“The Nicklaus Academy at Finca Cortesín is at the forefront of technology.”
He is passionate about golf and likes to transmit his adoration for the sport to his students. Ricardo Jiménez Eliaeson, an affable professional with a perennial smile and enthusiasm, masterfully directs the Nicklaus Academy at Finca Cortesín, the recently elected best resort in Europe by the users of the internet portal Leading Courses.
Born in Stockholm to a Malaga emigrant father and a Swedish mother, Ricardo, 48, began to pass on his golfing knowledge at Finca Cortesín when this luxury resort opened in Costa del Sol in the autumn of 2006. He had the honor of being one of the first to play the renowned course, when not even the tees were in place. “That first impression was spectacular,” he recalls. Later, three editions of the World Match Play Championships were played on those magnificent greens.
-What sets Nicklaus Academy apart from other golf schools?
The Nicklaus Academies are characterized for being a State of Art, for being at the forefront, where the student lives an experience among other things for its high technology, where the flight of the ball is analyzed through the Flightscope device and the swing through video analysis, and we also have the privacy of having our own practice tee. The teaching is very personalized and is usually developed with a teacher with one or two students, which accelerates the student’s learning.
-How important is technology and how important is the teacher when learning to play golf?
The reality is that most professionals do not need technology to know what is happening to the student, but the students do because through technology they understand that what we are telling them is the right thing to do. It corroborates our teaching. We use it first to show the errors that need to be worked on and then to check how the movement has improved.
-What are the most common mistakes a beginner makes?
-The biggest mistake of the beginner is that they don’t have the ability to handle the club, to control the clubface, to contact the ball. Obviously, the professionals do have that ability because we have developed it over many years, but the beginners don’t have it and we try to teach them how the clubface has to match the ball and what happens once the clubface connects with the ball. The key is to try to get control of the clubface, and this requires that the grip does not have a lot of tension. Most beginners have too much tension in the grip, so they can’t manage the clubface.
-And those of average players?
-It’s exactly the same for them. Ninety-five percent of our students have the problem of pressure on the grip, especially with the left hand.
-Does it not matter if a swing is ugly but effective, or should we try to change it?
-Not at all. Maybe in the beginning, when I started, I was very focused on trying to get the perfect club position during the swing, in our teachings before I came here the Jack Nicklaus Academy was looking for the perfect swing. But the reality is that every student is different, they can do what they can do, sometimes they have physical limitations for golf, and what we try to do is adapt to them. I always say the same thing: you take a Trackman or a Flightscope, you tell all the players on the Tour that you want them to have a swing line of two to the right and the club face one degree off the line, you leave and when you come back a few hours later they are all hitting a similar ball; yes, the swings are all different.
-What teaching options do you offer here: individual classes, courses…?
– We are an academy open to everyone, anyone can come and give lessons with us. We are based on the fact that 90 percent of the players want to improve their game, and that is precisely what we offer. We make an evaluation of your game on the course, an evaluation of your ball flight, using Flightscope technology, we evaluate your swing through tests and video analysis with Swing Catalyst, we also make an evaluation of the short game, Putt with a device (TOMI) that gives us some important parameters during the impact and we also make an analysis and test of the chip, the pitch and the exit of the bunker. And then we finish with a physical evaluation of the student, we evaluate their equipment, if necessary we do a fitting with Taylor Made, and finally we make an evaluation of all their skills and see how good they are in each section of the game. With all that, we see what aspects we need to work on with them using technology, plus the Drills and our training aids. And from there we constantly monitor their work so that they don’t stray from the right path. We have private classes, classes in the field, clinics…, but above all we work with customized packages adapted to the needs of each client.
Among the initiatives we want to launch, on June 6th we will participate in the Women`s Golf Day (One Day-Women Golfing-Everywhere around the World), an event where women and girls can introduce themselves to golf or improve their swing, in the case of more advanced players. We will have the special collaboration of Noemi Jimenez, Ladies European Tour player.
-Once the classes are over, what must be done to ensure that the knowledge acquired is not lost?
-The ideal student is the one who really wants to work. I’ve been fortunate to have a few students lately who have done some forty-hour packages and, of course, when the illusion is so great to improve, the work is much easier. The normal thing is the player who comes and gives an hour of class, then goes out to the field and does not hit the ball well and already considers that you are a bad teacher. One may not be the best teacher for all students, but it is true that the time a professional spends practicing, for example, cannot be spent by an amateur, usually because of his work. So, it is important not only what the teacher says and teaches, but also what the student works on afterwards. It doesn’t matter if he does it badly. If I send him an exercise and when he comes back the following week I see that he has worked on the exercise even if he hits it badly, then we will have progression, and that is very important: work and constancy. It is clear that the more time you work with the client, intensively, the better results you get.
Ricardo emphasizes that both he and his teaching partner Rubén Holgado have been professional players, “and that is important because we try to teach the students how to play a few strokes, transferring what they have learned to the field”.
“We know,” he continues, “that the physical part is important, the mental aspect, nutrition, but we are basically here to teach golf.”
In addition to golf, etiquette and rules, the main goal of the Nicklaus Academy at Finca Cortesín is for students to “get to know themselves as players and see how they can improve. Our goal is that when they leave here they know what they have to work on at all times”.
To achieve that goal, the Academy offers packages of three, five, ten or twenty hours. “We specialize in creating customized programs for each player,” explains Ricardo. “If someone wants for example to go out 18 holes on the course and then wants to work only on drive or putt, we put together a specific package for them.”
“And something important for us,” he concludes, “is to transmit to the student the passion we feel for golf and, based on the people who repeat with us, we seem to be achieving this.
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