Ben Pellicani, PGATeaching ProfessionalWesthaven Golf Club,Franklin, Tennessee2023 Tennessee PGA Teacher & Coach of the Year
O
f all the mesh points a PGA of America Golf Coach encounters, one that is often overlooked is how one’s professional life meshes with their personal life. That’s an area that’s top of mind for PGA of America Teaching Professional Ben Pellicani after he and his wife welcomed their fourth daughter to their family last year.
“Having a fourth girl in our family has really changed things for me,” says Pellicani, a Teaching Professional at Westhaven Golf Club in Franklin, Tennessee, and owner of the Pelli Golf coaching business. “Finding a new balance of time is interesting, and I’m figuring out how to balance it out with my different buckets of players.”
That’s meant a diversification for Pellicani. In addition to working with club players at Westhaven, he also coaches a handful of tour players, is a coach at the high school and middle school level, and has started giving virtual lessons and posting lessons on YouTube.
“I studied mechanical engineering in school, and I’m all about analytics and numbers, but something like YouTube is a different animal,” Pellicani says. “I’m still learning it, but I’m taking hour-long lessons and editing them down to eight minutes. It’s a way of promoting my brand and picking up some new clients. I’ve had to learn how to hold attention in that format even though I’m not a loud, in-your-face kind of person.
“To me, it’s just like integrating golf with fitness, strength training, the mental side – it’s a holistic approach to my business, like I take a holistic approach to coaching.”
Aside from the amount of time he can personally spend coaching, Pellicani is also adapting his approach based on golf’s demand. Pre-COVID, he was able to easily find open holes on the golf course to take students for playing lessons. Now the golf course is booked throughout the day, leading him to use the simulator mode on his launch monitor to provide the next best thing in a hitting bay.
“It’s how to create a sports performance environment that makes the target a problem that needs to be solved,” Pellicani says. “You’re hitting shots from a bay onto the range, but I’m using the simulator to superimpose a situation – 170 yards to a back left pin, can you hit a little draw in there? How about a different shot shape? We have to adjust to the times, and this is a time where golf is really popular.”
The other mesh point Pellicani is exploring is how to get the most out of different generations, especially Gen Z juniors. The techniques that might have worked for a Millennial like him don’t land the same with today’s juniors.
“My coaches told me what to do, and I learned to do it. Today, juniors need to know why you want them to do it that way,” Pellicani says. “It’s a challenge, because they’re a very talented generation. They have all the information, but they don’t quite know how to use it at first. If you can explain the ‘why’ to them, they’ll buy in and run through a wall for you. You can get them to own their golf swing and keep them from going down all the internet rabbit holes of different swing theories.
“I think it comes back to something Jason Baile said at the PGA Teacher & Coach of the Year Conference last year at Pinehurst: The customer is the hero, and really good coaches are taking on the role of the trusted guide. If you can give them the ‘why’ and the resources to get better, you’re going to have a trust factor that leads to a long-term win-win.”
—Don Jozwiak
