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Hello From Orlando: Golf In Orlando – Playing Links-style At The Royal St. Cloud – Unpretentious Golf At Its Best

For a real links-style golf experience we discovered the Royal St. Cloud Golf Links, located in St. Cloud, about 25 minutes southeast of the Orlando airport or the Disney area. The Royal St. Cloud Links greet you with a rolling layout of links-style fairways, punctuated by classic links bunkers that feature names such as Hell, Spectacles, Devil’s Pocket and Hoofprint. True to its link heritage, every club in the bag will be utilized as the terrain is naturally varied.

Unlike other Orlando golf courses, the Royal St. Cloud is free of any residential developments and offers a pure golf experience. The design features four sets of tees and from the blue tee offers a championship length of 7,111 yards and a 74.6 rating, all on flawless fairways and silky-smooth Tifeagle greens.

Its motto, as printed above the entrance to the club house is “Original Golf Played Here”, and indeed the Royal St. Cloud features original style golf at its unpretentious best. I had a chance to talk to Bill Filson, the Director of Golf and since 2002 co-owner of this facility.

Bill has an extensive teaching background. He has personally studied under some of the top-ranked teaching professionals and brings 12 years of teaching experience that featured beginners to PGA tour professionals. Bill has consistently been a top-ranked PGA Professional. The Royal St. Cloud’s teaching staff is complemented by Dave Rummels who brings 17 years of valuable PGA Tour experience with him and can share advice from the “Tour” with the students. Associate Professional, Doug Holloway, has 16 years coaching experience.

At the Royal St. Cloud Golf Links the commitment to teaching the game of golf commitment includes state-of-the art video equipment and even a teaching tent for inclement weather. Lessons, programs, and clinics are offered for every skill level and requirement. Bill explained that they run very reasonably priced children’s clinics at $7.00 per clinic and the club has 120 members in their junior program. Ladies can also learn the sport without embarrassment in a relaxed, comfortable environment. And with every family membership at the club kids play for free.

Bill prides himself on offering one of the greatest values in golf in the Orlando area. For the 2005-2006 season rates vary from $46 to $48 from November 1 to January 10, and $64 from January 11 to April 30, 2006. Discounted tee time rates
are available after 11 am or 12 pm respectively, 7 days/week. Bill went on to say that the fees at the Royal St. Cloud are always reasonable, and that he aims not to oversell his course, but to exceed the visitors’ expectations.

In addition, he offers a very unique proposition: a 100% money-back guarantee with no conditions if you didn’t enjoy your playing experience at the Royal St. Clouds. He said in the almost three years since he has run this course only 2 people ever asked for a refund; a phenomenal achievement, considering that several tens of thousands of rounds are played here every year.

One of the very unique features of this course is the handcrafted stonework which is evident in four bridges found throughout the course that have been hand-built by one individual brick by brick. Bill said that some of the bridges are even a little bit crooked, just to give them more character. The most famous stone bridge can be found on the 5th hole and many of the British visitors to this golf course come here specifically for this unique feature.

Bill explained that his golf course serves a value-based market that is composed of local residents, snowbirds escaping the cold northern winters, and British golfers, a very loyal crowd who refer this facility to many of their friends back home.

The Royal St. Cloud Golf Links have been rated as one of the Top 5 Most Underrated Golf Courses in the Orlando area and they have hosted the 2004 and 2005 British Junior Amateur. With its wide-open fairways the course looks deceptively simple, however, I experienced very quickly the unique challenges offered by the Royal St. Cloud. Traditional links golf is played on the ground, unfortunately I still managed to find water several times, despite the generously open fairways.

The other feature I really enjoyed were a number of the ponds on the back nine of the course that were playing host to a variety of local wildlife and water birds. I particularly enjoyed watching a very rare specimen of wood stork stalking the edges of a pond for food, and a crane standing upright with stretched out wings. The course had a very relaxed, casual and friendly feel to it and we enjoyed a tasty hot dog after our game on the beautiful patio outside the clubhouse as a way to cap off a very enjoyable golf experience on a gorgeous day.

Driving Directions from the Disney Area:
Royal St. Cloud Golf Links is an easy 25 miles from the Disney area.
(25-35 minute approximate drive time)

Who is using Golf Hypnosis for Golf Improvement – apart from Tiger Woods

So who?s using hypnosis to improve their golf performance ? apart from Tiger Woods and maybe Phil Mickelson? Well, taking first things first, it?s difficult to be sure who?s using hypnosis because most people who do don?t want to let on. Why?s that? Well firstly, they want to keep the competitive edge that golf hypnosis gives them to themselves. Secondly, although it?s becoming acceptable for a top golfer to admit to using a mind coach, their marketing people are still wary of saying they use golf psychology or, worse still, hypnosis ? that?s all to ?new age.?

A Valuable Mortgage Lesson Learned From Tiger Woods

A Valuable Mortgage Lesson Learned From Tiger Woods

Unless you’ve been living in a cave or under a rock the last few years, you’ve seen first hand how Tiger Woods has become one of the most dominate forces in men’s golf.

