Door County Grad Approaches a Decade of Teaching at an Elite Golf Facility
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Steven Cox has chased and achieved many of his golf-related goals, which includes helping avid golfers realize their on-course dreams.
The 2005 Gibraltar High School graduate has learned the golf business well, made great connections with the right people and established himself as a trusted instructor at one of America’s elite golf complexes. Cox has worked for nine years now at PGA National in Palm Beach Gardens, giving lessons, analyzing swings and assigning workout and practice regimens to help golfers play their best and enjoy the game for as long as possible. He’s even appeared on the Golf Channel.
“The majority is one, or two on one, in person,” Cox said of his lesson schedule on a typically hot, humid day in southern Florida – one of those mornings when it feels like you could “cut the air with a knife.”
Where he teaches, winter brings a full schedule of lessons, often for New Jersey and Long Island players who golf every day of the year, whether in Florida during the winter or in cooler latitudes during the summer. The hot months keep Cox busy with heat-tolerant, year-round residents, plus middle school, high school and college players, as well as aspiring young amateurs and pros who are grinding away, trying to advance their games to the next level.
Helping with “player development” as a teaching pro, however, wasn’t always the number-one goal for Cox, who played and worked at Peninsula State Park Golf Course growing up and started golfing at about age 5 at Bay Ridge, near his family’s Townline Road home.
“I originally thought I wanted to be on the administrative side,” said Cox, who graduated in the second year of a then-new University of Wisconsin-Stout golf-management program, “but you don’t realize when you get into the golf industry, you’re not playing a lot of golf in the beginning, especially versus what I do now, which is what I love. I’m out on the course with people. I get to rip a few with them because everybody wants to see how to do it. You have to be able to show people.”
In addition to teaching on the driving range and putting green, Cox and his colleagues at PGA National can set up mirrors, launch monitors, and video and technological equipment to measure and evaluate swing speed, ball spin and more.
Courses saw a golfing boom and increases in rounds played starting in 2020, a few months into the COVID-19 pandemic, but protocols restricted what teaching pros could do on the course.
“During COVID, I did a lot of online stuff for my students. I tried to promote that through a company called V1 Video Analysis, which I have a partnership with,” said Cox, who helped to build an indoor facility at PGA National a couple of years before the pandemic. He occasionally analyzes video sent in by current and former students to check for recurring flaws or potential improvements in form as a quick, between-lesson checkup or just to stay in touch.
Now most of the teaching takes place outside. Cox likes the demand for lessons from avid golfers and loves that PGA National’s teachers/employees have a great deal of independence.
“I have my own brand; I have my own clientele; I set my own hours. I enjoy the fact that I have freedom,” said Cox, who has been married for four years and has a 2-year-old daughter.
The facility, which hosts the PGA Honda Open, has six courses, including a par-3 track. It does not have a director of instruction, and it also allows appointments by contractors who teach the methods of famous teachers such as Dave Pelz and David Ledbetter.
Cox works with players of all abilities, and he has given tips or shared observations with senior tour players such as Mark Calcavecchia and Rocco Mediate. He has received mentorship from Michigan Hall of Fame instructor Rick Smith, who has the golf performance center at Trump Doral. Smith provides instruction to many high-caliber players, and Cox has absorbed information, methods and knowledge from them, too.
“I have worked with a lot of young professionals,” he said. “I think the fun part is, whether or not I’ve actually taught them, I’ve been privileged to be with them or play with them. I’ve been able to sit on the range with John Daly to talk to him and ask him what he’s doing.”
The Miami and Palm Beach area seems to have a never-ending pool of dedicated, talented high school players, and they keep Cox busy.
“High school golf down here is amazing,” he said. “They take it as seriously as any collegiate team. If your scoring average is above 40, you are playing on the middle school team or the JV team.
“But then again, you have the kids of tour pros coming through here. I see Charlie Woods all the time; a number of my boys play against him,” he said of Tiger Woods’ son.
Cox got his first teaching job at Hammock Beach in northeastern Florida a decade ago, then moved to Boca Raton and landed a job at Abacoa Golf Club.
“The head of the golf academy was the head of the Florida PGA,” he said. “I went out, and I shadowed him. I learned from him. Before that, I had worked at a golf school that taught me quite a bit, and before that I had worked as a head professional in Australia for a few years. I was constantly picking up little things that these teachers were putting out there. I wanted to have those little phrases and those little things that make you sound like you know what you’re talking about, but more importantly, so the student remembers this.”
Those lessons are invaluable – if for no other reason than helping ambitious golfers understand why they smashed every drive one day and couldn’t get off the tee the next.
“This is a game of degrees,” Cox said. “You could be ‘pure-ing’ it, and only a degree or two away from shanking it. And that’s the truth. It’s the difference between knowing where you are – what we call club awareness – and not knowing where you are.”
