This summer, the Bennett family experienced the PGA of America from opposite ends of a career.
At PGA Frisco, Anna Bennett, a University of South Carolina student, spent eight weeks working as a Member and Amateur Championships intern. She helped with the behind-the-scenes operation of the 2026 Junior PGA Championships, part of a 13-person intern class trusted with assignments across the Association.
Her father, David Bennett, reached a different milestone. He became the 487th PGA Member to earn PGA Master Professional status, the Association’s highest educational designation. Bennett completed the program in Executive Management, adding the credential after more than 30 years in golf and two decades as a PGA Professional.
The timing made for a fitting family snapshot. One Bennett was learning how the PGA works. The other had reached the top of its educational ladder.
It also captured something larger about David Bennett’s career. He has moved through golf as a player, teacher, head professional, club executive, resort operator and entrepreneur, but he has never treated experience as permission to stop learning.
“I decided that if I’m going to do this, I’m going to try to take it to the highest level that I can possibly achieve within the PGA of America,” Bennett told Athlon Sports. “It was just kind of a desire to try to be the best.”
Master Professional status would make a tidy final chapter. Bennett sees it as preparation for the next one.
PGA Professional Profile
David Bennett’s Career Snapshot
487th
PGA Member to earn Master Professional status
Executive
Management
His Master Professional designation
2005
Year Bennett became a PGA Professional
2
Vermont Amateur titles, in 2000 and 2001
2021
Vermont PGA Championship victory
UNF Hall
of Fame
Inducted individually in 2011 and with the 1999-2000 team in 2017
A Golf Career Born From a Skiing Injury
Bennett did not grow up charting a path through junior golf. He was a downhill ski racer until a knee injury forced him to reconsider his athletic future. He did not begin playing golf until age 18.
The late start did not hold him back for long.
Bennett reached NCAA Division I golf at the University of North Florida, was named honorable mention on the 2000 PING All-America team and became an All-America Scholar. He won the Vermont Amateur in consecutive years, 2000 and 2001, and later captured the 2021 Vermont PGA Championship with two under-par rounds. UNF inducted him into its Athletic Hall of Fame individually in 2011, then enshrined the 1999-2000 men’s golf team in 2017.
Competition remained part of Bennett’s professional identity even as his responsibilities moved far beyond the first tee. He believes PGA Professionals who continue to play stay closer to the reasons their members and guests care about golf. Tournament travel also became an informal education in course setup, agronomy, playability and the small operational choices that separate memorable facilities from ordinary ones.
“By getting out and playing and competing, you’re showing people in your club that you do continue to care about the sport,” Bennett said. “You do continue to try to play and get better, just as they are themselves.”
That competitive background did not teach him everything he needed to lead a club. One of his most important lessons arrived far from a golf operation.
From 2010-11, Bennett worked as a residence manager at Capella Pedregal in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico. Capella Hotel Group was founded by Horst Schulze, the former Ritz-Carlton president and chief operating officer whose service systems became influential throughout luxury hospitality.
Bennett had assumed excellent service began with hiring naturally engaging people. In Mexico, he learned personality without process does not scale.
“I always thought that you just hire people with good personalities and therefore you’d get good hospitality,” he said. “But there has to be a system, and there has to be a clear approach behind the scenes of building preferences, acting on those preferences and being able to do that over the course of 300-plus employees.”
The lesson carried into every club that followed: warmth matters, but repeatable excellence has to be built.
Credit: David Bennett
When the Job Became Bigger Than the Scorecard
Bennett’s résumé includes startup work at Stowe Mountain Club, years leading the Country Club of Vermont and a central role in the launch and operation of Cabot Citrus Farms. His career has also contained the sort of crisis that tests whether leadership language holds up under pressure.
While managing Winchester Country Club in California, an application error killed all 18 greens, the practice green and the nursery. Bennett faced members at a town hall, explained what happened and kept communication flowing throughout the rebuild. The club did not lose a member during the closure, according to an industry account published after the recovery.
Still, Bennett does not define leadership by the crisis or the trophy case. He points to the people who worked beside him and the professionals he helped move forward.
“When I first started out, I thought, ‘OK, golf was about playing the game,’” Bennett said. “I quickly realized, ‘OK, it’s about helping people enjoy the game.’ And then you get into the business side of the game, making sure it’s sustainable.”
Eventually, he said, the job comes back to people.
