Mike Swingle has spent decades grinding out low scores on the golf course. Thirty-eight years have gone by since he won the 1988 PNGA Men’s Amateur Championship, and the man from Issaquah, Wash. still performs well in senior competition to this day.
Additionally, since 2010, he’s been grinding up high quality coffee beans as part of a business venture that continues to caffeinate Western Washington locals.
That'd be the Issaquah Coffee Company. Mike’s been there throughout its decade-plus-and-counting lifespan, having taken a flier on owning it 16 years ago.
"Me and a partner, we decided to buy this shop and thought it was a terrible idea,” Mike recalled in jest. “We didn’t know anything about coffee and hadn’t done anything in restaurants, but we did know how to sell stuff.”
He has sold plenty of “stuff” since. In addition to its cozy physical location, Issaquah Coffee Company boasts a fully stocked online store where, among plenty of logoed items, shoppers can buy coffee beans sourced from all over the world.
Top to bottom, running a business like that is predictably time-consuming. But through it all, Mike keeps his competitive golfing half intact, playing a litany of amateur championships as well as PGA Section tournaments across the Pacific Northwest. In more recent years, he won the 2021 PNW PGA Senior Players’ Championship while competing as an amateur, and as recently as April 2026 was the low amateur in the PNW PGA Senior Players’ Championship, finishing tied for third overall.
“It’s very lucky,” Mike said, over how he’s still maintained a robust golf game in the years since owning his business. “I can manage this coffee business how I want, I can be there all the time, I can find time away. And I can work on my golf game and play some events around the Northwest.”
Born to golfing parents in Southern California, Mike grew up in San Diego’s intensely competitive and resourceful junior golf scene, occasionally having run-ins with Phil Mickelson, who he once joined on the San Diego High School All-Star team. Mike went on to have a career clad in UW Husky purple and gold, even if freshman pains came with adjusting to the softer, squishier playing surfaces of the Pacific Northwest.
“It was tough to go to school and play golf,” he said of such adjustments. “But I went home that summer, worked hard on my golf game and really made a change.”
His 1988 PNGA Amateur win followed those positive changes, as did a near victory over then-college superstar Mickelson in the round of 16 at the 1990 U.S. Amateur.
Mike dabbled with pro competition after graduating UW but eventually settled in an assistant pro role at Meridian Valley Country Club in Kent under the wing of Doug Doxsie, a widely respected PGA Pro now enshrined within the PNWPGA Hall of Fame. Mike’s new job was a natural transition, even if he was originally from elsewhere.
“I was well connected to the area,” he said. “I enjoyed being in Seattle at the time, so it was a good opportunity for me to go work for Doug.”
Mike started at Meridian Valley in 1992 and stayed until 1997. He made plenty of memories, which included caddying for Jack Nicklaus while the Golden Bear was spending time in the Northwest to design the course of The Club at Snoqualmie Ridge.
But wanting a new challenge, Mike decided to enter the world of equipment representation, and he soon began stints repping for Lynx Golf, Maxfli, TaylorMade and Titleist, before the downturn of the late 2000s eliminated that position, compelling Mike to leave the golf business and have his amateur status reinstated. After that, he spent some time coaching little league baseball, before he saw a small coffee shop in Issaquah up for sale.
He bought the establishment thinking he might resell it after a couple of years. But in his words, he “kind of got it going” with restaurant biz know-how, and Issaquah Coffee Company soon became a fixture in that Seattle suburb.
“We made lots of mistakes,” he conceded. “But we’ve made money since day one in the shop, and it’s done well.”
Today, Mike’s daughter manages the shop, while the elder Swingle spends time with its office-related affairs, such as bills and partnerships. Over the last 16 years, he’s adopted an exceptional level of care for both his staff and customers he’s come to know.
“The most satisfying part is when they’re doing well, they’re happy and it’s running well,” he said about his hard workers.
Adding about his customers: “It’s the people who keep coming in and want to sit around and talk and hang out; that’s really cool.”
Additional evidence of his still-humming golf world can be found at the tee boxes of his home club of Aldarra Golf Club in Sammamish, where he’s made countless friends and social groups from his presence in the club.
Most recently, Mike trekked to The Home Course in DuPont for the 2026 Washington Senior Men’s Champion of Champions. That trip marked Mike’s first to the venue since 2018, when he competed in that year’s PNGA Men’s Amateur, 30 years after his triumph at Royal Colwood Golf Club. It was a fun week, even if he was just a little more experienced than some of his playing partners.
“I loved being on the tee, the starter announcing me as the winner in 1988,” he recalled. “I think everyone in my group hadn’t been born yet.”
Mike is still going strong. And if he ever needs a coffee to help him through any given day, he’ll know just the place to get it.