BY MATTHEW RUDY
Krista Dunton, PGADirector of Instruction,Berkeley Hall Club,Bluffton, South Carolina
If students think PGA of America Golf Professional Krista Dunton is judging them as they walk onto the practice tee for their first lesson, they’re right. And it’s about more than just their golf swings.
Dunton, the PGA of America Director of Instruction at Berkeley Hall Club in Bluffton, South Carolina, uses a personality typing system she learned from sports performance consultant Jennifer Munro – the specialist Juli Inkster used to help her set productive pairings at the Solheim Cup. It helps Dunton get on the same wavelength as the student more quickly, resulting in more productive lessons.
In Munro’s Golf Mind RX taxonomy, players are broken into four color-coded categories representing distinct personality types, each requiring a different instructional approach. Challengers (red) are goal-driven and want minimum direction with maximum action. They move quickly, focus on their most important objective, and then get out of their way. Socials (blue) play for fun and need rapport-building and personal connection. They respond better to feel-based instruction than technical feedback. Traditionals (yellow) – the most common type – play to relax and want a formal approach with continuity and a clear plan they can trust. Technicals (green) are seeking replicable mastery through detailed, systematic processes with measurable KPIs.
“You learn that you almost have to be a chameleon to read the person in front of us quickly,” says Dunton, a Golf Magazine Top 100 Teacher. “Say a person is very goal driven and has a dominant personality. You have a short attention span with them. If you go off on a tangent, you’re going to lose them quickly. For students like that, I might give them one thing, their ball flight changes, and they say, OK, that’s all I need – and there might be 20 minutes left in the lesson.”
Dunton stresses that it isn’t about changing your personality or underlying swing philosophies, but about structuring a lesson in a way that meets each player where they are. “You need to be yourself as a coach, but that doesn't mean being cookie cutter and approaching every student the same way,” says Dunton, a PGA of America Teacher & Coach of the Year award winner in both the New Jersey and Carolinas PGA Sections. “Understanding these types doesn’t change the underlying foundation of what you teach, but the style you use will be different. They won’t look like the same lesson at all.”
A lesson with a more analytical green player might include far more use of a launch monitor or other technology, but with an important caveat. “A green player will often want as much information as they can get, but you have to be careful not to give them too much and send them down the data rabbit hole,” she says. She says blues thrive with social interaction and personal small talk, while yellow players want consistency, reassurance and positivity – and often prefer the low-pressure environment of a group lesson.
Dunton says these personality-guided lesson strategies are more satisfying both for the students and for her, and payoff has come in the form of quicker improvement and better long-term retention.
“Even if they can’t exactly put their finger on it, students who feel like you understand them are going to respond better and be more open to what you have to say,” she says. “You’re building a relationship, not performing a transaction.”
In other words, knowing a player’s personality might be just as important as knowing their ball flight.
