You can only imagine the excitement and anticipation building here at Hank Haney International Junior Golf Academy. We’re about two weeks away from the premiere of the real-life series, “School of Golf Hilton Head Island” on the Golf Channel.
The first of eight episodes featuring students from Hank Haney International Junior Golf Academy will be broadcast on Tuesday, September 2 at 11 p.m. and re-air on Wednesday, September 3 at 10 p.m.
More than 3 million people are expected to watch the primetime show on the Golf Channel and another 2.3 million will visit the Golf Channel web site to learn more about the show.
Nearly five months of filming resulted in nearly 1,000 hours of film which were edited down to eight 30 minute segments. Viewers will see students from the United States including Texas, Kentucky, New Jersey and Vermont as well as international students from Denmark, China, Mexico and Spain.
They will witness how the talented students---many of them away from home for the first time---balance the demands of golf competition at the highest level with the normal stresses of teen life, including academics.
Filming began with the start of the second semester at the academy in January and continued through graduation in late May and the Tournament of Champions on the International Junior Golf Tour which took place in Orlando.
It sort of turned our Academy into a television fishbowl for five months but neither students nor parents objected. Participation for students in the show was optional but all agreed to sign releases to appear in the real-life series.
The academy exercised no editorial control over the show. In short, we had no control over what hits the airwaves and what hits the cutting floor. The Golf Channel had creative control over the finished project.
As Hank himself said, “This is not an infomercial for our academy. This is about what happens here.”
He summed it up this way. “If everybody shoots 72 and makes straight A’s, it’s not real interesting, is it? No one would believe it because that’s not reality.”
Along the way, we learned some valuable lessons. One of them---how adaptable young people are. At first, there were some students who were apprehensive about the presence of the camera crews. But after a few short weeks, the camera crews were virtually invisible to the students. It was the adults who were anxious and at times uneasy. The kids---they were fine.
Richard Bisi
Director of Communications
Hank Haney IJGA
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