Rinker’s Golf Tips Top 100 Teacher Tom Stickney. Tom grew up in Memphis, Tennessee and lived on the 15th hole at Colonial Country Club where we used to play the Danny Thomas Memphis Classic. The first one that I played in was in 1981 where Jerry Pate won and then did a swan dive into the lake on number 18. Around 12-13 Tom started to get more serious with his golf game. When it came time for college he wanted to stay close to home, and went to the University of Memphis to play golf. He recounted how much he enjoyed helping his teammates on the range, and when he graduated, he didn’t have the passion to follow in his father’s footsteps as a banker. His father told him to find out what he was passionate about and the money would come.
Tom played the mini-tours for awhile and one day he played with a guy that shot 64 when he shot 74. As fate would have it, the owner of the Houston-Levee course in Memphis, who was a pro golfer and wanted to play instead of teach, asked Tom if he wanted to come work with him and teach at his club. It was a great opportunity at a 45 hole facility with 1000 members. There was another pro there named Charlie Long, and he introduced Tom to the Golfing Machine, a book by Homer Kelley published in 1969. Charlie had worked with Ben Doyle, an authorized instructor of the Golfing Machine who worked with Bobby Clampett. Later Tom would meet and work with another disciple of the Golfing Machine, Mac O’Grady, a two-time winner on the PGA Tour.
Tom is currently the Director of Instruction at the Big Horn Golf Club in Palm Desert, California and in the summertime at the Promontory Golf Club in Park City, Utah. He uses a Trackman launch monitor, but still relies on his eyes and video to help students feel the difference between what he has taught them, and what they used to do. He said, “If the student can’t feel the difference, I haven’t taught them.” He always asks his students what their goals are with the whole point of lowering their scores. Visit www.TomStickneyGolf.com for more information.
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