Mike Suhre, PGA, Head Golf Professional and third-generation owner of Oak Brook Golf Club in Edwardsville, Illinois, is the pied piper of youth golf development in the greater St. Louis area. At 47, he is a generous ambassador and advocate for young golfers, a teacher, coach and leader who believes life lessons are best learned through golf experiences.
The 2025 PGA Youth Player Development Award recipient doesn’t do everything conventionally as a golf facility owner and operator. He never says no to junior golf events or to youths wishing to play Oak Brook, providing free golf to more than 100 high school golfers each year and hosting junior programs and free golf for kids 280 days per year.
Oh, and Suhre has coached seven PGA Jr. League teams during the past seven years, while finding time to serve as the Gateway PGA Section Junior Golf Committee chair and as a Section officer.
Perhaps Suhre’s love for teaching and training youths is centered around his fond memories of accompanying his father, PGA Life Member Larry Suhre, to Oak Brook virtually every day from the age of 5. Suhre will be the first to admit golf is his life and mentoring young players is his passion.
“My mother insists I was baptized with a golf club in my hand, and I’ve lived on the golf course my entire life,” claims Suhre, who was elected to PGA of America Membership in 2007. “I am blessed to be able to pass down to others the lessons I learned from my dad and others through golf.”
Suhre’s philosophy on providing a platform for the next generation of golfers to succeed and enjoy the game is simple.
“I want the juniors in my program to see how fun golf can be,” Suhre says. “It is a gift. As a game you can play your entire life, learning it at a young age is priceless. If golf can provide joy for my students now, it can for the rest of their lives.”
But is having an open-door policy for young golfers good for the bottom line at Oak Brook?
“Many golf courses have countless tee times that go to waste daily,” says Suhre. “Giving free golf to fill those times is not hard. It doesn’t make you a saint, but just makes sense.”
It is not an exaggeration to say Suhre eats, sleeps and breathes golf 24/7/365, and he has literally spent his entire life at Oak Brook Golf Club, where he and his wife Mandy, three kids, five dogs and a cat live 75 yards away from his father and mother Nancy. Mark’s grandfather, Wilbur, wanted Mike’s father, Larry, to play on the PGA TOUR. But when that didn’t work out, the two Suhres decided to build a golf course – Oak Brook – and 83-year-old Larry still works at the course every day alongside son Mike.
“My grandpa (Wilbur), who was a life-long entrepreneur, bought some ground out in the middle of nowhere, and started what is now Oak Brook Golf Club,” notes Suhre. “My dad has opened and closed almost every day for the past 52 years.”
Mike’s penchant for golf and his love for teaching and coaching youths took root while playing high school golf at Edwardsville High for legendary coach Dick Gerber and competing under Jack “The Rock” Pheanis and Assistant Coach Dr. Jim Suttie at Northern Illinois University, where he was a two-time NCAA Division I Academic All-American.
“All of those gentlemen had a profound impact on my perspective on life and competition,” says Suhre, the Gateway PGA Section’s Golf Professional of the Year in 2016.
He qualified for his first professional event in 2000 on the Buy.com Tour (now the Korn Ferry Tour), met his wife Mandy in 2002, and played on several mini-tours until 2005.
“I loved to play competitive golf, but I just didn’t make enough birdies,” admits Suhre.
“God gives us all unique gifts. Once we know those gifts, it is our duty to share them with as many people as we can. Junior golf is my gift.”
—Roger Graves
