Ashley Rogers, PGAPGA of America Assistant Professional,New Orleans (Louisiana) Country Club
Ashley Rogers grew up the way a lot of good players do, more interested in being on the golf course than wearing out the range. Her regular routine would be to hit a few balls and then head straight out to play.
Still, she says she wished it would have been slightly different.
“I always wanted an on-course lesson, just so somebody could be there to see,” says Rogers, the 2024 Gulf States PGA Section Assistant Professional of the Year. “I know I can hit the ball on the range, but that’s obviously not playing golf.”
Now a PGA of America Assistant Professional at New Orleans Country Club (NOCC), Rogers has built her coaching business around exactly that idea – and it’s working. The foundation is broader than instruction.
It’s friendship. When Rogers started at NOCC in 2021, she already knew that teaching relationships don’t start with swing mechanics.
“It’s super important to just establish a friendship with the membership and to build trust,” she says. “Once you get in the door there, then it’s easier to build that golfing, teaching, coaching relationship.”
That friendship is strengthened on the course, where Rogers plays alongside members, talks through what’s happening on the professional tours, and – most importantly – makes people feel good about their game.
During the PGA Championship Weekend, for example, she was out playing with a member and the conversation turned to the heavy, penal rough at Aronimink Golf Club.
“I said, ‘Don’t worry about not hitting the fairway here,’” she recalls. “You should if you’re playing courses like that, but here, the grass is not as thick. You can still hit a good shot. Building people up like that, in relation to how the tour players are playing – I think that always helps.”
Rogers prefers on-course lessons over the range for a basic, but important, reason. The golf course doesn’t lie.
“I had a pretty good player tell me he was struggling with his driver,” she explains. “So, I said, show me, and he started striping it on the range. I said, OK, this is boring. Let’s go to the golf course.”
On cue, his tee shot on the first hole went off-line. “It’s like in tennis, where you might hit the ball against the wall and get in a good rhythm,” she says. “But you’re not playing tennis.”
Rogers also makes a point of getting new golfers on the course by their second lesson – no exceptions.
“I don’t want them to feel stuck on the practice range for six weeks or three months and then feel like they can never get out to the golf course,” she says. “Being on the course helps with more than swing mechanics. It demystifies everything, from where the golf car should go to what to do after you’ve found a buried lie in the bunker.”
Rogers’ coaching philosophy on the course centers on one concept: the next shot. “I coach them through not thinking about score necessarily, but just thinking about hitting the next shot,” she says. “If you think about the next shot, you can picture good shots the whole time.”
And watching Rogers play alongside her students – working through her own misses, staying calm – carries its own lesson: Even very good players don’t hit it down the middle every time. The standard most amateurs set for themselves isn’t realistic, and seeing that up close tends to reset it.
NOCC’s relatively quiet weekday schedule gives Rogers room to work.
“Every day’s a shotgun start,” she says with a laugh, “because we can get everybody out any time.”
In a club’s intimate ecosystem, word spreads quickly. Members finish their on-course lessons and head out with friends on the weekend. They hit those shots again. Then they tell their friends who it was who taught them.
“They say they got it playing with their PGA Professional,” Rogers says. “I can’t think of a better way to spend a day. You get to go hang out with somebody interesting, play golf, and they learn something and I learn something. Everybody wins.”
