ST. SIMONS ISLAND, Ga. — The busiest pro at the PGA Tour’s RSM Classic this week won’t hit a single shot nor will he sign a scorecard. But he could influence who walks off with the trophy as he did last year. It’s swing instructor Scott Hamilton, who counts 17 players in the 156-man field as his students, and it would have been 18 had Maverick McNealy not elected to skip his title defense due to the recent birth of his first child.
“Scott has one of the deepest understandings of the golf swing and the mechanics and biomechanics of anyone in the game,” said McNealy, who has enjoyed a steady rise under Hamilton’s watchful eye. “If you met him on the street, you wouldn’t think that but he’s kind of a savant.”
The number of players Hamilton works with at any time fluctuates depending on the week. Caddies, statisticians and agents steer players his way. For nearly 20 years, he’s been in high demand and traveling to wherever his players are competing at least 35 weeks per year.
“It’s easier to tell you the weeks I wasn’t on Tour,” he said.
Hamilton, 60, apprenticed as an instructor at Harbour Town and Haig Point in South Carolina in the 1980s. But it was a lesson from pro George Kelnhofer that made him an early adopter of video as a teaching tool. Hamilton received a Sony video camera from his wife for his 25th birthday, and he has been recording swings ever since. Jason Bohn was Hamilton’s first student to play the Tour. Boo Weekley, who made it to the Charles Schwab Cup Championship, limited to the top 36 in the season-long points race this season, is his longest-running relationship, and Chris Kirk probably has been his best meal ticket. Hamilton analyzes launch monitor numbers but keeps it simple and dishes out plenty of folksy words of wisdom such as, “You don’t have a bad attitude; you just don’t have a square clubface!”
When he isn’t following the Tour, Hamilton teaches at Cartersville Country Club in Georgia, where cutoff jeans and T-shirts are common sightings on the course. The laidback Hamilton, who has been recognized as the Georgia Section PGA teacher of the year, has served as head professional and now director of golf there since 1993. His three bays at the back of the range, which he built in 1998 and paid for himself, are the definition of function over fashion while decked out with all the latest technology any tour pro could possibly need. He built a separate indoor studio in town and installed Gears 3D motion capture, a full body optical motion tracking system designed to measure and analyze every aspect of a golfers’ swing. Having the ability to 3D so many Tour pros has helped Hamilton visually break down a 2D video in a better manner.
“The Gears 3D probably is the best investment I’ve ever made in myself,” he said.
Tour pros have been beating down his door and making the trip to the northwest edge of the Atlanta metropolitan area to get their fix of the redneck pro.
“You wouldn’t walk in there thinking this is home of one of the best instructors in the world,” McNealy said. “He manages to boil down all the information to something very simple. He’s helped me understand the road map for my golf swing.”
Hamilton’s facility has been described as a frat house, which is fitting because he has created a fraternity of sorts among his players. They often visit his facility at the same time, stay at his house, practice on the putting green in his basement and eat at his dinner table. The local Cracker Barrel can claim to have fed its fair share of Tour pros, too.
“Guys just know when they go to Cartersville, two things hit your soul: Cracker Barrel and you leave town with more answers than you arrived with,” said caddie Travis McAlister, whose current employer, Gordon Sargent, is one of the more recent pupils of Hamilton.
Jacob Bridgeman never had a proper swing coach until he began working Hamilton. When he turned pro, he realized he’d never own his swing until he learned to understand its inner workings better. He asked his college coach, his agent and one other person he trusted to name a swing instructor whom they respected and all three gave him the same name. So he called up Hamilton.
“I thought he was going to be some regular guy and he answers the phone and he sounds like a redneck. I thought, yeah, I kind of like this guy,” said Bridgeman, who made the Tour Championship this season in just his second year on Tour despite failing to win. “He helped me drive it straighter and hit my irons higher. It seems like every time he’s working with me lately someone comes over and asks him to look at his swing and he helps them for 30 minutes and they start striping it.”
Mackenzie Hughes is another of the newer members of the Hamilton stable that also includes the likes of Tom Hoge, Carson Young, Nick Dunlap and Chandler Phillips, last week’s runner-up in Bermuda.
“Maverick went from a good Tour player to a top-10 player in the world, and that’s something I want to emulate,” said Hughes, explaining his decision to join Team Hamilton.
Hamilton has a knack for finding the most important area of a player’s game to fix and concentrating on it. “Let’s cut the tumor out and the rest of the parts will fall into place,” said Hamilton, who doesn’t have one method he teaches. “I do a check book for each of my players. They’re all different. I’m just trying to calibrate.”
Get in line if you want a checkup from the busiest pro on Tour.
