Skillest is Reimagining Golf Instruction

“That’s greeaaattt,” the instructor says with his head buried a golf magazine. Not looking up at the woman he’s supposedly coaching, he drones on without an ounce of enthusiasm or interest: “Very good. Bend those knees. Remember now, it’s all in the hips. You’re doing great. It’s all in the hips.”

Further down the range, a “golfer” in an unbuttoned plaid shirt and work boots making $50 bets with excited and astonished onlookers he can hit it over the highway is the only thing that piques Chubbs Peterson’s attention as his student flounders in her attempts to swing a club, potentially for the first time.

While this scene from Happy Gilmore is an exaggeration of golf instruction for comedic purposes, it does highlight methods of coaching where instructors set up shop at their local range or course for a number of hours to work with students at an infrequent cadence.

“The industry has been built for golf coaches to be able to lean up against a pole and do their nine hours of golf coaching in the one location where everyone goes to them,” said Baden Schaff, Skillest co-founder and director of instruction. “It’s convenient for them and then they get to go home. Most of them don’t record it, they don’t follow up, they don’t check out what’s going on afterwards, and that’s great for them because they can do their eight or nine hours, go home and not have any homework. 

“That’s not built for the student. What’s built for the student is a highly customized experience. … What we’ve done is completely flipped the model.”

Built “Fore” the Student

Born and raised in Melbourne, Schaff moved to Australia’s Gold Coast in his early 20s to pursue his passion of becoming a PGA teaching professional under the tutelage of Gary Edwin.

Armed with the experience and knowledge from one of Australia’s most influential golf coaches, Schaff traveled the world, teaching in London, Singapore and the United States before returning to Australia.

It was during his own experiences as a teaching pro, as well as watching his mentor, when Schaff realized a few things: people would go out of their way for good instruction/insight (he’s even seen Edwin review VHS tapes mailed from the Netherlands), a specific instructor isn’t necessarily compatible with every student and many instructors are “landlocked” by their location, offering limited options for both instructor and student.

Looking to shake up the status quo, Schaff and Alan Gao, an app developer he taught, launched Skillest in 2017.

“(Golf instruction) is as much about swing analysis as it is about the relationship between coach and student,” Schaff said. “Learning golf is so bloody hard. If you don’t have a mentor checking in on you, it’s really quite difficult.”

Rather than being limited to whoever is employed at your local range, course or indoor facility, Skillest offers users the ability to seek personalized instruction from 500 professional coaches around the world, including Sean Foley, Cameron McCormick, Dan Grieve and Grant Field.

After downloading the app and filling out a questionnaire, users are paired with a recommended coach who best fits their swing struggles and golf aspirations. As part of the discovery process, users are also able to view sample lessons and communicate with potential coaches before committing to a lesson. The objective is to find the perfect fit, based on communication style and teaching methods, location and time zone, lesson/subscription cost or even a specific facet of the game such as short game and putting.

“We have plenty of coaches at different price ranges,” Skillest CEO Brian Park said. “If you can only afford $30 per lesson, we have that. If you want a subscription that’s under $100 for unlimited access, we have that. If you want to get a bucket-list experience with one of the best coaches in the world, we have that, too.”

Online Versus In-Person

Not only does Skillest provide users with personalized coaching options around the world but the actual instruction is more efficient, more frequent and more cost-effective compared to in-person coaching.

Say, for example, an amateur looking to improve their game books an hour-long block with a teaching pro. The clock starts when they show up to the range, course or simulator. First, they stretch and warm up. Maybe the instructor needs another coffee. Then they chit-chat.

“Can you believe what happened at the Masters?” 

“Nice headcover. Where’d you get it?”

Fifteen minutes in, your actual lesson finally begins. More times than not, you’re rehashing what you went over last time and why it didn’t stick. Eventually, as time comes to a close, you’re given your homework to focus on between your next lesson.

On the other hand, online lessons via Skillest involve sharing a recorded video of your swing or whatever aspect of your game you’re working on with your coach who watches, analyzes and sends back a message or video explaining what you’re doing properly and what needs to be worked on.

Rather than waiting a week or month for your next lesson, you’re able to communicate with your coach in a day or so and repeat the process as frequently as your lesson plan or subscription permits as you make changes to your game more effectively and efficiently. 

“(Coaches) spend a quarter of the time and you get the majority of the same benefits (as in-person lessons) so they can pass on those savings to the customer,” Park said. “Would you rather have five 10-minute lessons with a coach or one 50-minute lesson?”

Not only do Schaff and Skillest believe shorter, more frequent lessons are more beneficial than the traditional weekly in-person session but they’re leveraging technology to make communication and analysis even more effective and seamless.

Users are able to revisit prior lessons via the app and can message their coach any time through the Skillest platform. Taking the user experience one step further, Skillest recently announced a partnership with Arccos Golf, the official game tracker of the PGA Tour. Through their API integration with Arccos, Skillest users will have their rounds, strokes gained and smart club data immediately uploaded to their coaches’ Skillest account for even further analysis. 

“We want to embrace technology in a way to make instruction better,” said Park, a Silicon Valley vet with 25 years of experience building and running consumer internet services. “When Trackman first came out, people worried if it would be the end of the coach because golfers could self diagnose but too many numbers can confuse people even more.

“Technology, when developed correctly, makes things easier for coaching. Our goal is to make it as easy for the student and coach to share information with each other.”

With golf more popular than ever, Skillest believes it is positioned to help make instruction a breeze.

More than one-third of the U.S. population (123 million) over the age of five played golf, followed it on TV/online, read about the game or listened to a golf-related podcast in 2023. The U.S. golf instruction industry was an estimated $1-billion enterprise as of 2019.

To help support the game’s next generation, Skillest recently announced a partnership with Steph Curry’s Underrated Golf Tour. Skillest will provide every junior golfer on the purpose-driven tour providing opportunities to underserved and overlooked golfers with a dedicated online Skillest coach, courses and content from top-tier instructors, as well as access to tools and features on the apps to perfect their games.

“It’s never been a better time to be a golf coach,” Schaff said, “and it’s never been a better time to be a student.”