Nathalie Sheehan built no magical career ladder in her head before entering the golf industry. That doesn’t mean a college-age Sheehan, née Filler, wouldn’t be pinching herself at certain parts of her résumé.
Sheehan, the director of women’s golf at Pelican Golf Club in Belleair, Florida, spends her days largely giving lessons in person, but she’s recognizable to a much bigger audience through online instructional videos featured on GolfPass, a subscription service under the Golf Channel umbrella.
The second season of her latest GolfPass show, “The Next Shot,” premiered in September. Previous shows she has filmed with the company still run on Golf Channel. Sheehan, 30, also posts simple, easy-to-understand instruction tidbits on her Instagram page, @nattiegolf.
She has become a leading and increasingly visible female instructor, and that’s the part she might not have believed when she was on the roster at the University of Delaware, helping kickstart a fledgling program.
“I never had any huge goals,” Sheehan said. “I just have been somebody, I think, that works hard at whatever I’m doing and have been lucky to just have people who helped me a lot along the way. Hopefully I can continue to give back in that way to other people, but definitely would have never imagined that that would be me.”
Sheehan arrived at Delaware in 2012, shortly after the university started its women’s golf team. The Blue Hens were ranked near the bottom of women’s college golf, but before Sheehan had graduated, the team had played its way into the top 100, won a Colonial Athletic Association title and earned an NCAA regional bid.
“It goes back to seeing and being, that whole deal, and being able to see people in roles that you would want to be in, especially as a female.” – Nathalie Sheehan
Sheehan is from Hartford, Connecticut, and early in high school, she began taking lessons with Suzy Whaley, who later became the PGA of America’s first female president. Her relationship with Whaley continued into college, when Sheehan began helping Whaley with golf camps and clinics during the summers. Sheehan credits those summer gigs with opening the door to the world of teaching and coaching.
Whaley had a lot of influence in shaping Sheehan’s budding career, largely in the way she carried herself in a male-dominated industry. Whaley’s confidence and expertise was apparent, Sheehan noticed.
“I think that she just exuded a lot of confidence that you can do it, too, essentially,” Sheehan said. “It goes back to seeing and being, that whole deal, and being able to see people in roles that you would want to be in, especially as a female.”
When Sheehan first got to college, she envisioned a career for herself in fashion merchandising, but quickly realized it wasn’t for her. She switched her major briefly to English and then landed permanently on art history after one moving class she took with a teammate, who was studying to be a physical therapist.
“We were obsessed with this class – the professor was amazing – and we were like, You know what? Let’s just be art history majors,” Sheehan said.
The required memorization and writing skills suited Sheehan’s strengths, and that was important considering how much school she was missing for golf tournaments.
When interviewing at Philadelphia Cricket Club in 2016 for her first post-college job, which she landed, Sheehan was asked by an older teaching pro already on staff about how a degree in art history equipped her to be an effective golf instructor.
“I don’t even know where this came to me, but it makes a lot of sense to me now,” Sheehan said. “I said, ‘Well, basically, what you’re doing in art history is you’re looking at a piece of art or architecture or whatever and describing it and understanding the nuances of it and the origins of things and why something looks a certain way and the background of it. I think that’s very similar to teaching golf, where you’re observing and explaining and learning how to say things in different ways.”
That kind of perspective and charisma stood out to Jim Smith Jr., the director of golf and chief operating officer at Philadelphia Cricket Club, when he first met Sheehan. A mutual connection arranged for Sheehan to come to the course to play golf and meet some of the teaching staff.
“I knew I wanted to hire her before I asked her anything about instruction,” Smith said. “I think the main reason why she is a successful instructor is, she is a phenomenal human being. She’s smart, funny, thoughtful; she’s just a really good human being, with a really good heart.”
“We gave her a ton of rope and said, ‘Do what you want,’ and we just got constant positive feedback from every group that she touched – and that’s not common, frankly.” – Jim Smith
Smith gave Sheehan the freedom to come up with programming and deliver instruction in a way that suited her. It’s one of the aspects of that experience Sheehan treasured most.
The longer she was at the club, Smith said, the more players began flocking to her for lessons – male and female. Smith believes a big component to effective instruction is trust, and Sheehan cultivated that.
While at Philadelphia Cricket Club, Sheehan pitched and subsequently launched a PeeWee Golf Program designed to start 3- and 4-year-olds in the game. At first, Smith was skeptical because it targeted kids at a much younger age than previous programming.
It became one of the club’s most popular programs and still exists today, even after Sheehan has moved on.
“We gave her a ton of rope and said, ‘Do what you want,’ ” Smith said of Sheehan’s time there, “and we just got constant positive feedback from every group that she touched – and that’s not common, frankly.”
Now at Pelican Golf Club, a haven for women’s golf that annually hosts the LPGA’s Annika Driven by Gainbridge event, Sheehan finds her day-to-day routine still revolves largely around instruction. She once thought she might like to work with tour players but has found she’s most interested simply in being around the game and helping to invite more people into it.
“I’m doing more corporate-type things and helping men and women in the corporate space be able to be exposed to golf and use it in the business setting, which I think is super important,” she said. “Doing more of those types of things, and lucky enough that I’m in a place and a space that I can focus on more of what I like to do personally.”
Give her the space to do it, and anything seems possible in Sheehan’s hands.