Rinker’s Golf Tips July 6th Guest Tom Jackson. Tom Jackson is the founder and owner of the Core Golf Academy at Orange County National in Winter Garden, Florida next to Walt Disney World. I played mini-tours with Tom back in 1979-1981. I asked Tom how he got into teaching and he said that he asked himself, “what do I know” and that answer was that “he knew how to play golf.” He had learned a lot working with George Knudson, Ben Kern, and David Leadbetter on his own game and that all transferred to teaching. Tom said Knudson brought the same desire to teaching as he did to his playing. I asked him what he would have done differently when he was playing if he knew then what he knows now. He said fitness, which very few people were doing then, and understanding how the body functions during the golf swing, would have been invaluable back when he was playing.
I asked him when he met Sean Foley and he said they met in the fall of 1979. They had a mutual friend, Ben Kern the Director of Golf at the National Golf Club in Ontario, and Ben had already influenced Tom in a lot of ways. Ben had an industry leading junior program at the National that was taught by George Knudson and Sean had gone through their program. Ben told Tom that Sean would be calling and “you should hire him,” which Tom did as the Director of Instruction at Glen Abbey where many Canadian Opens have been played. In 2006 Tom and Sean took a huge gamble and started Core down in Orlando, Florida. Sean was the house parent, cook, taxi, and coach that first year. Some people may think that Sean Foley is an overnight success now as Tiger Woods’s coach, but there is a road and path that all successful people take to get there. Tom had 7-8 teachers at Glen Abbey and each one could teach all facets of the game. Many days they would do a “full pull” which was 7:00 am till dark. Sean got his training degree and started training people at night after doing full pulls. Sean did all this so he could go to seminars around the country and continue to learn. All the pros also gave a percentage of their lessons pro-bono just because it was the right thing to do.
I asked Tom why he started Core, and he said it was because they had a kid in their program that was progressing nicely in Canada, and he recommended that he go to a noted top junior academy in Florida. The parents put their money together and it ended up being a horrible experience. His coach was a frustrated mini-tour player, he didn’t get one of their top coaches, and his instructor went in for a knee operation and never came back during the season. The kid, who was a hard worker and on the up rise, comes home and is destroyed. He couldn’t break 80 now, when he was shooting in the 60’s and winning tournaments the previous summer. He was never the same after that experience. So Tom, who had already started a successful junior program at Glen Abbey, went to Florida in 2006 and started a full residential junior academy. I asked Tom what they do first when the kids come to Core and he said they put them through physical evaluations and functional tests to see how their bodies can really move. Once they have assessed that, they then start hitting some balls. Big plans are in store for Core this fall with approximately 60 kids coming in, a new 5000 sf gym, and two indoor hitting bays with Trackman and most likely 3D. Tom Jackson can be reached at www.CoreGolfAcademy.com.