Heather Angell

Please indicate past awards won/recognitions:
GRAA Top 100 Growth of the Game Teaching Professional, Golf Digest Best in State, Other (Indicate specific awards below in 3-a)

Other awards won:
2026-2027 – Golf Digest Best in State 2026-2027 – Golf Magazine Teachers to Watch 2025, 2024, 2021 South Florida PGA Southwest Chapter Teacher of the Year 2024 South Florida PGA Professional Development Award 2024, 2023, 2022, 2021 GRAA Top 100 Growth of the Game Teaching Professional 2023 US Kids Top 50 Kids Coach 2025, 2023, 2022 National PGA Player Development Award Nominee 2024, 2022, 2021, 2020 US Kids Top 50 Honorable Mention 2021 South Florida PGA Section Player Development Award 2021, 2020 PGA Lead Cohort V 2019 South Florida PGA Southwest Chapter Player Development Award

Total number of individual lessons given per year:
Male: 531
Female: 568
Junior: 102

Total number of individual clinics given per year:
22

Please indicate any Growth of the Game initiatives your facility/academy has launched over the past year (please give specifics on such programs):
In December 2024, I was recruited to join The Golf Club at Fiddler’s Creek in Naples, FL, as its first Director of Instruction. I went from a 36-hole private facility with almost 3,000 members to an elite Top 100, 18-hole facility with 320 members. The 20-year-old facility was undergoing a rebirth, which included a completely renovated golf course, new clubhouse, and new state-of-the-art practice facility. While speaking to members at one of several Meet and Greets, I discovered that my future students preferred private lessons over clinics. I found this interesting, as my previous club loved group clinics. I filed this information away and continued to tell them that I was on a Journey, having qualified for the LPGA KPMG Championship. I invited them to join me on my Journey to practice and prepare like a professional golfer. One student stood up and was excited about my Journey, but wanted to go on her own Golf Journey as well. Several others agreed and it became evident to me that I needed to rebrand my clinics into Journeys to pique the interest of the club members.

Clinics imply a one-time group session to improve a golf skill like chipping, putting, or tee shots. To create a successful player development program, one must provide a reason for the student to come back to see continual progress. A Journey implies not just a one-time event, but recurrent events that would show the student that they are on a journey to a better golf game.

Each week, the Journey for my students covered a different skill that built on last week’s skill and provided a way to practice to take it to the next level. Once all of the golf fundamentals were covered, I took their Journey onto the golf course, where we discussed how to utilize our skills on the course and further our success with course management and strategy. Students loved the week-to-week progress, and I found many of my beginner students on the Journey were finding more enjoyment in the game than they thought possible. One student admittingly told me he took up golf in his retirement years only because his wife enjoyed the sport. He preferred racquet sports. About halfway through the season, he came over to me after one of our Journey sessions and said he was enjoying this sport more than he thought he would. At first, he was just doing this for his wife, but now, he is seeing progress and really having fun!

I also created a Journey for myself. Since I qualified for the LPGA KPMG Championship as a PGA Professional this year, I took the opportunity to invite my lower-handicap students, who adamantly opposed clinics, to join me on my Journey. Each week, I picked an aspect of the game that is needed to be successful in a professional tournament and worked on that skill alongside my students. They loved practicing with me like a professional! We worked on drills and discussed ways to take their skills to the next level. We even went on the course to hone our skills using strategies a professional golfer would use to shoot their best scores. With lower handicap players, improvement is more about course management and mental strategies, not major swing changes.

The Journeys proved to be a great success. Students came back each week to continue their improvement instead of just dropping in for a clinic when they wanted to learn or improve a certain skill. Each session brought at least six participants.

Even though my Journey to the LPGA KPMG Championship has been completed, my students’ Journey does not end. This coming season, I will once again offer their Journey and focus on a goal of either Breaking 100 or Breaking 80. Most of the members at my facility are either new to the game of golf or have handicaps under 20. The competition is fierce at my facility among the better players, so helping them achieve the goal of breaking 80 will appeal to lower handicaps who typically gravitate toward individual lessons and not group sessions. I found they really enjoyed practicing like a professional last season, so we will continue in this direction. Working on their Journey with me and other like-minded individuals will create the opportunity for maximum success.

