By Vinnie Manginelli, PGA
Dividing her year between Sebonack Golf Club in Southampton, New York and the Ocean Reef Club in Key Largo, Florida, PGA of America Golf Professional Stefanie Shaw is a 2024 Golf Range Association of America (GRAA) Top 100 Growth of the Game Teaching Professional and has been named a Golf Digest Best Young Teacher in Florida annually since 2018.
Originally from Cleveland, Ohio, Shaw’s father taught her the love of the game when he switched from tennis to golf when Stefanie was about eight years old.
“My parents named me after Steffi Graf, so I think they had high hopes of me winning Wimbledon, but I took a bit of a detour and ended up exactly where I needed to be,” Shaw explains. “We belonged to a club in Hudson, Ohio, and my favorite part was driving the golf cart. My dad was my main influence and my biggest hero. His efforts to introduce me to the game of golf are the reason I am here today.”
Stefanie played golf at Florida Southern College in Lakeland, Florida, and after graduating, moved to Hilton Head, South Carolina, to work at Belfair in nearby Bluffton. Across the road was The International Junior Golf Academy (IJGA), a boarding school for junior golfers run by Hank Haney that had 150 students from all over the world.
“The kids from the academy got their club fittings at Belfair, and I met Peter Krause, the academy’s PGA of America Director of Instruction,” Shaw recalls. “I begged him for a job, and thankfully, he agreed. I ended up working for Peter and Hank for seven years. My main job at the academy, as one of 12 instructors, was to teach the students who had never played golf and also didn’t know how to speak English, and get them to a level where they’d receive a college scholarship in four years. Looking back on my teaching experience, I’m not sure there could have been a better way to start my career.”
After leaving the IJGA, Shaw went to work for Kellie Stenzel, a GRAA Elite Growth of the Game Teaching Professional, for the next seven years. Shaw says that Stenzel has been the biggest influence on her as a teacher, a mentor and one of her best friends.
“Once I left working for Kellie, I went to Florida to be the PGA of America Director of Instruction at the Ocean Reef Club,” she says. “Mike Adams has been a mentor and friend during my five years in Florida.”
Shaw enjoys running golf schools, corporate events and clinics, teaching beside talented guest instructors and bringing fresh ideas of her own to the table. She runs wine and putting clinics – social events to get new golfers involved. She encourages group lessons for new women golfers and strives to get some of the many “pickle-ballers” at her club involved in golf, as well.
“Most of the events and clinics I run are to attract new golfers, and fortunately, I have a very large and active membership at Ocean Reef, and they love being part of what we offer instruction-wise, which makes it even more fun. We are fortunate to have a beautiful teaching building with Swing Catalyst, Trackman, Foresight and PuttView,” she boasts.
Each year, Shaw and Stenzel run multiple all-women’s golf schools throughout the season. In their most recent three-day school, they had 60 women sign up. At Sebonack, Shaw has her short game wine clinic, as well as on-course clinics that have almost tripled the number of women who come out to the club.
At the Ocean Reef Club, Shaw has a few clinics that are set in stone throughout the season, and has supplemented these sessions with some“pop-up clinics.”
“I send an email to the membership in the morning for a clinic that afternoon, and it usually fills up within 30 minutes,” she says. “I find this works very well with members’ schedules, and they find it fun to keep a lookout for this correspondence.
“Getting scheduling right in the Hamptons in the summer can be challenging, but the women recently started a book club, and I have been scheduling a putting or short game clinic for the hour before, as the attendees already had the book club on their schedules – this was very successful last year.”
When asked what she sees trending going forward, Shaw concluded, “There are so many people coming from other sports into golf. I work at a club that has almost every sport imaginable available, especially racquet sports. Almost daily, I have new golfers coming in to learn to play. The majority are females and are ready to try something new!”