“If you take care of those people and you lead by example, the rest of those things fall into place.”
That belief helps explain why the Master Professional designation mattered at this stage. The program requires at least 10 years of PGA Membership, advanced certification and an extensive project and presentation in a chosen career path. Bennett did not need another line on his résumé to prove he could run a golf operation. He wanted to model the same professional development he expects from the people around him.
He also emphasized that the achievement belonged to his family. The work required hundreds of additional hours on top of a profession already known for long days, nights and weekends.
In December 2025, Bennett and his wife, Amy, established Bennett Golf Group. The company was created initially so Bennett could consult exclusively with The Hill Club during development, before the club had an operating entity able to employ him as its chief operating officer. Bennett said the business may eventually extend beyond that role, including golf travel, but its first purpose is focused.
It exists to help build The Hill correctly before anyone keeps score there.
Building a Club Before Inheriting Its Habits
The Hill Club at Gold Dust Farms is a development-stage private golf project in Brooksville, Florida, and the physical home of The Hill Golf Society. Tom Doak and Blake Conant are co-designing the course.
The Society’s public manifesto rejects the idea of another transactional destination. It describes the course as the “temple, not the product,” prioritizes the ground game and presents membership as a network that extends beyond the property.
Bennett describes the planned facility in more practical terms: a private match-play club, pure golf and limited on-site lodging for members.
“What we’re trying to do is create something that will stand the test of time,” he said. “To do that, you’ve got to create something that people enjoy to play every day.”
The opportunity fits a pattern. Bennett has repeatedly been drawn to properties where the operating culture was still wet cement. Stowe Mountain Club, Cabot Citrus Farms and now The Hill required decisions that would not reveal their full consequences for years.
That is what excites him.
His responsibility is to take what he has learned across competition, hospitality, agronomy, club governance and resort operations, then look three to five years ahead. The question is not simply whether a choice works during construction. It is whether members and employees will still benefit from it after opening-week energy fades.
The Hill’s development schedule has not been publicly fixed. Bennett’s larger ambition is clearer. He wants the club to be a place where golf can test fresh ideas without discarding everything tradition got right.
Development Vision
What Bennett Is Building at The Hill
1Brooksville, Florida: The Hill Club at Gold Dust Farms is planned as the Society’s physical home.
2Design: Tom Doak and Blake Conant are co-designing the golf course.
3Format: Bennett describes a private match-play club centered on repeatable, everyday golf.
4Experience: Pure golf, a strong ground game and limited on-site lodging intended for members.
Making Room for the Blue Blazer and the Team Jersey
Bennett sees the next decade bringing a collision between two golf cultures.
Traditional private clubs still matter. So does a generation of 15- to 25-year-olds who discovered the game through YouTube personalities, social media and entertainment-driven golf. They may have different expectations about dress codes, music, the number of holes they play, when they play and how much social life belongs on the course.
“They’re consuming golf in a different way,” Bennett said. “They look at golf differently than the traditional country club person.”
He does not consider that difference a threat. He sees a leadership assignment for PGA Professionals.
“We need to figure out how to bridge the gap between that generation and the traditional country club generation,” he said.
That bridge cannot be built from an office. Bennett believes PGA Professionals must remain visible and present, watching how golfers actually use a facility and understanding the expectations they bring with them. A private club can define its culture through membership. A public facility has to interpret a wider range of backgrounds and behaviors every day.
Bennett believes his age and experience allow him to understand both sides. The Hill Golf Society, if it develops as envisioned, can become his proving ground for a model that protects respect, etiquette and the golf itself without insisting that every golfer experience it identically.
His favorite picture of that future is not architectural. It is a bar after the round.
Bennett on Golf’s Next Chapter
“Honestly, I could care less if you go in and see one person wearing a blue blazer at the bar and the next person wearing a team jersey. As long as people are respectful of each other and don’t interfere with each other, we can all enjoy the game in our own way.”
David Bennett, PGA Master Professional
Bennett has spent more than 30 years learning how golf works. His next chapter is about deciding how much of it must change.
PGA of America Golf Professional Brendon Elliott is an award-winning coach and golf writer who serves as Athlon Sports Senior Golf Writer. Read his recent “The Starter” on R.org, where he is their Lead Golf Writer. To stay updated on all of his latest work, sign up for his newsletter or visit his MuckRack Profile.
