By Andy Reistetter
Golf writer Andy Reistetter continues his exclusive "Play-Write" series with a round of golf on the Seaside Course at Sea Island in Georgia. Ben Crane triumphed in the PGA Tour's McGladrey Classic on the Seaside Course. Along with the Plantation and Retreat courses, Sea Island Golf Club is a premier golfing destination. But there is more to the story. Play along with Reistetter as he discovers a truly unique, world-class golfing experience at Sea Island.
There may be five oceans and seven seas, but there is only one Sea Island.
What defines a golf course?
Eighteen holes?
What defines an ocean or a sea?
It gets complicated, isn't it all salt water?
What defines golf in the southeast United States?
I grew up north of the Mason-Dixon Line, playing on golf courses with bent grass greens and Kentucky bluegrass rough.
After four years of living in the Southeast, Bermuda grass continues to challenge me.
How does one play a shot from the rough around the greens?
Why is it harder to read the break on Bermuda greens?
But isn't Kentucky south of the Mason-Dixon Line?
Why does bluegrass, but not Bermuda grass, grow well up north?
Here's the answer to the rub…
Play the Seaside Course at Sea Island Golf Club on St. Simons Island in Georgia.
Sea Island defines southeast golf… golf nestled in the salt marshes in the coastal plains of the Low Country.
There is a reason Sea Island has hosted the SEC golf championship since 2001.
Sea Island's pedigree goes back to 1927, with Walter Travis designing the original nine holes of the Plantation Course.
Harry Colt and C.H. Alison designed a second nine in 1929.
In 1999, Tom Fazio redesigned Colt and Alison's work, as well as Joe Lee's Marshside nine (1973), to form the Seaside Course as it is known today.
Seaside is a design masterpiece.
The first nine goes out and back in a counterclockwise fashion, while the second nine follows a clockwise direction.
Each of the four par-3s faces its own unique direction.
In essence, the layout complicates the gauging of the ocean breezes.
Red wicker baskets are the norm on the Seaside Course.
The golfer is left in quiet isolation to feel the direction and strength of the wind without the aid of a flag on the stick locating the hole on the green.
The PGA Tour thinks this is unfair for its players, so during the McGladrey Classic there are flagsticks on the greens.
Golfers with exceptional talent and a desire to have that talent challenged have always come to Sea Island.
Bobby Jones first played there in the summer of 1930, just before completing the Grand Slam at Merion Cricket Club in Pennsylvania.
Merion has wicker baskets but no crickets.
World Golf Hall of Fame member Louise Suggs has been a member of Sea Island since 1955.
Whether it is a sponsor's product or a golf club affiliation, Suggs never associates herself with anything other than the best and something she personally believes and trusts in.
Sea Island was the place where the best golfers would come for instruction by Davis Love Jr.
His son Davis Love III heads up a growing list of professional golfers who make Sea Island their home.
Hosted by Davis and his foundation, the McGladrey Classic is a family affair. His brother Mark is the executive director of the tournament.
Davis grew up at Sea Island. This is where his heart is.
To bring a PGA Tour event to his hometown must be as satisfying as winning the 1997 PGA Championship with Mark on the bag.
Every golf shot Love takes has something to do with his father.
When he sank the winning putt for his first major championship, a rainbow was present.
It was as if his father, who had died nine years earlier in an airplane accident, was there smiling his approval for a course well played, a job well done.
The golfing face of McGladrey is bigger than only Davis Love III. It includes Chris DiMarco, Natalie Gulbis, and another Sea Island resident, Zach Johnson.
While I have been trying for four years to understand how to play golf on Bermuda grass, it took me one round at Sea Island to understand Southern golf.
We all know that the lie dictates the shot.
Play shots from greenside Bermuda rough like bunker shots. Open the blade up, aim an inch or two behind the ball and blast it softly onto the green.
On the green, look for the grain at the edge of the hole cut and play one-third less break than you think you need.
