By John Steinbreder
Tony Pancake was fresh out of the University of Alabama when he secured his first head professional job in 1988, at the recently opened Valhalla Golf Club in Louisville, Kentucky. Only 24 years old and possessing a degree in accounting, the Indiana native had been working at courses and clubs since he was a teenager. He had also played on the Crimson Tide golf team for a couple of seasons.
So, Pancake felt pretty confident about his abilities as he prepared to start at his new place of employ. But he nonetheless knew he needed help.
To secure that, Pancake reached out to some of the PGA professionals he had worked with previously, among them Scott Davenport, who would go on to become the director of golf at Quail Hollow in North Carolina, and the late Jack Lumpkin, who was a fixture for many years on the lesson tee at Sea Island in Georgia. Then, Pancake began contacting others he felt were at the top of their profession – and doing so cold.
“I wanted to understand how they did certain things and did them so well,” he recalled. “Teaching and merchandising. Running a tournament, hiring and training staff and making the day-to-day golf experience exceptional.”
The first pro Pancake called was Bob Ford at the Oakmont Country Club.
“Bob told me to come on over to Pittsburgh,” Pancake said. “I stayed at his house for a couple of days. I followed him around at work. I watched what he and his staff did.”
Soon after, Pancake contacted Larry Dornisch at Muirfield Village near Columbus, Ohio, and Jim Ferriell, who was the head professional at Crooked Stick outside Indianapolis.
“They were the sorts of golf professionals I aspired to be,” Pancake added. “And what they showed and taught me was amazing.”
Equally impressive was the way that Pancake applied those lessons. And by studying the best, he eventually became one of them. He’s a highly regarded teacher who not only helped a lot of his members improve but also coached his children well enough that three of them went on to play collegiate golf, with the youngest, Annabelle, going on to compete on the Epson Tour after capturing a pair of Indiana Women’s State Amateurs. A mentor, too, who helped more than 40 past assistants assume head professional positions. A merchandiser whose golf shop is Ralph Lauren-like in its look and feel. A superb host, too, whether for the tour professionals and elite amateurs who competed in the six national and international competitions staged at Crooked Stick, where he currently serves, or recreational golfers participating in one-day member-guests. And a person who willingly gave back to the game by serving in various positions of governance, including as a member of the PGA of America’s board of directors and section president for the Indiana PGA.
Pancake also acquitted himself as a player, qualifying for a PGA Professional Championship and winning the 2015 Indiana Senior Open Championship.
“Like most kids in Indiana, I loved sports in general, and basketball in particular. But there was something about golf. I liked the individuality of the game, and the fact that how well I played was entirely up to me.”
tony pancake
It is no wonder, then, that the now 63-year-old father of four children – and grandfather of five – has amassed a slew of awards through the decades, with the most recent being the biggest possible honor in his business, the PGA of America’s Golf Professional of the Year. That came in 2024 and followed his being named the Indiana Section Golf Professional of the Year in 2009 and 2019 and the Kentucky Section Golf Professional of the Year in 1992.
For those and many other reasons, Pancake is the Global Golf Post Pro’s Pro for 2026.
Born in the Hoosier State, Pancake grew up in Seymour, Indiana, a community of some 21,000 residents that lies roughly 60 miles south of Indianapolis and about the same distance north of Louisville, Kentucky, with Cincinnati nearly 90 miles to the east. His parents were members of the local country club, and Pancake started playing golf on its nine-hole course when he was 12 years old.
“Like most kids in Indiana, I loved sports in general, and basketball in particular,” he said. “But there was something about golf. I liked the individuality of the game, and the fact that how well I played was entirely up to me.
Tony and Libby Pancake with their daughter Annabelle (center)
“The head golf professional at Seymour was Mike Laughner,” Pancake added. “He gave me lessons and also gave me a job. By the time I was 14 years old, I was cleaning clubs and carts and working in the golf shop. When I wasn’t playing or practicing, that is.”
Pancake competed on his high school golf team, and the squad, which was coached by another mentor, Bob Krietenstein, was ranked No. 1 in Indiana for most of his senior year – and made it to state finals.
By that time, Pancake had started to think seriously about playing in college.
“I ended up going to Alabama,” he said. “It was the warmest place to offer me a golf scholarship. It was also where Jerry Pate had gone, and I was a big Jerry Pate fan.”
Looking back, Pancake says he received a first-rate education at Alabama, with perhaps the best lesson being that he was never going to be good enough to play professionally.
“But I love being around the game,” he said. “So, I decided to become a club professional.”
That meant spending the last years at Alabama working when his studies allowed at the NorthRiver Yacht Club in Tuscaloosa, the same city in which the university is located. Davenport was the head golf professional and Hank Johnson the director of golf, and they gave Pancake the equivalent of a graduate degree in that field.
They also prepared Pancake for his first gig after graduation, which was as an assistant to Lumpkin at the Elk River Club in the North Carolina mountains.
“I pretty much taught straight for two years after college,” Pancake said. “I was physically and emotionally exhausted after that because I was scheduling as many lessons as I could, to pay the bills. At that point, I recognized that maybe I could do better as a club professional by doing more than just teaching and running other aspects of a golf program.”
That realization is what led him to Valhalla.
A new club with big ambitions and a Jack Nicklaus course that would go on to host four PGA Championships, the 2008 Ryder Cup and come to be owned by the PGA of America, Valhalla had little more than 100 members when it asked Pancake in the winter of 1988 to serve as its head golf professional. He started work in March of that year and married a month later to a fellow Hoosier, Libby.
“They took a big risk with me,” said Pancake, whose wife was a competitive junior golfer who played collegiately at Arizona State. “I had no head pro experience. But I had worked at some good clubs for some really good golf professionals.”
It turned out to be a smart move for Valhalla. For Pancake, too, and he stayed in that position for nine years, seeing the club through its first major championship, the 1996 PGA.
From there, Pancake moved to the Hurstbourne Country Club in Louisville, holding the top job at that 27-hole facility for a spell before heading east to the Baltimore Country Club. Then in late 2003, club leaders at Crooked Stick asked him to take over for one of his old mentors, Jim Ferriell, who was retiring. And that offer was after six interviews, one of which entailed playing in the club’s Pete Dye Cup with Pete himself.
The connection with Ferriell made the Crooked Stick job a homecoming of sorts for Pancake. So did returning to the state of his birth. Libby was pleased as well, having hailed from French Lick, the town in south central Indiana where basketball great Larry Bird grew up. Midwesterners to the core, they also liked the idea of raising their growing family in that region.
Tony Pancake (center) rubs shoulders with quarterback Peyton Manning (left) and announcer Jim Nantz.
After six years as Crooked Stick’s head professional, Pancake assumed the role in 2010 of director of golf and club operations. It is a big and sometimes complex job, but Pancake says he enjoys how different every day is for him and how much variety there is to the tasks he performs in his work. He especially relishes his interactions with people and spending time on the golf course, which is the first championship layout Dye ever designed.
Clearly, Pancake loves his job. And the people at his club love the job he does.
“I’ve known Tony for 20 years, and he is a wonderful ambassador for the game of golf and without a doubt the best golf professional I’ve ever been around,” wrote Peyton Manning – an NFL Hall of Fame quarterback and longtime Crooked Stick member – in a letter of recommendation to the PGA of America for the selection process that ended with Pancake being named its national Professional of the Year. “It feels great to recognize Tony, especially since he is quiet, humble and never looking for attention, as he represents so many great PGA of America golf professionals just like him all over the country.”
A pro’s pro all the way.
Top Photo: Darren carroll, PGA of America via Getty Images
other PHOTOS COURTESY tony pancake