I am already selling out programming for this coming season. In addition to Breaking 100 and Breaking 80 gaining traction among students, my new program called 4 at 4 (4 holes with Heather at 4pm) is already sold out for the fall season (October-December). I will take four students out to play four holes of golf with me each week. It gives me a chance to see their games, as well as discuss strategy and course management skills. I plan to offer additional sessions if there is demand.

My easy teaching style and visionary approach to fixing swing problems at the source quickly spread throughout the membership. The General Manager at Fiddler’s Creek was surprised and impressed by the popularity of the programming, as he was unsure how many lessons I would get when he hired me. The majority of the membership belongs to multiple clubs and in the past, took their lessons up north in the summer. I focused on changing the culture so that members would see improvement in their golf games year-round.

2025 Season (January-April)
– 24 Group Journey sessions with 50 participants total
– 70 Individual Journeys (3 or more lessons)

https://www.heatherangell.com/fiddlerscreek

Please share any programming you have made to keep your customers & students engaged:
I was recruited to join The Golf Club at Fiddler’s Creek as the Director of Instruction just one month before the season started this past December. I rushed to learn the culture and quickly found out that the members preferred one-on-one lessons. They were not fond of clinics, so I rebranded my clinics into Journeys to adapt to this new culture. The members loved the perspective of a continual Journey and not a one-time clinic to see improvement in their games. I found the group Journeys were as popular as the one-on-one Journeys, despite what I learned when arriving. I created a member experience, not just a one-lesson fix, so they not only saw great improvement in their games, but also in their enjoyment of the sport.

– Journeys

o Changing the bad connotation of clinics to encourage members to participate in group lessons and calling them Journeys. This encourages consistent attendance to see greater improvement.
o Breaking 100 Journey – Geared toward students who want to score under 100.
o Breaking 80 Journey – Geared toward students who want to score under 80. Fiddler’s Creek has a large population of golfers with handicaps under 20, so this Journey targets the lower handicap players to see greater improvement on their Journey.
o Fitness Journey – As a TPI Level 1 Certified Instructor, I created a Fitness Journey to help with strength, stamina, and flexibility for members. The club is just a golf club with no fitness facilities, so incorporating fitness into my instruction has helped members improve their games more quickly.

– Aimpoint Bootcamps

o Level 2 Certified in Aimpoint, a process that helps students read the greens faster and smarter.
o Fiddler’s Creek has undergone a complete golf course renovation and brand new practice facility, Himilayas putting course, 19th hole, and clubhouse, the Aimpoint Bootcamp gives participants a way to properly read the new greens in a quick and easy method.
o Bootcamps held 2-3 times a month
o 4-6 participants each session

– Beginner Bootcamps (Get Golf Ready)

o Created a bootcamp to cover all the basics of golf to prepare students to be golf course ready in four sessions. I kept each Bootcamp small in number for more one-on-one attention.
o Bootcamp held three times a season
o 4-6 participants each session

– Short Game Bootcamps

o My favorite Bootcamp: I focused on short game skills and included a custom fit wedge to learn to use in the Bootcamp. I partnered with the Cleveland Rep for the wedge fitting.
o Bootcamp held three times a season
o 6-8 participants each session

– 4 holes at 4pm

o In order to fill late afternoon lesson times that tended to be slower, while also engaging members to do more playing lessons, I created 4 at 4. I take four members out on the course for four holes of golf in the late afternoon. It gives me an opportunity to play with them, watch them play, and discuss course management and strategy. The 4 at 4 has been so successful that the fall season booked in early October, so I added additional dates to accommodate the demand.

2025 Stats at The Golf Club at Fiddlers Creek January 1 Through May 31
Total lessons given through May 31 – 439
Total lessons given to Men – 171
Total lessons given to Women – 252
Individual students who took lessons – 182
Playing Lessons on the course – 11
Journeys and Bootcamps that had between 3-20 people participate – 55
Journey participants each week – 15-20
Bootcamp participants each session – 6-8
Referrals for Golf Club Sales by my students through May 31 – $71,000