By Vinnie Manginelli, PGA
Winning an award once is honorable. Winning one four times is excellence. Marissa Kulig Crow is a four-time Golf Range Association of America (GRAA) Top 100 Growth of the Game Teaching Professional. Crow, the 2021 LPGA National Teacher of the Year and 2022 LPGA National Professional of the Year, is the LPGA Director of Instruction at Twin Hills Country Club, an 18-hole private facility in Longmeadow, Massachusetts.
Crow was just eight years old when she first expressed an interest in the game of golf. She grew up running around on the golf course with her father, Joe and grandfather Henry, who were scratch golfers and played competitively.
“I attended Cathedral High School in Springfield, Massachusetts, since my hometown school, Granby High, did not have a golf team,” Crow recalls. “My parents carpooled me to Cathedral for a better education and the opportunity to play golf.”
Crows remembers trying out for the boys’ team from the same tees as they had. Despite the hurdle, Marissa made the team and played varsity golf all four years of high school. After graduating from Cathedral (and securing her name on the Dean’s List each year), she went to Springfield Technical Community College and played on the men’s team, again with no advantage as to where she’d put her peg in the ground on the tee box.
“We won the New England’s and competed in the National Junior College Athletic Association (NJCAA) Golf Nationals in Vass, North Carolina,” she adds. “I then transferred to Bryant College (now University) in Smithfield, Rhode Island, to play on their newly formed women’s golf team.”
Crow would become captain of the upstart Lady Bulldogs.
From high school to a couple of years out of college, Crow worked part-time in the golf shop at the Chicopee (MA) Country Club. By age 25, she decided to pursue golf as a full-time career. She worked under Daril Pacinella, a top teacher at the Country Club of Wilbraham in Western Massachusetts. Pacinella had a female assistant who was a Class A LPGA Professional, Ann Marie Hamilton. Crow apprenticed there, failing her Playing Ability Test (PAT) on the first try, but passing it on the next.
“From 2002 to 2016, I held every position in the golf industry – from greenskeeper to assistant to head professional to general manager,” she says.
All of this valuable managerial experience left little time to pursue her LPGA Class A status. It was after she attained her first full-time teaching position at Lyman Orchards in Middlefield, Connecticut in 2013 that she actively sought her Class A requirements, completing them in 2017. Crow would go on to teach full time at Lyman for 11 seasons and won her first LPGA award as Northeast Teacher of the Year in 2019.
“Daril and Ann Marie were my first mentors, then Jane Frost,” she says.
She also credits Lyman Orchards colleague, Jon Wilson; Troon Director of Instruction, Steve Loesher; and LPGA Hall of Famer, Cindy Miller, with aiding in her development and success.
“My career has been a culmination of different positions and hard work,” she admits. “Coaching is my calling, so I’m proud to have built the largest women’s program in the country with 1,500-2,000 ladies taking lessons and classes from March through October and 300+ women playing in the women’s league. It was the perfect formula of an awesome facility, wonderfully supportive colleagues and a nice community that let me shine.”
Unfortunately, the commute of sometimes 90 minutes was taxing on her, her car and her home life.
“I have a 9-year-old high-functioning autistic son, Daniel Henry, and leaving the house at 9:00 in the morning and returning 12 hours later wasn’t cutting it,” she recalls. “I was tired and reached burnout. It was the hardest career decision I ever made.”
Crow was an independent contractor in 2024, running her own business, Marissa’s Golf Movement, at the Ledges Golf Club in South Hadley, Massachusetts and Northampton Country Club in Leeds, Massachusetts. She also traveled and taught LPGA Amateurs clinics in Rhode Island, Connecticut and New York. She taught at four different indoor simulator facilities this past winter and was contacted in January by Twin Hills Country Club to meet with Patrick Murphy, the club’s director of golf.
“It’s been an amazing three months as LPGA Director of Instruction,” Crow boasts. “I worked so hard to stay busy and fill my lesson books last season. I got to spend a lot of time with my family, but wasn’t quite financially stable or nearly as busy as I was at Lyman Orchards. I am currently booked almost three weeks out!”
Coming from Lyman Orchards with all the programming she had offered, Crow hopes to do something similar at Twin Hills. She wants to improve the women’s leagues, offer instruction for all skill levels and provide a variety of social options, including Sips and Swings, one-day golf schools, women’s golf trips and LPGA*USGA Girls Golf.
Crow has students who travel as much as two hours for her instruction, a true testament to her professionalism and expertise. As mentioned, she’s booked three weeks in advance at Twin Hills, and that’s having been there only a few months! She gets texts and emails from students all the time thanking her for helping them attain their new low score or helping them make the high school golf team. She has golfers who play multiple women’s leagues and others who are traveling to play the game of golf. These are all wonderful success stories.
Some of her current programming includes:
- Private lessons for men, women and juniors
- Golf Fore Women 101
- Get Golf Ready – three different offerings per week from May to October
- Group clinics
- Spring/summer tune-ups – golf school for eight students
- Women’s Golf Day events
- Ladies nine-hole league – two new divisions (one social and one competitive)
- 18-hole ladies league
- Sips and Swings – six-week session for new golfers
Crow uses Onform for video analysis and has a golf cart full of teaching aides she sets up on the range tee.
“Golf is an evolving sport, and several trends are emerging or likely to continue shaping its future,” Crow admits. “Technology integration will continue to drive progress via launch monitors and data analytics. Devices like Trackman and FlightScope are already widely used for swing analysis, but the use of data is likely to expand even further. Expect more players and instructors to rely on AI-driven analytics to improve performance. AI is the future and that includes golf!”
With much experience in the area, Crow says that indoor golf simulators are becoming more advanced and accessible. With virtual courses and real-time stats, they’re poised to change the way people practice and play, especially in colder climates like hers in Massachusetts. In fact, when she was at Lyman Orchards, she had three covered bays with golf simulators so the facility could run year-round.
“I instructed so many newer golfers that I felt it was too much information at first,” Crow reflects. “It was unnecessary for the student to be bogged down with stats. Also, as a new golfer, they want to see the ball flight outside instead of into a wall. The short game was a challenge as well, learning distances with chips and pitch shots and learning how to putt with undulations. However, years later, my old-fashioned way of thinking has changed. Last winter, I gave lessons at several different locations. Bad weather and winter here in the Northeast were no longer a problem. My new golfers who learned in the fall can continue to improve and practice through the winter. Using the data makes me more efficient at correcting swing tendencies. Technology is the future, and I think it’s good to continue to grow the game. It’s about improving golfers so they enjoy the game more and want to play, rather than getting frustrated and giving up.”
Crow sees inclusivity and accessibility as keys to keep the golf wave going. The LPGA has been gaining more traction, and initiatives to encourage female participation in golf, like the rise of female professionals and visibility in media, are growing. Golf brands are designing more equipment and apparel for women, and golf organizations are working to make the sport more inclusive. She takes pride in growing this segment every day. After 40 years in the game, she see that the once male-dominated sport is slowly but surely changing.
“The growth of digital golf media is also helping spread the word on the benefits and virtues of golf,” she says. “As people consume more digital content, golf broadcasts, live streams and highlights will continue to expand. Social media platforms and apps will be key in driving the next generation of golf fans, with micro-content formats like TikTok showcasing moments from major tournaments and casual rounds. However, there are sometimes pros and cons to having so much information at our fingertips. Golf is so visible. As an instructor, there are challenges in sorting out all of the information people consume on a daily basis. regardless, these trends combine to paint a picture of a sport that’s becoming more accessible, technologically advanced and globally interconnected.”
For more information on Marissa’s Golf Movement, check out her website today!
