Four years ago, when PGA Class A head professional Tim Frazier was interviewing a young woman for a job at his club, the familiarity of her name puzzled him.
But it all became very clear when Sabrina Bonanno met again with Frazier for her second interview and told the club professional that she had played at his Sycamore Hills Golf Club course in Fort Wayne, Indiana.
And when she was hired in 2020 as an assistant club professional at Sycamore Hills, Bonanno found that her journey had come full circle. Seven years earlier, she had first impressed her future boss during the 2013 U.S. Girls’ Junior, a prestigious USGA national championship hosted that year at his club.
“I remember the grit and never-give-up way Sabrina played during the Girls’ Junior,” said Frazier, now in his 26th year as a head professional. “When she told me she had played in that championship, I immediately knew who she was. It was a cool ‘aha’ moment.”
Bonanno was a largely unheralded junior from the Chicago area when she first set foot onto Sycamore Hills. As the championship progressed, college coaches looking for national-level juniors watched in the second round of match play as she defeated stroke-play medalist Bailey Tardy, a future LPGA tournament winner, 4 and 3.
That afternoon, Bonanno dispatched Maria Fassi, a future NCAA champion, LPGA Tour member and Mexican OIympian, 5 and 4, to move into the quarterfinals. Her march to the Girls’ Junior final ended on the 18th hole of her quarterfinal match against Megan Khang, a future LPGA Tour winner and four-time U.S. Solheim Cup player, who edged Bonanno, 1-up.
That performance changed Bonanno’s profile in junior golf, but she had already verbally committed to play college golf at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock. She upheld her commitment.
“I needed to find a full scholarship for college or I would not have been able to leave home,” said Bonanno, 29, who grew up in Norridge, Illinois. “They gave me that chance at Arkansas [Little Rock], and my coach, Bridgett Norwood, became like a second mom to me for all four years that I was there.”
Bonanno was the 2015 Sun Belt Conference freshman of the year and was a three-time all-SBC selection, graduating in 2018. She stayed in Little Rock to work on her master’s in business administration and volunteered as an assistant coach for one year before working as a College of Business graduate assistant the next year, earning her master’s degree in 2020.
Bonanno had big golf dreams as a junior. At age 3, she began hitting balls in a Chicago domed facility with her father. By 7, she started playing U.S. Kids Golf tournaments, qualifying for the U.S. Kids World Championship for five consecutive years.
But the bigger junior tournaments were not in the budget for her parents, Joe and Anna Bonanno, Italian immigrants who held full-time jobs. Joe works as a crane operator with a helicopter company in Chicago that delivers machinery on top of buildings. Anna is a warehouse manager.
“My parents are very humble, blue-collar people…. Our family trips were golf tournaments, not vacations.” — Sabrina Bonanno
“I played in Midwest tournaments, and my parents did the best they could to get me in what tournaments I could play,” Bonanno said. “I just tried to make sure that I shined wherever that was.”
She played golf at Indian Boundary Preserve, a public course in northwest Chicago. When her parents finished work, one of them would drive her to the course. She also got the earliest-possible tee times on Saturdays to play the packed course on a day when her parents were off work.
“My parents are very humble, blue-collar people,” Bonanno said. “I saw them struggle continuously to make sure I could play tournaments and that I had the best golf equipment. And our family trips were golf tournaments, not vacations.”
Bonanno brought her family work ethic with her to college in her first extended time away from home. That same get-it-done attitude followed her to her first job with Frazier at Sycamore Hills.
“When she got here, she said, ‘Tell me what I need to know, and don’t sugarcoat it,’” Frazier said. “In all my years and with all of my assistant golf professionals, she is probably the one who has paid the most attention to the details of everything I say. She’s just a sponge.”
“She told me early on she wanted to learn how to teach and how to make an impact on our members and their golf games.” — Tim Frazier, Sycamore Hills Golf Club PGA professional
Frazier suggested that she ramp up the club’s programs for women and juniors, so she went to work creating events and inviting golfers to participate. Her junior program now ranges from age 3 to high school. After implementing a Ladies’ Invitational tournament and women’s clinics with golf fashion shows, she now has a steady group of 25-40 women participating at a championship-level club that offers only golf.
Bonanno also began observing how Frazier taught golf lessons and peppered him with questions, eventually instructing players in her programs. She now teaches 10-15 lessons a week.
“She told me early on she wanted to learn how to teach and how to make an impact on our members and their golf games,” Frazier said. “She worked hard to gain their trust, and now both of the programs she runs are as healthy as they have been in a long time.”
A year ago, there was a vacancy for Frazier’s lead assistant at the club. Bonanno wanted that job, but at the time, she was an associate PGA member. Frazier reminded her that only a Class A PGA member could become his lead assistant.
He challenged her to earn her Class A PGA status while continuing her daily responsibilities. And to win the endorsement of the rest of the club’s staff, Frazier groomed the young pro’s leadership skills and gave her a copy of Dale Carnegie’s “How To Win Friends and Influence People.”
It worked. By June, Bonanno was a Class A PGA professional and was named as the club’s first female lead assistant. And with her newly attained Class A status, Bonanno was encouraged by Frazier to compete in the Indiana PGA Professional Championship in August.
“I had only played three 18-hole rounds in August leading up to the championship, but my head professional encouraged me to play and said it would be a great experience,” she said. “We carpooled to the championship, and I told him I had no expectations.”
That 36-hole event at Woodland Country Club in Carmel would become yet another first for Bonanno, who was one of two female professionals in the field playing the course at 85 percent of the yardage as their male counterparts.
Bonanno was steady on the first day but rallied from four shots back in the final round to birdie her last hole in regulation and move into a three-way playoff. One player was eliminated on the first extra hole, so Bonanno and the other remaining player advanced to the second extra hole. Both scored pars, setting up the third extra hole on the 18th, with a gallery pressed around the green.
“I was very nervous, and I was ready for it to be over,” Bonanno said.
Her fellow competitor hit his tee shot out of bounds. Bonanno smoothed her drive down the 18th fairway, hit the green in regulation and two-putted for par. It was finally over, and she had just become the first woman to win the Indiana Section PGA title.
“I’ve had 24 assistant golf professionals, but she’s the first female lead assistant at Sycamore Hills, the first assistant to win the section championship and now she’s going to represent Indiana in the National PGA Professional Championship next April,” Frazier said. “Sabrina is all about the firsts and the steps she has taken makes me really proud.”
When pressed for her reaction about the historic win, Bonanno said her victory “is probably one of the top things I think I will ever achieve,” but added that after the short celebration and drive home, she returned to work the next day for a 12-hour shift.
“It happened at the right time in my career when I’m finally finding what I want to do, and it’s my first year as a Class A PGA professional, which means volumes to me,” she said. “It also was fun to have that experience with my head golf professional, because he is my mentor.”
But the milestone was meaningful for reasons far beyond bragging rights for Bonanno. She described the experience in Italian to her grandmother and celebrated the group effort with her tight-knit family. Admittedly, she had come a long way from her inaugural visit to Sycamore Hills.
“It means a lot to have my parents see how all the hard work we did paid off,” she said. “And how I have made golf my career – not as a professional golfer, but as a golf professional.”