Mary Hafeman is a Golf Range Association of America (GRAA) Elite Growth of the Game Teaching Professional. She has earned several North Florida PGA Section and Chapter awards for Player Development and Teaching, and most impressively, was the 2016 PGA of America National Player Development Award recipient. She’s earned accolades with the LPGA, U.S. Kids Golf, Golf Digest, Golf for Women Magazine, GOLF Magazine, the Women’s Western Golf Association and more. She’s a member of the Wisconsin Golf Hall of Fame and the University of Florida Athletic Hall of Fame. Hafeman was a Curtis Cup member in 1980 and played on the LPGA Tour. Saying her resume is impressive is quite an understatement. Let’s take a step back…
Mary Hafeman started playing golf with her parents when she was nine years old. Her dad was learning the game to take customers out to play golf to increase business sales. As he learned, he wanted Mary and her mom to learn too.
“Since I was the oldest of seven kids, he took both me and my mom out to play golf at a local public course,” Mary recalls. “I grew up in Wisconsin and took to the game right away. It was fun being able to learn with my parents and eventually all my brothers and sisters.”
Mary’s parents joined West Bend (WI) Country Club the following year, and she and her siblings all took part in the Tuesday Junior Golf Program. Playing together was a new family tradition. Mary recalls having an appreciation for the individual aspect of golf — only she could affect her game. She loved all aspects of playing as well — driving…putting…and everything in between. She loved the challenge and the competition. She never got bored!
When Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 was enacted by Congress, Hafeman, a high school sophomore at the time, asked her principal to help establish a girls golf team. He agreed, but they had to find a coach. Hafeman talked her English teacher into coaching and driving them to matches. With four players on the team, they convinced one other girl to play. She was a skier, not a golfer, but with her they had five players.
“We ended up second as a team in the first Wisconsin State Women’s Golf Tournament,” Hafeman boasts, “and I was the first ever medalist.”
Soon after, Hafeman started looking at colleges and sent out many letters looking for scholarships. She initially chose the University of South Florida, but transferred to the University of Florida to play on the golf team after her sophomore year.
“There was a lot of competition, and we finished very high in all our tournaments,” she recalls. “I really wanted to go to college because when I was in high school, Patty Berg came to our club to do a demonstration and play nine holes. I was able to play with her since I was the girls junior golf champion. She really inspired me to work towards an LPGA Tour career.”
Hafeman enjoyed a successful amateur career, playing on the 1980 U.S. Curtis Cup team in Wales. After graduating with a sports management degree, Hafeman earned her LPGA Tour card. Unfortunately, a car accident in Tucson, Arizona would cut her playing career short.
She had good relationships with Don Hill, PGA, her coach at West Bend Country Club, and with PGA of America members Bobby Duval and Nick Clark in Jacksonville, Florida. With her playing career over, they encouraged her to seek PGA membership.
She worked for Clark at San Jose Country Club in Jacksonville and gained a lot of experience. The guidance she received as a PGA apprentice under Clark helped her earn PGA membership. Soon after, she was hired at Ponce de Leon Resort in St. Augustine as a PGA of America Head Golf Professional. In addition to the mentorship she received, she credits her college education with driving her career in the golf business forward.
Today, Hafeman is an independent business owner, providing golf management, consulting, coaching and travel services to golfers of all skill levels.
“We’ve been focusing on growing the game basically by laying out a roadmap for the players based on what they are interested in,” she explains. “For the juniors and adults, we have a track to competitive golf and a track to leisure fun golf. We work to build the fundamentals and quickly get the players on the course. We implement games on the driving range and short game practice areas that focus on all areas of the game, and we track their progress using Shot Tracer and Trackman.
“It’s also important to me to educate our students on the rules and etiquette of the game. We spend a lot of time on the course and have practice days to learn how to be competitive and shoot lower scores. We work with competitive teens from 8th grade to high school seniors, walking with them on the course, listening and talking through their decision-making process.”
Hafeman says they place a lot of focus on the short game as well. She tells her students that everyone eventually hits a ball in the woods and emphasizes the importance of getting out of trouble.
“I like to make sure students can perform different shots and can discuss them — why they are using them and then demonstrate them in front of groups. It’s great seeing handicaps drop with confidence growing,” she says.
Hafeman cites the social benefits of group coaching, establishing relationships and friendships. In fact, she uses the same formats with her women’s groups, not only enjoying how her lady golfers learn to play, but watching them develop long-lasting golf friends too.
“Eventually a lot of my clients have joined me on national and international golf trips that I host,” she tells us. “It’s really rewarding to see so many of my clients that I have known for up to 40 years still enjoy traveling and sightseeing on my golf trips. We’re heading to Black Desert Resort in Utah this year with a group of 26 to visit two National Parks and play three rounds of golf.”
From a business perspective, Hafeman knew she needed to develop new players to be successful and has enjoyed the challenge of increasing memberships and rounds of golf, while creating happy clients and staff member experiences. She has always encouraged the next generation of golf pros to become PGA members. She also touts the benefits of getting into golf and using it in their future careers, in and out of the golf business.
As she looks to the future, Hafeman appreciates that technology has introduced a whole new group of people to the game. Many of them play on simulators or driving ranges, but haven’t ventured onto the golf course.
She says, “The great part of the game is that it is changing, and all of us must change with it. We must be creative in how to keep people engaged and having fun. That means being flexible in coaching and learning what our students want out of golf. I coach each person individually, incorporating simulators, fitness, on-course learning and all areas of the game, especially short game.”
As valuable as the driving range is to the development of a golfer, Hafeman understands the importance of getting people on the course fast with friends. She says they are more likely to stick with the game. As a coach, she keeps learning, attends conferences and the PGA Show, visits successful coaches to see what they are doing and reads a lot of books on education “because we are coaches and teachers.” She keeps up with technology.
“Hopefully we can use AI positively and continue to create new players who love the game as much as we do,” she concludes.