SPORTS SCHOOLS GO HIGH TECH New teaching methods perfect your golf and tennis strokes using computers and psychology.
By MARILYN WELLEMEYER REPORTER ASSOCIATE Julianne Slovak

(FORTUNE Magazine) – Fancy high-tech teaching aids to make over your golf or tennis game are off to a swinging start in Florida. The Jack Nicklaus Academy of Golf in Orlando and the Nick Bollettieri Tennis Academy in Bradenton use computers, high-speed video cameras, and heart monitors to diagnose the problems and improve the performance of duffers, hackers, and tournament players alike. The Jack Nicklaus Academy, built near the Grand Cypress Resort golf course designed by Nicklaus, aims to develop the perfect golf swing for every comer. Nicklaus also created the academy's three practice holes, which include the hazards, traps, and tricky lies a golfer might meet anywhere. W. Whitley ''Whit'' Hawkins, 55, a senior vice president for marketing at Delta Air Lines, his wife, Betty, and nine other students began a December session by standing before two video cameras at the welcoming cocktail party. Then Ralph Mann, 37, an Olympic hurdler and a specialist in the computer analysis of body movements, went to work. By filming 50 touring pros, including Nicklaus and Arnold Palmer, Mann devised a model of what he considers the perfect swing. To tailor the swing for the students, Mann takes data on their physiques from the video images and sends the information to a computer. The computer adapts Mann's model to the student's measurements to produce the ideal swing for each golfer. This appears on the screen as a stick figure overlaying the image of the student. During three days at Grand Cypress, each student gets a daily 45-minute lesson in front of the video cameras. The stick-figure model always shadows his image on the monitors. Instructor and student can then compare how the stick figure executes a swing with the student's actual movements. Fred Griffin, 30, the academy director, or Phil Rodgers, 48, an adviser to Nicklaus and author of Play Lower Handicap Golf (New York: Simon & Schuster), critiques the swings and records all his comments, thus giving students a permanent audio-visual record to review at home. The price: $1,200 for the classes, two meals a day, and accommodations in luxurious villas. The fee rises to $1,600 when Rodgers teaches. DELTA'S HAWKINS, a 25-handicapper who learned his golf from friends, says he left Grand Cypress with ''an ability to control the ball better and with a much better understanding of the subtleties of the short game -- pitching, chipping, and bunker play.'' His wife, a beginner with a 36 handicap, used every shot she had learned as she played the practice holes; she even parred one of them. The instructors warn students not to make bets on their games immediately. It takes at least three weeks of practice, they say, before a made-over golfer feels comfortable with his new skills. After a November session with Rodgers, John A. Fennie, 54, president of Celanese Textile Fibers in New York, entered a Florida tournament. ''I was a total disaster the first day, but on the third day I played my best ever,'' says Fennie, a 9-handicapper. ''The academy put a lot of new things on me: grip, setup of the ball, position of hips, head, and shoulders. You can't turn off your old game one day and turn on your new game the next.'' Some authorities question how valuable the computer-generated swing is for recreational players. Garey Wiren, 51, former educational director for the Professional Golfers' Association, feels that while the computer model may help skilled golfers, it is overkill for the high handicapper. But, says Wiren, ''the level of golf instruction has been raised because of Grand Cypress, and will therefore make the game more fun.'' Nick Bollettieri doesn't try to create new strokes for the adults attending his tennis program. Known as a stern molder of aspiring juniors, Bollettieri, 56, says, ''We work within the scope of an adult's own game.'' It's not that Bollettieri feels old dogs can't learn new tricks. Instead he believes it is more important for his adult students to develop the right attitude than the perfect stroke. The Bollettieri Academy stresses what it calls mental toughness. This part of the program is under the direction of James E. Loehr, 43. A tennis pro with a doctorate in counseling psychology, Loehr has advised such world-class players as Johan Kriek, Tom Gullikson, and Kathy Rinaldi. He recently co-authored Mentally Tough: The Principles of Winning at Sports Applied to Winning in Business (New York: M. Evans). Loehr defines mental toughness as the self-control that enables players to rise to a challenge without choking, getting angry, or losing concentration. ''Mental toughness is an emotional skill athletes can learn,'' he says. Loehr uses a heart monitor as one of his chief teaching aids. A player's pulse rate in competition not only reveals just how hard he is working, but shows his emotional state as well. Twice during their week at the academy, students wear chest-band transmitters and computerized wristwatch receivers that display and store their pulse rates. In one demonstration Loehr had his students play a tie breaker. To make the game extra stressful, he gave them dead balls and required them to exchange rackets. Periodically Loehr asked the players to read off their pulse rates. Afterward he remarked that one of them, Reginald Ridgely, 53, of Vitro Corp., a shipbuilding consultant to the Navy, had not shown the drop in heart rate that ideally occurs between points when a player feels he is doing well. His opponent, Joseph H. Spencer Jr., 42, who runs his own engineering firm in Charlotte, North Carolina, consistently registered a pulse rate too low to rouse him to a high level of play. Loehr asked all students to take their pulse whenever they felt they were playing their best, and then aim to keep it there. ''We find that players perform best within a narrow range of heart rate,'' he explains. JOE SPENCER, who plays four times a week, developed a ritual to focus his attention on the ball before serving or receiving. At Loehr's suggestion, he bounced on his feet to get his heart rate up, and he breathed out at the moment of the racket's impact on the ball. The payoff came immediately as he split sets with both a ranked junior at the academy and the director of the adult tennis program. Spencer found Loehr's insights the most valuable part of his week. The Bollettieri Academy isn't a resort. New facilities for 32 adults, separate from those for 200 juniors, include condominium suites, a dining room, and a swimming pool. Cost: $745 per week or $275 per weekend. Don't expect all the high-tech aids to prevent aching bodies. In six hours a day of hard activity at the Nicklaus and Bollettieri academies, students discovered muscles they never knew existed.