Keith Bennett, PGAPGA of America Golf Instructor,McCormick Ranch Golf Club,Scottsdale, Arizona
Many PGA of America Golf Professionals take pride in maintaining a high playing standard even when they get busy on the lesson tee. But for Keith Bennett, playing well – and demonstrating his love for playing the game – is a fundamental part of his business model.
Bennett, a Golf Digest 50 Best Teacher in Washington and Arizona who splits his seasons between McCormick Ranch Golf Club in Scottsdale and The Golf Club at Newcastle outside Seattle, started his golf career out of thin air. Literally.
The Stowe, Vermont, native was a high-level competitive snowboarder through his teens, training at Stowe Mountain Club until the aerials got dangerous enough that golf looked like a better long-term option.
“The double corks and the going upside down twice – it turned into three and four times in one jump, and there was a decision to make,” he says. Golf, which he’d been playing summers at Stowe Country Club, was the answer.
What hooked Bennett on the game – beyond the lower risk of catastrophic injury – was the process of improvement. “I really enjoyed the feeling of getting better, the small wins,” he says. “The feel and the sound and the look of a good ball flight toward a target, it just never gets old. It’s a good old dopamine rush.”
Bennett walked on at New Mexico State with no junior background and later competed professionally. He still plays Section events, keeping a tournament on his calendar at all times. “I love having an event a month out and asking, where’s my game at? What do I need to improve?”
That ongoing competitive life is fundamental to his teaching business. “It starts with empathy,” Bennett says. “Whatever the level of competition, it’s all the same nerves. It’s all the same thoughts.”
The shared experience of competition, he says, makes him more useful to students than if he were only observing their struggles from the range or outside the ropes.
It also helps keep Bennett’s lessons sharply focused. “I know that standing on the first tee of a tournament, I can’t have a checklist of four, five, six things running through my head,” Bennett says. “So I get one thing – setup – because that’s not as heavy a cognitive load, and I get one, maximum two things to tell a person in their golf swing. Because if I were going to go play, I wouldn’t be able to handle more than that. There’s no chance my student, who practices far less than me and competes less, would even have a chance.”
Bennett built what he calls the 1% Program to systematize students’ total game improvement. It’s a three-month commitment where Bennett functions essentially as a personal trainer for a student’s entire game. Range work is part of it, but so are multiple rounds of on-course instruction covering strategy, course management and club selection.
“I’ve seen a lot of really awesome improvements from people not even tinkering with their swing,” he says. “It might be just helping them understand where to target their shots and why.”
Students see value from the first hole they play with Bennett in their ear, and on their golf car. “So many people on the golf course are, frankly, clueless about what to do,” he says. “I get a lot of ‘I didn’t know I could use that club in this scenario.’ I’ll remind them that there’s no rule against using any of your clubs in those scenarios.”
That’s different than some instruction plans that never graduate from one-hour range lessons.
“You don’t ever really teach people the game of golf by just being on the range, and actually playing the game is the fun part!” Bennett says. “People want to get out on the course and play. Nobody wants to spend their whole life hitting practice balls. That’s not why they’re here.”
