Columnist Victoria Sun: Angel Park school helps players get a grip on the game’s nuances

Victoria Sun

Wednesday, Nov. 3, 1999 | 10:17 a.m.

Victoria Sun is a Las Vegas Sun sportswriter. Her golf column appears Wednesday. Reach her at 259-4078 or victoria@vegas.com

Whether your goal is to become a professional on the PGA Tour or you are a novice and want to learn how to play golf, there's something for everyone at the Resort Golf Academy location at Angel Park Golf Club.

In conjunction with O.B. Sports, the academy has been operating at Angel Park for four months.

The school conducts group specialty clinics, private lessons, corporate outings and group lessons catered to the specific needs of its clients.

On Tuesday, Si Pollack, a businessman from Albuquerque, N.M., and his son Jerry, a marketing representative for a record company in Chicago, took their first lesson with Mike Davis, the director of golf instruction at the academy.

After sitting down with the father and son to assess their goals, Davis reviewed fundamentals with the pair, then filmed them for further analysis.

"The other lessons I took, it was just send me out there and let me hit," Si said. "They are very analytical.

"I wanted to learn the right way to do things before I started to hit instead of just going out there doing things the wrong way and trying to fix them because old habits are hard to break.

"I have a good feeling that when we indeed go out to play that I'm going to be able to do better."

That's exactly what Davis and Karl Fisher would like to hear.

Fisher is Davis' assistant and one of four teachers at the academy.

Fisher has been giving golf lessons for two decades and stresses the word "teacher" as opposed to the word "instructor."

As a former pilot for Canadian Airlines, Fisher said he started teaching golf after he took a lesson and it was too complicated.

"I figure if you can take a 720,000-pound airplane with all its complexities and make it fly, then we should be able to teach people how to swing a stinking golf club," Fisher said. "We don't instruct golf, we teach students.

"An instructor gives you a set of directions and tells you to do it. We tell you things we want you to understand so that you can translate it to your game. Our job as teachers is to make sure you pick up something from us that doesn't go away tomorrow."

Chances are that won't happen at any Resort Golf Academy.

The schools, ranked in the top 25 in Golf Digest, Golfweek and Golf magazine, are located across the country, including Scottsdale, Ariz., and Palm Springs, Calif.

Each lesson includes a take-home video complete with an audio critique of things to help improve a player's game.

"We are also a disciplined group," Fisher said. "We are very coordinated so if I work with someone, then leave town, they won't be lost with another instructor because everything I've done with them will be in their personal file that another person can get to."

* PAK TO PLAY: South Korean Se Ri Pak, the 1998 LPGA Rookie of the Year, will compete in the season-ending PageNet Championship at the Desert Inn Golf Club Nov. 8-14. The 21-year-old won the U.S. Open and LPGA Championship her first year on tour and finished second on the LPGA Tour's money list with $872,170. Entering the PageNet, Pak has won the ShopRite LPGA Classic, the Jamie Farr Kroger Classic and the Samsung World Championship.

The field features the top 30 players on the money list as of Nov. 7. The pro-am for the event will be Nov. 10 and the four-round tournament will be played Nov. 11-14. The 6,373-yard par 72 course at the D.I. will be the only course played. ABC Sports and ESPN will televise the tournament live.

* JUNIOR GOLF CLINIC: On Tuesday at 3 p.m. at the D.I. driving range, there will be a free junior clinic for boys and girls ages 7 to 17. The clinic is for experienced as well as beginning golfers. Three players from the LPGA Tour will be at the clinic to help teach the kids. Equipment will be provided, but kids must wear their own golf or tennis shoes.

* MEMORIAL GOLF TOURNAMENT: American Legion B.M.I. Post #40 will hold the Ben Stepman Memorial Golf Tournament next Tuesday with an 8 a.m. shotgun start at the Stallion Mountain Country Club. A $150 entry fee includes golf, cart, lunch and a tee gift package. There will be an awards ceremony and prizes for longest drive, closest to the hole and hole in ones. Sponsorship packages are also available from $50 to $1,200. For more information call 565-5433.