Nick Paez’s smooth touch on a golf course has translated well to life beyond the fairway. The PGA pro with a business degree has transitioned from reading the green to earning it.
“You’re put into situations on a golf course that are constantly challenging,” says the franchise owner and director of instruction at GolfTec in North Olmsted and Beachwood. “You don’t always have your best stuff, but you have to get creative and figure out ways to get the ball in the hole in the fewest strokes.”
Paez certainly found a way to do that with the 143-store franchise’s annual awards. He took home six honors in 2009, including Top Instructor, Teacher of the Year and Store Manager of the Year.
“When you’re looking at business, you get curves thrown at you all the time,” he says. “Especially as a startup, you’re constantly learning, from hiring the right people to getting the right contracts out, what to sign and what not to sign. At the end of the day, it’s about perseverance and facing adversity then being determined to make the right decision.”
GolfTec’s sensor-based swing analysis, club fitting and mental approach to the game has made it the largest golf-instruction chain in the world. The key, according to Paez, is balancing the operational side against the teaching. He holds frequent meetings to learn what instructors are doing to help clients shoot lower scores. “What is it taking to get there?” Paez asks. “A lesson a month? A week? How many practice sessions?”
To help get your golf game back on course, we asked Paez to identify a few flaws that can creep in after a long winter away and some easy ways to fix them.
Balance of power. A good swing begins with good balance, something most golfers never consider. Paez recommends standing on your left leg with your eyes closed to see how long you stand. Anything above 24 seconds is excellent. “The average balance is 10 seconds, but most people we screen are around five seconds,” Paez says. “Lots of people can’t do it with their eyes open. But anything involving balance is huge.”
Mirror image. Work on your swing while it’s still snowing by standing in front of a mirror with your arms crossed in front of you, making just the shoulder turn in your backswing. “It gets you to move your lower body and torso,” Paez says. “Rotate your torso, shift the weight through your leg and impact into the finish without using your arms.”
Ball position. Paez estimates that 95 percent of his clients come to GolfTec with the wrong ball position, setup or balance at address, making it difficult to strike the ball properly. Higher handicap players tend to play the ball too far forward with their driver. “It forces them to open the shoulder up,” he says. “All of that promotes the wrong swing plane, and the ball starts slicing to the right. Their fix is to keep aiming left, and eventually it slices so bad that they either give up the game or think, I have to get some help.” An easy fix is to picture a set of railroad tracks. The feet, knees, hips and shoulders should be in line on one track with the club on the other track. “Everything should be parallel to those tracks,” Paez says.