FEATURE
By Julliana Bravo
By the time she was 17 in 2010, Kyla Jo Williams was a Texas All-State golfer, playing every weekend for her high school team and starting to feel the pressure of competitive golf. Although she grew up loving the game, she was beginning to burn out and lose connection with her other interests. She wasn’t passionate about golf anymore.
That’s why at the end of her senior year of high school she put her clubs down and swore to never touch them ever again. Although her experience as a junior competitor took a turn for the worse, it would have a happy ending, one that would inspire her career.
When she was done with golf, she decided to pursue another passion that had been with her since she was a child – theater. She went into her first audition in middle school and fell in love with it. She was able to pursue that passion at West Texas A&M University in Canyon, Texas, and even did a summer program at NYU.
Being part of an acting team stuck with her, too, causing her to feel like something was missing. One day in 2022, she felt compelled to hit some golf balls. Sneaking into her parents’ garage, she grabbed her clubs and headed to the range.
“I didn’t want anyone to know,” she recalls.
On the range, she realized golf wasn’t something she could neglect anymore. It was a part of her she needed to let live. She got fit for some new clubs and started to take lessons with her pro. She also, finally, told her parents.
But it wasn’t until 2022 that she received a call from an old friend who was starting a new indoor golf simulator facility in Brooklyn and wanted Williams to join the staff as a coach. “It felt like fate,” she says.
When she put her clubs down, she never expected to pick them back up, let alone reignite her love for golf. With her experience from her own junior career, she wanted to ensure that juniors were receiving the best possible experience. Williams passed the PGA Playing Ability Test and studied youth development and training to ensure that no one would feel burned out the same way she did.
In 2024, she received another opportunity after meeting with Will Smittle, the director of instruction at Game On Golf Center in White Plains, N.Y. At first, she offered her coaching services one day out of the week, since she was living in the city. One day has turned into three days a week at the all-weather driving range, where she spearheads the programs and lessons for women.
The transition from player to coach was less about mechanics and club positions than it was about fostering an idea that golf should be fun and exciting and not a chore.
That led to another opportunity to create her very own teaching school, Green Apple Golf Club in 2024. The first lesson was in the backroom of N&M’s Pizza Bar in Washington Heights in northern Manhattan. She set up a Net Return and Foresight Simulator where birthday parties are usually held. All she needed was one yes, and that yes came from the staff at the pizza shop, where you could buy a slice and cure a slice all at once.
“It launched off the support and efforts of the people around me,” Williams recalls.
A year and a half in, she’s still learning the ropes on how to conduct a business, running a curriculum, and creating a community. Right now, she teaches at three separate locations – GOLFZON Social in Brooklyn, 5Iron Golf on the Upper East Side, and Game On Golf Center. In the next five to 10 years, she’s hoping to have a physical location in city, as well as some satellite locations eventually. She wants people to see the power behind her curriculum and attitude towards golf.
For now, her next venture is hosting golf camps for women around the New York area. With four held throughout the summer and one already sold out, she’s looking forward to bringing a group together to learn and play golf.