Annette Thompson, to the core, is an educator. The nuanced difference between teacher and educator appears when the 81-year-old North Carolina native talks about how she does her job.
“Annette always has a story about everything she is going to talk about,” said Lynn Marriott, a highly respected golf instructor and co-founder of Vision54 Golf Academy with Pia Nilsson. “She is the classic educator through metaphor.”
Marriott, who played college golf for Thompson at Penn State, remembers how caring the coach’s instruction was.
“It has been one of my foundations, human beings first,” Marriott said.
The wit and wisdom of Thompson, a longtime instructor at BallenIsles Country Club in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida, typically elicits chuckles and nods of agreement.
“My schtick is that I want them to understand what it is, and it is not as complicated as everybody tells you it is,” said Thompson, whose students are predominantly adults. “It is a relatively simple idea. You hit a ball with a stick into a hole. We’ve made a mega industry on the complexities of the game. It’s hard but it’s not complex.”
A physical education graduate of UNC Greensboro with a sports psychology degree from Smith College, she relishes the three decades of summers she worked with the Golfari women’s program at Pine Needles Lodge and Golf Club in Southern Pines, North Carolina. Equally, she cherishes her time with the late Peggy Kirk Bell, who championed the program that Thompson calls “summer camp for adults.”
“I’ve known her all my life, but we were in different circles,” Thompson said of the late World Golf Hall of Famer. “She was in golf, and I was in farming. But I remember how absolutely impressed I was with her. She embraced me like I was a peer. That was her personality. She is a pedestal person.”
As she does anytime she’s teaching, Thompson stirs a unique blend of reality, humor, sarcasm and mechanics.
Thompson related a story of a very proper woman who took the teacher’s suggestion of finding a rhythmic mantra during the golf swing. A day later the student enthusiastically approached Thompson saying: “I found it. I never liked playing with my husband because he is always telling me what to do. Now, I’m just going to say: ‘Son … of … a … b****.’”
“It’s not much fun to be all uptight and angry and cranky while you are playing. You can do that at work.” – Annette Thompson
A further hint to Thompson’s approach to teaching golf is exemplified in her email address that includes the words stress, free and golf.
“Yes, the oxymoron,” she said. “It also comes from my experience in golf. It’s not much fun to be all uptight and angry and cranky while you are playing. You can do that at work.”
Thompson began honing her approach to teaching by observing a phys ed teacher at UNC Greensboro, the legendary Ellen Griffin, who was the LPGA’s national teacher of the year in 1962. The LPGA launched the Ellen Griffin Rolex Award three years after her death in 1986. It is the association’s highest honor for teaching, which Thompson won in 2002. In addition, Thompson is a member of the LPGA Professionals Hall of Fame (2006).
A coach at Penn State for 10 years, Thompson grew up in Jackson Springs, North Carolina, where she became captivated with the game as a high schooler practicing at Knollwood Fairways in Southern Pines.
“I grew up on a farm,” Thompson said. “I loved golf. I thought it was cool. I thought it looked fun. It has a nebulous quality, kind of like riding horses.”
She asked for golf clubs for Christmas and would practice at UNC Greensboro’s nine-hole course, where Griffin would watch the young pupil’s efforts.
When the frustrated novice golfer asked Griffin why she couldn’t hit a pure shot every time, the teacher responded: “My dear, that is the price that you pay to be able to enjoy sunsets.” Thompson uses that line to this day.
She admits she is not a particularly adept player (her lowest handicap index is 11), but she always wanted to be a teacher, following in the path of her mother, who taught English.
Thompson tried art as a first college major and then English in a doff of the cap to her mom. But she finished in physical education. She said Griffin was instrumental in that decision.
The mentor helped Thompson overcome her feelings of inadequacy in golf skills by saying: “We want to know how you can help others do it.”
Before her time at Penn State (1971-80), Thompson coached at Vassar and Smith colleges. Marriott and Patti Butcher, both highly regarded golf teachers in national circles, were on the roster with Thompson as head coach.
She employed many of the sports psychology maxims that she learned from her wide network of contacts within the teaching business. She never met Texas teaching icon Harvey Penick but heard the tribal history stories from her friend and fellow teaching standard bearer Betsy Cullen, a three-time winner on the LPGA Tour.
Penick only reviewed Cullen’s grip, as did other prominent teachers like Jack Grout and Jack Lupton.
Thompson, herself, has been honored on national best-teaching lists on several occasions but the specifics are uncertain – “I have no idea,” she quipped. “I am old.”
She is humbled by those awards but would rather turn the conversation to her peer-to-peer interactions.
“One of the things I like to try to do is provide experiential information to young professionals in the game,” she said. “We sit around and chat about how to do things and what to expect and what to not be concerned about in your career and how to treat people who are learning.”
As an educator, she lives for the moments when she gets a call or a visit that regales her of success because of her teaching.
Thompson tries to play on the weekends at her home club, PGA National. She still prefers teaching over playing.
As an educator, she lives for the moments when she gets a call or a visit that regales her of success because of her teaching.
“The short answer is hundreds,” she said of tallying those moments. “The long answer is I don’t know.”
Her quips – walking down the range and sarcastically telling someone that their short-term success is only fleeting (“Don’t worry, it will go away”); extolling beginners (“They don’t have any bad habits,”); or ribbing those who are sure of themselves (“I get people who want to tell how to do it their way”) – are countless in number and priceless in value.
Makes you want to take a lesson from her, right?