A five day golf school is four and a half days of coaching built around one idea: practise in the morning, play in the afternoon, and review every evening. If you are wondering what that actually feels like, here is the week as it runs at Australian Golf Schools, hour by hour.
Most golfers book a golf school to fix something specific: a slice, inconsistent contact, nerves over short putts. The fix itself usually takes an hour to explain. Making it stick takes far longer.
Over more than four decades of running schools, our coaches have found that it typically takes two to three days to absorb a swing change and stop reverting to old habits. The final two days are where the change is tested on the course, under pressure, until it holds. That is why we recommend five days for anyone attending a school for the first time.
Shorter schools have their place. The one day school works well as a refresher for past students, and the two and three day schools suit golfers chasing one targeted improvement. But if you want the change to survive your next club competition, five days gives it time.
We recommend checking into your accommodation on the Sunday before your Monday start. Daily return transfers run from Main Beach, Surfers Paradise and Broadbeach. Broadbeach is the closest beachside suburb to our base at Emerald Lakes Golf Club, so it is the easiest place to stay, and the dining is excellent. If you would like help booking accommodation, the AGS team can arrange it.
Pickup is between 7:15am and 7:30am, and the school starts at 8:00am at our coaching centre at Emerald Lakes.
The first hour is introduction and evaluation. Your coach films your current swing and talks through what you want from the week. Most golfers arrive believing they know their problem. The video often tells a different story, and that is where the real plan for your week comes from.
From 9:00am until midday you work on the full swing, short game and putting. Lunch is quick and on the go, because at 12:30pm you head out for an 18 hole playing lesson with your coach.
The playing lesson is the part most golfers remember. Instead of hitting balls in isolation, you take the morning’s work onto a real course, with your coach beside you deciding which shot to play, why, and how to recover when it goes wrong. By 4:30pm you review the day and head back to your accommodation by 5:00pm.
The morning returns to the full swing and short game, and adds club fitting. A swing change can fail simply because the clubs in the bag fight it: shafts too stiff, lies too upright, grips too thin. Checking this early means the rest of the week is spent on the swing, not the equipment.
The afternoon is another 18 holes with your coach, and the new movement starts to feel less foreign.
Wednesday morning is dedicated to pitching, putting, chipping and bunker play. For most club golfers this is where the most strokes can be saved, and it is the part of the game few people ever practise properly.
By the afternoon playing lesson, the goal shifts from making good swings to making good decisions: which club to hit into a tight green, when to take the safe line, how to leave yourself an uphill putt.
Thursday morning reviews the full swing, the short game and shot making. This is where you learn to shape the ball, control trajectory, and play the awkward shots courses actually ask for.
After the afternoon round, the evening is set aside for dinner with your coach from 6:00pm to 9:00pm. It is a relaxed chance to talk through the week, honestly assess what has changed, and plan the final day around what still needs work.
The last morning is an evaluation of your swing improvements: an honest look at how far your swing has come since Monday, and what to keep working on at home. Then comes one final 18 hole playing lesson, where the week’s work faces a real course one more time. The school finishes at 5:00pm.
Afternoon playing lessons rotate across some of the Gold Coast’s best courses, including The Links Hope Island, The Glades at Robina, Palm Meadows at Carrara, RACV Royal Pines and our home course, Emerald Lakes Golf Club. Courses may change depending on availability, but every one of them is a first class test of what you learnt that morning.
Every school runs at a ratio of no more than three students to one coach. It sounds like a small detail. In practice it is the whole difference between a golf school and a golf clinic.
With three students, your coach watches every swing you make, notices when an old habit creeps back on the 14th hole, and adjusts the plan the same afternoon. With ten students, you get general advice and a lot of waiting.
It also means the fundamentals get checked properly, which is where most fixes start. Owner and head coach Tom Linskey puts setup and grip tension ahead of everything else: “If your setup is correct and your tension levels are correct, everything else falls into place.” He points out that the best players hold the club far more softly than most club golfers believe, at about four out of ten in the top hand and close to zero in the bottom hand. Watch Tom explain it.
Coach David Gleeson, a former Australian Amateur champion and three time Asian Tour winner, often starts with the grip for the same reason. When the top hand sits too far under the club and the bottom hand sits on top, the clubface returns to the ball open, and the result is the slice so many golfers fight on the first tee. Move the top hand more on top of the club and the bottom hand more underneath, and the face can return square without the golfer changing anything else. See David demonstrate the change.
These are small adjustments. Over five days, with a coach watching every swing, they become habits rather than tips.
The five day school includes:
The five day school is $6,000 per person including GST, with a $1,000 deposit to secure your place. Schools run every week of the year, Monday to Friday.
A five day school suits golfers who want lasting change rather than a quick tip: people who have plateaued, people returning to the game, and anyone who has taken lessons before but watched the improvement fade within a month.
If you are completely new to golf, the five day beginner school follows the same structure with the fundamentals taught from the very first grip. If your long game is solid but your scores are not, the three day short game school focuses almost entirely on the shots inside 100 metres.
Past students describe the timing well. One five day student wrote: “I recommend the 5 day school as it starts to sink in after 3 days.”
Another was honest that the change did not show straight away: “I had to change my grip and it was hard to do and because of this, I didn’t really see a big improvement while I was at the school. However, the drills that I was taught and how to course manage by playing the right shots at the right time has paid dividends. A month after the school continuing these drills and swing advices I’ve seen a big improvement and my local golf coach has even said I’ve made a massive improvement.”
The week builds the change. The weeks after are when it shows up on the scorecard.
Five days. Five rounds with your coach. A swing that still works when you get home.
See the five day golf school or compare all our golf schools.