By Vinnie Manginelli, PGA
Alex Iguchi is a PGA of America Golf Professional with three decades of experience coaching and managing golf instruction programs nationally and overseas. Over the years, he has been acknowledged for mentoring assistant professionals who represent the next generation of professional golf instructors and head golf pros.
Iguchi considers himself a student of the game and offers expertise in teaching, technology, biomechanics and didactics. He delivers the most up-to-date instruction in an easy-to-understand manner and effectively helps students and golfers of all levels and ages to set and achieve their goals. He does so by implementing a personal plan around their skill level, their available practice time and the philosophy of “Train how you play; Play how you train”.
“I was introduced to the game of golf when I was three years old by my father who was a photographer and wrote a column for a Japanese golf magazine,” Iguchi explains, “but I didn’t start playing until the age of 14 and was hit with adversity the moment I started.”
Iguchi says that after a couple of rounds with his father, a lady introduced herself as a youth committee member and asked him what his handicap was. Being new to the game, Iguchi told her he was able-bodied and had no handicap.
“The woman made matters worse and told me I couldn’t play again unless I had a golfer’s ‘license,’ which took almost a year to get and was harder to obtain than a driver’s license,” Iguchi says.”
“On top of that, when I started making significant progress and began watching golf on TV, I asked the instructor at the club how a pro like Jack Nicklaus made money because I didn’t know there was a winner’s check. I thought all he got was a trophy. He told me I didn’t need to know because I would never be a pro. Years later, I carpooled to a tournament with a friend, and he got paired up with this ‘not so charming’ individual, who as it turns out told my friend that he didn’t understand why I was practicing so hard because I would never amount to anything anyway. That same day, I won my first-ever professional tournament!”
It may sound like a movie script or tall tail, but this is a true story. Having been Teacher of the Year in his PGA Chapter and a 2023 GRAA Top 100 Growth of the Game Teaching Professional, helping hundreds of students and mentoring dozens of pros, Iguchi has proved that instructor wrong many times over. But while this unwelcoming approach may have ignited a fire in him, Iguchi fears it may have also turned other people away from the game. As a result, Iguchi always takes time to answer questions from kids and adults as thoroughly and sincerely as he can.
Alex Iguchi has a degree in Biomechanics because he wanted to turn pro in Holland and was told he had to attend college for two years. He says the golf knowledge classes basically just taught him to teach “left arm straight and keep your head down”; but they added classes like biomechanics, anatomy and didactics, upon which Iguchi still relies heavily – they allow him to follow different philosophies and stay abreast of the most modern teaching methods and concepts.
“During this time, I met the kindest pro named Ray Leach (pictured below), who was the type of person you want to meet on your first lesson when you’re intimidated and nervous,” Iguchi says. “He was very disarming, personable, funny and supportive and never charged me a penny, although I did have to mow his garden, trim his hedges and help build a water fountain in his yard. He was my Mr. Miyagi and led me to my first (and pretty much only) victory, which is the one I mentioned earlier where I stopped that bully who had tormented me growing up.”
Iguchi says Leach gave him a tip before the event that addressed his tendency to swing too fast, placing focus on his tempo – it worked! The victory earned him 1,000 guilders, not life-changing money, but at least he knew how much a pro earned, although it was a far cry from what Nicklaus collected on TV that fateful day several years earlier.
Iguchi attended his first teaching and coaching conference in Spain in 1998 and watched Jim McLean debunk long-held beliefs about path and face. He later had a chance to meet privately with the great John Jacobs for an hour. Iguchi asked him the secret of the golf swing, to which Jacobs responded “Turn your body right, lift your arms up, and then turn your body left and bring your arms down.” That was too simple for Iguchi; so he sought out McLean for more in-depth guidance.
After traveling between Europe and the U.S., Iguchi helped a friend open his own golf academy in Georgia. It was a start-up business and faced some challenges, so they ultimately went in different directions. Iguchi went the club management route, which took him to Ko Olina in Hawaii, Pebble Beach and the Four Seasons Resort in Costa Rica.
“I was still heavily engaged in teaching but learned everything I needed to know about club management from Rob Oosterhuis at Four Seasons,” Iguchi adds. “I soon realized that executive management was not the best route for me. After attempting to play competitively for three years and failing to qualify for the Dutch Open by one shot, it was time to invest my time into something I had a better future in.”
After speaking at the European Golf Course Owners Association conference, Iguchi got a job offer in Ukraine, where he helped train the next generation of golf pros and transitioned into the role of mentor. He tried the club management route for a few more years as an Assistant Business Manager in Japan at a U.S. Army base and as the GM at a municipal course in California. Eventually, he had to be honest with himself and decided to return to teaching.
“I joined Golf Galaxy in Pembroke Pines, Florida for a full-time teaching position and became their top instructor, responsible for doubling the lessons taught in 10 stores in the Southeast market,” he explains. “I even helped open two new stores. But, having started my career at high-end private and resort courses around the world, and now suddenly working for a big box retailer, I didn’t think I had much chance of ever finding another job at a green grass facility. So I registered to be a PGA Mentor in the Section’s pilot program and provided some other work to support them. Soon after, to my surprise, all my experiences worked in my favor when the PGA Golf Club in Port St Lucie hired me as its PGA of America Director of Coaching.”
Iguchi says the biggest success at PGA Golf Club is their PGA HOPE program. It runs year-round and welcomes 15 new veterans every two months. Ask any PGA HOPE instructor and he or she will tell you that of all the people they teach, the veterans are the most appreciative. They return and share stories of how the program has given them a new positive outlook on life and how they can enjoy the game again after they thought they could never play due to injuries, etc.
“The program is carefully crafted to be an emotional support program first, and a golf instruction program second,” Iguchi details. “All classes follow a schedule – putt, chip, pitch, bunker, swing, recap, course. I introduce everyone to the basics of biomechanics (the science of motion), by using drills, training aids and resistance training like GolfForever in every aspect of the program. We use Toptracer and Trackman for a modern touch, but it’s used in a game mode because we are building camaraderie. I call this ‘the no man left behind for 55 minutes rule’ which means I do not follow the traditional way of teaching a clinic, lining people up on a range and walking down the range, allotting only five minutes out of an hour to each individual. Instead, all activities are done in small groups, which means less repetition, but more concentrated practice and definitely more fun.”
When he considers the future, Alex Iguchi says it’s already here. “Golf lessons powered by AI – Alex Iguchi that is!” Iguchi says the biggest benefit of AI is enabling golf instructors to learn new and relevant instruction methods, marketing strategies, and more, so they can quickly fix a student’s game more effectively, efforts the original AI has been doing for his students around the globe for over 30 years.
Iguchi recently gave a featured presentation at the South Florida PGA Teaching Symposium as a local rising star and agreed to speak on Friday morning at the PGA Show in January – the topic will be lessons powered by AI.