We all know that the truth dictates one's life experience.
Play Sea Island and enjoy a truly remarkable golfing experience!
Golf Instruction in Class by Itself at Sea Island Golf Learning Center
From instructional DVDs to divine intervention, there are myriad possibilities that hold promise for golfers on the long road to improving their game. Those who are truly serious should get to Sea Island in a hurry. “If someone really wants to improve, no matter their level, there is no better place than Sea Island Golf Learning Center,” says Todd Anderson, Director of Instruction. “Our successes are unmatched in the country.”
Indeed. A destination all its own adjacent to The Lodge at Sea Island Golf Club and the championship Seaside course, the Golf Learning Center counts three of the country’s top 50 instructors, including Anderson, the 2010 PGA Teacher of the Year. Their approach is holistic, focusing on five core competencies, including Long Game, Short Game, Golf Fitness, Club Fitting and the Mental Game. “Our holistic approach works because there are always limitations in how the body functions or how the equipment performs,” continues Anderson. “People often overlook the mental game entirely, but not here. We examine every different variable from all sides and gear golfers toward proficiency in each.”
The Golf Learning Center’s results speak for themselves: Students have garnered 60 wins on major U.S. tours since 2005. PGA professionals Davis Love III, Jonathan Byrd, Matt Kuchar and U.S. Open Champion Lucas Glover are just a handful of the game’s best who train at the Golf Learning Center, while untold amateurs of every skill level arrive daily to polish their game as they never believed they could.
Unmatched Team Approach
The Golf Learning Center team is led by Todd Anderson, Jack Lumpkin and Mike Shannon, a trio of world-class talent individually hailed by Golf Digest as three of the top 50 golf instructors working today – the highest concentration of talent in the country. Like Anderson after him, Lumpkin was the PGA’s Teacher of the Year in 1995, an honor earned by only 25 professional instructors to date.
The faculty goes deeper, employing top sports psychologist Dr. Morris Pickens, author of Learn to Win. “The better you get physically the more important your mental game becomes,” notes Dr. Mo, who helps golfers find balance and keep sharp through the demands of a three- or four-day tournament. There’s also fitness expert Randy Myers, a Pennsylvania State grad whose Masters thesis, A Strength Training and Flexibility Program for Recreational Golfers, set a new precedent for golf exercise conditioning. Myers has been fundamental in establishing the connection between fitness and golf, concentrating on flexibility as integral to injury prevention and creating an eponymous Golf Stretching Pole that is the only training aid of its kind approved the U.S. Golf Association for players to carry in their bag.
Together, the Golf Learning Center faculty serves countless guests each year through one- to three-day training programs that assess fitness levels, swing mechanics, equipment, body function and mechanics with impressive results.
If The Club Fits
Even deeper, the Golf Learning Center has made a specialty of club fitting, one of the least considered yet most significant aspects of the game. On-staff club fitters are masters of their craft, including Craig Allen, who doubles as the Center’s Manager, and Curtis Leggett, a St. Simons Island native who has plied his talents at Sea Island since 1984.
Utilizing advanced technology via Trackman Launch Monitors, Allen and Leggett enable golfers to test the latest equipment from major manufacturers in live conditions or to confirm the performance of their existing clubs. It takes about an hour each for woods and irons, or two hours for both, with hourly rates ranging from $125 for Sea Island guests and Pros.
Let’s Golf
Newly tuned for optimum performance on both fairway and green, what’s a Sea Island golfer to do? Play golf, of course. Along with the superb practice facilities from a driving range to putting greens, the resort offers three world-class championship courses – Seaside, Plantation and Retreat – as well as Forbes Travel Guide Five-Star and AAA Five-Diamond-rated luxury accommodation at The Lodge at Sea Island Golf Club.
For more information or to book a training program at the Sea Island Golf Learning Center, call 800.732.4752 or 912.638.5119.
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