We watched as he won the CA Championship at Doral Golf Club a few weeks ago by two strokes. Woods won this event for the sixth time, more than any other tournament. Tiger is believed to be the first player to win a tournament six times on six courses – in Spain, Ireland, Atlanta, San Francisco, London and Miami, the latter on a Blue Monster course where he has won the last three years.

There is no doubt we are witnessing the performance of a truly great athlete. His dedication and preparation is truly amazing. He finished at 10 under par at 278 and earned $1.35 million for his second victory of the year, and 56th of his career.

You’re probably asking…Where’s that mortgage lesson you talked about? OK…Here we go!

On every hole that Tiger plays (whether it is practice or sanctioned play) a gentleman follows Tiger closely…charting each stroke and documenting the results. He maintains a low profile and you would find it difficult to pick him out from the gallery that follows Tiger on every hole. He documents each hole, of each round, at each location that Tiger plays.

Just so you know, the gentleman’s name is Hank Haney and he is the “Swing Coach” of Tiger Woods. Tiger pays Hank one million dollars a year plus expenses to perform this function. Hank Haney charts each stroke from tee to green, analyzes each stroke, and then recommends the appropriate practice to correct the problems that he may have noted.

Hank Haney doesn’t organize Tiger’s travel plans or make hotel reservations, and he doesn’t chart the golf course (that’s the job of Steve Williams, Tiger’s caddie of six years). As a side note, Tiger pays Steve some 10% of all purse monies. Hank Haney gets paid to do just one thing…to be Tiger’s “Swing Coach.”

Today, most of the top pros on the tour employ a “Coach.” We picked Tiger to underscore our point here: Why would a man so naturally talented and currently so dominating in his profession, be willing to invest such a huge amount of money into his game?

The answer is simple! He’s investing in his business…his livelihood…and, his future. He knows that to stay ahead of his competition he needs to invest, or better yet…re-invest in his business at every opportunity. With tour earnings of $9.9 million in 2006…Tiger spent more than 20% of that amount to improve his business.

I am always amazed by the number of Loan Officers/Mortgage Brokers who don’t spend more than fifty dollars a year on their own professional growth. We’re in a profession that’s changing daily and by leaps and bounds, and most mortgage folks refuse to invest in their business.

There’s no doubt, you began a strong mortgage career, and you really got into it – but then you fell asleep at the switch and forgot to do those basic things like read industry publications or new books by sales masters.

You don’t go to sales seminars. You don’t listen to audios or view videos on sales-related topics. You don’t have any paid subscriptions to newsletters that could improve your mortgage knowledge or capability. In short, you don’t constantly re-invigorate and improve your business or yourself.

If you want to survive and prosper in the Mortgage Business today…you need to be a “Tiger” and invest in your profession.

Woods and Mickelson Unite, is your Golf Game Stagnant and Stop Competitors From Getting Into your Head

Now that Presidents Cup fever has replaced FedEx Cup mayhem, it will be interesting to see how Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson perform as comrades uniting for a common goal.

Although Team U.S.A. has only five golfers ranked in the top-twenty of the PGA Tour’s Official Golf Rankings, the combination of Woods, Mickelson, Stricker and Furyk will most certainly dominate at this year’s event. With the addition of Scott Verplank and Stewart Cink, who always appear to keep cool under pressure, the “Internationals” will have a tough time holding on, in my opinion, even with Ernie Els leading the pack. Rory Sabbatini can’t close a deal and gets flustered around Tiger Woods, Vijay Singh has missed his last two cuts and Mike Weir just hasn’t shown much spunk this season. Hoping for Adam Scott and Geoff Ogilvy to hold off the Americans is like wishing for Colin Montgomerie to win an event on the PGA Tour here in the States…it just won’t happen.

Phil Mickelson was featured in first few minutes of the latest Family Guy episode (”Blue Harvest”) on the Fox Network (not available yet as a download). Actually, his wife Amy was the topic of discussion with Phil appearing as a cartoonish prop. The demeaning and vulgar commentary about Amy was too long, unnecessary and not really all that funny. Why did writer Alec Sulkin single out Mickelson? Could it be a weird twist on Mickelson’s “family guy” image?

Or could it be because Elin Woods, a former bikini model, was just too easy a target and no one wishes to upset Woods, lest, in a fit of rage, Tiger decided to purchase the Fox Network and cancel the show!

Without watching the Turning Stone Resort Championship, it was totally up to the internet to provide us with Steve Flesch’s terrific win. Congrats to Flesch although would he have had such an easy time if the top players in the world were competing at Atunyote? Or is this fall series, with the interest falling on keeping a PGA Tour card, more stressful than accruing FedEx Cup points?

Golf for Beginners podcast also discusses Mike Pedersen’s new golf blog which takes us through the top reasons golfers just don’t improve. In addition to these golf tips, we admit a flaw in last week’s blog about the Solheim Cup and answer an email from a listener who asks, “how do you deal with playing partners who insist on keeping you up to date with your score when you’d rather not know your running score?”

CLICK HERE to listen to this week’s podcast.

Send commentary to golfforbeginners@worldgolf.com.

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