Long before the Sea Island Golf Club on St. Simons Island, Georgia, became host to this week's McGladrey Classic, golfers came to this oasis with views of the Atlantic Ocean and St. Simons Sound to play the three championship golf courses and to take lessons at its Golf Performance Center.
Recently, I visited the southeast coast of Georgia to see for myself why nearly 20 PGA Tour players, including 2014 FedEx Cup champion Billy Horschel, as well as Ryder Cup player Matt Kuchar, trained at the facility.
For my three-day adventure that included three touristy trips to the Waffle House for breakfast, I took along three friends, who among them have taken thousands of hours in golf instruction.
James T. Love, a 39-year-old globetrotting executive at Hewlett-Packard and a childhood friend, was once a plus-2 handicapper and the No. 1 man on the Kentucky State University golf team. After college, Love tried to see how good he could get, so he spent time at the David Leadbetter Academy in Orlando and visited Titleist's Performance Institute in Oceanside, California. He arrived on Sea Island hoping that the trip would jump-start a new phase in his development as a player after a long hiatus from serious golf.
Jason Kraus and Daniel Levin, both good friends from New York, filled out my foursome. Kraus, 31, who makes his living as an artist, is an affable, obsessive, neurotic sort who makes his swing instructors earn every cent of their fee.
Levin, a 19-year-old freshman on the Bucknell University golf team, is the oldest teenager in America. He's not a know-it-all because he thinks he knows everything, like many a precocious youth. Rather, it's because he has spent his life absorbing every detail from much older people about golf courses, players, etiquette, caddies and just locker room conversations in general.
With its multidisciplinary approach, the Golf Performance Center was going to be rigorous and challenging for my crew of serious-minded players, but also the kind of intense process that all aspiring good golfers should have at least once in their lives. During the visit, we all received instruction in putting, the mental game, the full swing, and club fitting, but never before in the comprehensive, inclusive and technologically driven way that was being offered at Sea Island.
Three of us were never going to be pros, but now we were getting a scaled-down version of the center's "Train Like the Pros" program.
On our first day at the resort, we ran into Davis Love III at the Davis Love Grill, where we were served a Sunday buffet with an array of Southern delicacies. The 20-time PGA Tour winner was there with his mother, Penta Love, who cut the ribbon and hit the first ball when the center opened in 1991. It had been the vision of Love's father, Davis Jr., who died in an airplane crash in 1988.
DL3, who works with the performance center's Jack Lumpkin, is a near-ubiquitous presence around the island. When we weren't running into him at the resort, or at Bubba Garcia's, a popular Mexican restaurant, or at Frederica, a nearby private golf club, we could see his name plastered on his local Paddle and Putt shop.
At the 2012 Ryder Cup matches at Medinah, Love, an avid stand-up paddleboarder, gave each of his players a custom paddleboard as a gift.
Love, who is much more easygoing and talkative than the sober mien he portrays on the golf course, is mildly amused by all of the tour players who have come to live on the island.
"Players used to ask me why are you on St. Simons Island," he said. "Now it seems like a new one moves out here every year."
Mike Shannon is one of the instructors the players come to see. Shannon, a former assistant pro at Augusta National, is a putting guru with 14 tour clients, including Kuchar. To see Shannon's putting philosophy in action, just watch the tucked elbows in Kuchar's putting stroke.
Shannon made a couple of subtle tweaks to my claw grip and by the end of the trip my putting had vastly improved. He couldn't promise that I would never have the yips again, but at least I knew now what I needed to do to become a more consistent putter. Shannon also showed us how we all aimed our putts slightly left at address.
After Shannon, we spent the next day learning everything about the relationship of the body to the golf swing, club fitting and swing mechanics. Turns out I'm pretty fit but my body doesn't fully support the movement that I want to make in my full swing.
Scott Fedisin, a golf fitness specialist at the center, taught me several stretches that would help me keep a better posture during my swing, so it doesn't come up and out on so many irons that produced the weak high shots that get knocked out of the air by a gust of wind.
Jordan Dempsey, a former NCAA All-American at Ole Miss and now a senior instructor at the center, pushed my ball position back with my irons to help me get a more penetrating ball flight and more solid contact. With the 3D body-tracking system, which compared my swing with Rickie Fowler's, center instructor Jared Walahoski gave Dempsey helpful notes on what was happening in my swing.
I felt like a tour player as Craig Allan, a Master club fitter, put my swing under the analysis of TrackMan, which gave me every imaginable detail about my swing from club speed to face angle. With Dr. Morris Pickens, the resident sports psychologist, we got an inside view of the mental processes and performance plans that have helped his clients win more than 25 PGA Tour events since 2005.
In the end, we all benefited immensely from the exhaustive, collaborative work done at the center.
Love, who grew up with me near Atlanta, learned on the trip that we often putt the way we swing the golf club.
"I like to hit fades and my putting stroke is similar," he said. "I come over the top with an open face."
For Levin, the trip was an important step in his maturation as a young college player trying to perhaps take his game to the next level.
"It was great being able to work inside with Randy Myers and the guys in the Nike lab so you could analyze your swing and how your body works or doesn't work with your action and how you can use that analysis to create a plan of attack to improve," Levin said. "Having that coupled with such a great practice facility makes it a truly unique and memorable experience."
Levin is contemplating more trips to the center. On our last day on the island, we got to play Frederica, a beautiful Tom Fazio-design, with Bobby Wyatt, a former Alabama star who moved to Sea Island after turning pro this summer. Wyatt said his decision to move was strongly influenced by the performance center and his friendship with tour players who lived in the area. He had come for our round directly from a workout at the center.
Wyatt, who once shot 57 in an Alabama junior tournament, finished with a 67 that included two eagles and a double-bogey.
"Bobby's action is so refined and his shot selection is really interesting to watch," said Levin, who shot 71. "You pick up a lot of little bits and pieces that you can add to your own game, which will help you save a shot here and there."
The Sea Island Golf Performance Center will deliver a similar product for most serious and aspiring players: bits and pieces of advice and instruction to lower your handicap. And if you're lucky, a chance encounter with Davis Love III to chat about paddleboarding, snowboarding or the next U.S. Ryder Cup captain.