Reid has agreed a five-year deal for the Cindy Reid Academy at Mission Hills, and she hopes to see her business expand in Asia in the coming years: "Over the next five to seven years I would like to open perhaps another three academies in Asia. But I won't rush into it – I want to focus on quality, not volume..." In China? "I don't know yet. I haven't taken any decisions on locations thus far."
She is confident about the future of the game and of her prospects in China, with good reason, she believes. "Golf is a luxury, that's true. But it's an addictive luxury – more than any other sport. There is a secret to the grip that golf takes on you, and I don't think that anyone will ever find it."
The Mission Hills Academy opened its doors to the public in April 2008. Some work remains to be done, but it is already an impressive facility. Perched high on the hill behind the Mission Hills Clubhouse beside the first tee of the Jose Olazabal course, the drive to the Academy is a spectacular climb, and the set-up is spectacular too when you get there.
Of particular interest are the eight custom-designed individual driving booths equipped with V1 Swing Technology. The booths are of the highest quality, each containing four fixed video camera units – an improvement on many such facilities that will often provide only a single movable camera. The result is that instructor and student have the ability to conduct a 360° frame-by-frame swing analysis that enables an understanding of the student's habits and tendencies from each of four different angles.
This frame-by-frame analysis of their golf swing gives the students the ability to understand their current swing and shows them where they need to improve. It's both practical and rapid as a means of identifying flaws – I took a swing that looked decent from behind, but the very same swing seen from the side-on view looked very different – it highlighted a simple and obviously long-standing weakness that I was able to address immediately.
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The individual driving booths are of the highest quality.[Cindy Reid Academy]
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AJ Madani shows me around the Academy. He is typical of the non-Chinese coaches, with a set of broad-based qualifications and experience in golf, sport, and fitness training. Personally selected by Reid as the director of the Facility, he is a dynamic graduate of the USPGA Golf Tour Academy whose expertise extends to club fitting as well. He has qualifications in golf swing dynamics and equipment specifications from the Titlelist Performance Institute and from TaylorMade: The Kingdom.
AJ is more than simply a technical coach – it is clear that he also thinks carefully about his approach to teaching in the context of the cultural environment in which he is working.
"I'm conscious that the Chinese study hard," he says. "They put a lot of emphasis on the value of study, and this intellectual focus influences the way they try to learn to play golf. They are very analytical in their approach – they want to understand all the components of a good golf swing and to try to assemble them into a unit. I need to help them to understand that a good golf swing is an entity in itself, not simply a combination of the individual elements, and that you need to feel it as a whole rather than as a sum of the parts..."
It's an interesting and shrewd analysis, and bears out what I myself know of the Chinese in other unrelated fields. In the equipment shop on the same day I see an example of what he is talking about – a young man is testing a new club with the help of his girlfriend. Rather than trying to feel his way through a complete swing, he takes up a set of fixed poses at several different points in his backswing and follow-through, and asks her to check his positioning at each of them.
A quality facility and quality coaching will be the key to the Mission Hills Academy's success. In addition to the golf practice facilities, the Center offers a range of ancillary services and equipment designed to build a healthy golfer as well as a proficient swing. Located in the Academy building is a fully operational fitness facility. This facility offers state of the art cardio and strength training equipment as well as functional trainers and many products to promote balance within the body. Some of the equipment is custom-designed for the Academy.
Already the Academy is starting to bear fruit. Reid takes great pleasure in introducing us to one of her star pupils, Sharmeny, a 12-year old local from Guangdong Province. "She has a beautiful natural swing," says Reid. "She is capable of playing golf at the highest level."
In the summer of 2009 Reid is planning to take Sharmeny to America to experience high-level competitive golf for the first time. Sharmeny will be the first of what she hopes will be many proficient exports from the Mission Hills Academy by Cindy Reid.
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Cindy and Sharmeny, one of her most promising pupils.[David Ferguson/China.org.cn]
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(China.org.cn March 20, 2009)
