Golf in Miami

The founder of Start to Finish Golf, PGA-certified instructor Lucas Cohen, helps golfers improve their swings with a simple, effective teaching philosophy. Cohen’s Start to Finish Concept focuses on establishing the proper grip, posture, alignment, and ball position. The curriculum also stresses finishing the swing on balance and holding the postswing pose—back heel off the ground, club wrapped around the opposite shoulder, hips facing the target, and eyes toward the judges after sticking the landing—well after contact. Cohen and his team of instructors have honed their practice with more than 25 years experience and 30,000 lessons taught.

The Start to Finish concept’s underlying philosophy is that golfers who begin and end their swing with sound, consistent form are likely to excel when making contact with the ball in the middle of the swing. Cohen has proven that his methods work, as he has twice been published in PGA Magazine and boasts a record of success as a player, a coach, and a sand-wedge sorcerer.

Shula’s Athletic Club—named for Don Shula, the NFL Hall of Famer who coached the Miami Dolphins to a Super Bowl trophy in 1972—doesn’t find it hard to fill its sprawling 40,000 square feet of space. A cardio room with more than 50 pieces of equipment, a spinning center, weight rooms, fitness-class studios, and basketball courts spread through the facility, luring athletes for independent workouts and personal-training sessions. Dozens of weekly fitness classes range from calorie-burning Zumba workouts and Vinyasa-yoga sessions to spin classes that help students practice for the day they have pedal-powered cars.

The athletic club also accommodates older exercisers with aquatic aerobics and seated Silver Sneakers workouts, and it keeps kids busy with confidence-building youth sports programs. Young legs run over a new 60-yard athletic field or nine lighted tennis courts where kids whack tennis balls and low-flying hot-air balloons with rackets.

Named one of the Top Eight Teaching Facilities in the United States in the August 1999 edition of Golf for Women magazine, Conte's Palm-Aire Golf Academy continues to welcome students in search of the expertise needed to improve their entire golf game. Academy Director Stephen Conte heads up a team of instructors comprised of PGA and LPGA teaching professionals who possess more than 80 years of combined experience. During individual and group lessons at Palm-Aire Country Club, students learn through the academy's unified teaching method. This system ensures that instruction stays consistent from instructor to instructor and students will never have to study with a substitute teacher that forces them to putt with pool cues.

Originally built in 1930, Spring Hill Golf Course spans 6,665 yards of kempt fairways lined by mature trees and interspersed water hazards. The par 72 course snakes through the charming Spring Hill College campus, challenging golfers with subtle elevation changes, six ponds, and rogue professors interrogating passersby about the lost history of the mashie niblick. The driving range prepares golfers for their 18-hole odyssey, which begins with an unforgiving first hole—a 435-yard par 4 rated the course's most difficult.

PGA professional Shane Allen oversees the stately grounds, employing digital video analysis in lessons for juniors, adults, and caddies desperate to determine their most intimidating post-putt howl.

Course at a Glance:

• 18-hole, par 72 course
• Length of 6,665 yards from the farthest tees
• Course rating of 71.3 from the farthest tees
• Slope rating of 124 from the farthest tees
• Four tee options
• Scorecard

The golfing gurus at Edwin Watts Golf Academy diagnose and correct their students' poor swing and putting habits in an effort to help them improve their shots and lower their scores. In one-on-one swing-analysis sessions, students learn a repeatable swing that eliminates tendencies they may have to slice, hook, push, or pull the ball. A special laser attaches to the end of the player's club and tracks the swing path while JC Video swing-analysis software records the session from two separate angles, lest analysis be thrown off by only looking at the golfer’s good side. Putting analysis employs Tomi technology to measure eight separate parameters of the putting stroke, from clubhead orientation at address to swing path and tempo. After swing and putting lessons, students may access the recordings on a password-protected website, so they can forward videos to friends or sports-documentary filmmakers.

With state-of-the-art facilities and equipment, the professional instructors at A-Swing Golf Academy develop lesson plans that make swing improvement fun and, most importantly, functional. Their approach to instruction aims to instill fundamentals in all skill areas, including full strokes, chips, slapshots, and putts. During lessons and swing-analysis sessions, the golf gurus employ the technological intricacies of a high-speed video camera to capture a player's unique swing motion and identify unfavorable tendencies.

Golf pros also follow students onto the course for playing lessons, in which they coach the intangibles of course management, risk assessment, and subtle intimidation tactics such as grunting during an opponent's backswing or teeing up with a rusty nail and glass eyeball.