The advice spanned professional golf to working with beginners and technical solutions to interpersonal skills – with more than one nod to the NFL playoff games going on during the event’s first day on Sunday.
“We really are like NFL coaches now,” said PGA of America Master Professional Joe Plecker, who was on a panel examining what makes a quality golf instructor with fellow PGA of America Coaches Bernie Najar and Troon Golf director of instruction Tim Mahoney. “We’re looking at data, we’re making a game plan and we’re doing the motivating. We’re helping it all come together.”
Najar encouraged attendees to go beyond golf to find best practices to test and adapt to their coaching, citing the gold mine of coaching, organization and motivation nuggets he gleans from time spent with students – and from Baltimore Ravens Head Coach John Harbaugh. Najar also gained first-hand appreciation for the importance of scaffolding complex information in a digestible way by becoming a beginner again himself. “I learned how to dance for my wedding, and it really gives you a reminder of what it’s like to be a new student,” he said.
Noted tour instructor Chris Como was the headliner on Sunday, and he discussed the cross-functional responsibilities of the modern coach for elite players with 2013 PGA Teacher & Coach of the Year Lou Guzzi. The job is just as much prioritization and problem solving as it is nuts-and-bolts swing instruction, which includes knowing when it’s better to say nothing at all.
“I’m not trying to be a guru,” says Como, who works with Xander Schauffele, Tom Kim and Si-Woo Kim, and formerly coached Tiger Woods and Bryson DeChambeau. “I’m trying to be an educated collaborator to help you set your goals. If we have to pivot to a different hypothesis, that’s OK. This is supposed to be a fun thing we’re in together.”
On day two, Golf Digest 50 Best Teacher Bill Harmon – a member of golf’s first-family of instruction – reminisced about how his father, legendary Winged Foot PGA of America Head Professional (and Masters champion) Claude Harmon helped him learn how to identify a starting point with elite players long before the days of video and launch monitors.
“The first thing you do when you teach a good player, you figure out what they’re doing right,” says Harmon, who is Jay Haas’ longtime teacher and brother to top teacher Butch. “Because if they didn’t do anything right, they wouldn’t be any good. I see all this stuff today on the internet about what’s wrong with Rory McIlroy and it makes me chuckle. People are so quick to start with the bad … with the problems.”
That ability to help an elite player process emotions and focus on the positive was a common thread in the final event of the Summit, a conversation between LPGA Tour star and Solheim Cup Captain Stacy Lewis and her coach, 2024 PGA of America Teacher & Coach of the Year Joe Hallett. Lewis described walking with Hallett to the first tee at the Women’s British Open in 2013. She was so nervous she said she couldn’t feel her hands. Hallett told her to focus on being able to wiggle her thumbs, and Lewis promptly smashed her first tee shot down the middle on the way to winning her second major.
Students aren’t the only ones to benefit from the ability to focus on what matters. PGA of America Coaches Dr. Alison Curdt, Warren Bottke and Tim Cusick unveiled a new PGA Coach Performance Report that will give instructors a streamlined way to compile and track metrics that reinforce their value to a facility. “Imagine an industry where coaches are no longer considered an expense but a cornerstone of economic growth,” said Curdt, who started manually compiling her own key performance indicators more than ten years ago. With the new tool, which was released to attendees in beta on day one, it’ll be easer than ever for teachers and coaches to do what Curdt did when it came time to build a relationship with a new general manager: Provide real, actionable information about the benefits of that relationship.
“The best part about coming to the Summit is that you get to go into your new year with not just new information, but a way to consider a lot of the things you do and evaluate if there’s a better way,” said attendee Jason Guss, a PGA of America Coach at Naperville (Illinois) Country Club. “It goes beyond the presentations to the time you spend with other coaches in between and after. The more we can share with each other, the better.”