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Brian Mogg has his strong hands wrapped around mine.

These are the hands that gripped and ripped golf clubs on the PGA tour in the 1980s. And these are hands that have helped rework the grips and swings of touring golf pros, including a fellow named Charles Howell III who has already won $15.4-million (U.S.) in his short career.

Mr. Mogg has focused his considerable persuasive powers - he's rated one of North America's top 100 swing doctors by Golf Magazine - on coaxing a lifelong tendency to hook out of my drive. He's already shifted my stance. Now he's working on my grip, prying apart interlocked fingers.

I'm on the tee with a retired brokerage-house chief executive officer and a top venture capitalist, at the luxe Magna Golf Club in Aurora, Ont., and we are lapping up these lessons from a golf demi-god: Mr. Mogg, after all, has played in the U.S. Open.

I packed away my clubs shortly after that late-summer event, run by Toronto-based venture capital fund Wellington Financial. But snow on the greens in Canada simply means affluent duffers fly south for midwinter swing tune-ups at golf academies such as Mr. Mogg's, near Orlando, Fla., or former Tiger Woods coach Butch Harmon's high-end school in the desert near Las Vegas.

Three short days of pitching and putting with the guy who guided Tiger's swing - best not to ask about their breakup - is a $5,900 proposition. For $2,900, the same package, including nights at Caesars Palace hotel, is available with one of seven teachers in Mr. Harmon's stable. But where's the fun in saying the hitch in your backswing was fixed by a guy who knows a guy who knows Tiger?

From the Carolinas to Nevada and out to Hawaii, golf teachers with credentials forged on the PGA are capitalizing on that fame with winter clinics. There is a waiting list for the privilege of being torn apart and rebuilt by Mr. Harmon.

It's not just the swing doctors welcoming patients. Legendary Bay Street bond trader Jack Lawrence, founder of Lawrence & Co., has sessions when he's in Florida with the same personal trainer Tiger uses. Entering the world of the PGA elite means respecting a code. Tiger has never revealed what he does to tone his Adonis-like physique, and Mr. Lawrence is equally discreet about his regime.

Many couples who spend summers together on the links find a winter trip to golf academies, complete with spas, is a way to kick-start their shared golf passion, for better or for worse.

"My wife and I treated ourselves to a three-day package at this incredible resort in Georgia. It was great until she actually learned something and started beating me," said a travel-industry executive who spent $12,000 to be humbled by his spouse.

Golf at this level is taken seriously. Show up at one of the high-end schools, and you're as likely to be teeing off with aspiring PGA pros as with retired insurance executives. Mr. Mogg's stable of students in Florida, for example, includes a number of top-ranked university-aged golfers.

Golf pros such as Mr. Mogg, whose tutelage starts at $175 an hour, preach that improving your game is as much mental as physical. Lessons from a guy who has come down a fairway on Sunday with a slim lead on fellow pros and big money on the line are about achieving Zen-like calm and recovering effortlessly from the inevitable missed shot.

Does it actually work? Can the sublime skills and killer mindset of a touring pro be transplanted into a weekend hacker at any price?

"I've taken lessons from former pros all over the place. I still go back to the slice I developed in high school," moans one banker who has spent thousands on lessons.

After Mr. Mogg unknotted my fingers and let me swing away, I promptly topped the ball and barely got it past the front tees. Tiger would have giggled.

But on the 18th tee, with the clubhouse crowd watching, Mr. Mogg took over. My mind cleared, my hips shifted and my swing felt like a natural act for the first time in my 30 years of golfing. I launched the longest, straightest drive of my life. Q school, here I come.