George Bennell
Pebble Beach, Calif. — The man behind the women’s game’s most provocative young star swing doesn’t play golf himself. He can’t anymore. Not with bad knees, droopy shoulders and flabby shoulders.
“Walking is hard, even for short distances,” says George Bennell. “I just don’t get enough oxygen in my body.”
Watching golf is less compelling, and Bennell, who turns 78 next month, has been doing a lot of that week, driving a buggy around Pebble Beach Golf Links in search of his star pupil Rose Chang.
Everyone seems to be watching Zhang these days, the bookmaker’s favorite title for the 2023 US Women’s Open, and a darling of reporters and spectators alike. Among the crowd at Pebble, her coach, in a buggy, drew less attention.
Despite this, he has long distinguished himself in junior golf circles.
For more than 30 years, starting decades before Zhang became his apprentice, Pinnell has been nurturing young talent into top competitors. Anthony Kim and Kevin Na both passed through his stable, as did LPGA Tour stalwart Mi Hyun Kim. At the junior, collegiate, and professional levels, Pinell players have more than 350 tournament wins.
If Pinell’s reputation hinges in part on those titles and the Trackman-directed insights he brings, it also rests on the hybrid role he plays as coach, a mix of whisper-swinger and real-time mentor.
Chang credits him with helping her find balance.
“George gave me great advice, not only in golf but in life as well,” she says.
In an age when the image of a first-rate golf instructor is a stern-looking man standing cross-armed and staring at rolled shades, Pinell cuts the image of a sage grandfather. He speaks from the perspective of a man whose life has never been so caught up in the scope. To his students, he preaches the gospel of good behavior—to do to others what you would like them to do—along with the primacy of the present. His advice often boils down to staying in the moment, without getting stuck in what was or what could be.
“A big part of it is managing expectations,” Bennell says. “When a golfer gets up in the morning, whether it’s an amateur or Tiger Woods or Lydia Ko or Rose Zhang, they have no idea how they’re going to play. So why bother thinking about what might happen? When people ask Rose what her predictions are going to an event, she will say She doesn’t really have any, and she’s mean. It’s something we talk about all the time.”
Unlike the vast majority of his students, Bennell came to golf relatively late. A multi-sport athlete who grew up in Iowa, played basketball and baseball in what was then Northeastern Missouri (now Truman State), but didn’t touch a club until his college weekend when he joined a friend from hoop for a local tournament. Addiction follows.
“Golf fascinated me because I was such a good athlete that I couldn’t play,” he says. “It disturbed and amazed me at the same time.”
Although he graduated with a degree in physical education, his first job after college was teaching driving, the start of a series of non-golf gigs. He worked as a policeman in Colorado, then as a salesman of communications equipment for a company that took him to Southern California.
“I was earning much higher than I thought my pay grade was,” Bennell says. “But I always had sports and training in the back of my mind.”
Before his 40th birthday, Pinell received an offer to coach as a professional golfer at a club in Fountain Hills, California. He took the job, then jumped through hoops to become a PGA Certified Professional. Teaching came naturally to him, as did technology, which was about to break through the industry. In 1994 Pinell became an early adapter for the V1 Video as an instruction aid. A little over a decade later, when the Trackman was used mostly for compositions and distance measurement, Pinnel began using the tool in his education.
“It’s kinda weird because I’m not a math guy or a computer guy,” he says. “I was born 42 years ago for this.”
Among Pinnell’s early students were Jay Choi and David Oh, future fellow All-Americans who would go on to compete on the Japanese PGA Tour. Other solid youngsters followed. Bennell’s name was coming out. Mi Hyun Kim benefited from the lessons, as did the rising star, Kristen Park.
“It just kind of snowballed,” Bennell says.
As far as technology goes, Bennell has also relied on his eye for a long time. With a few twists, he says, he can get a decent measure of player promise.
“I don’t know what it’s like inside of them right away, how badly they want it, how hard they work,” he says. “But the sportiness of this move tells me a lot.”
Nearly a decade ago, when 11-year-old Zhang first appeared on her range, she already possessed a smooth movement; Bennell knew in the blink of an eye that she was special.
He could talk for hours about the adjustments they’ve made since then, and the defining features of a hammock. But he is equally immersed about Zhang as a person, how she conducts herself in both the public and private sectors, the relationships she has forged, and the way she treats people.
“From the day I met her, there was a maturity in her that you don’t see very often at this age,” he says.
Their interactions have changed since I joined Stanford two years ago. They don’t work in person often, but Bennell tries to be handy in the big tournament she plays. He was at this year’s NCAA Championships, where Zhang won the singles title, but missed out on winning the Augusta Women’s National Amateur Championship.
“They don’t have a cart, so I can’t move around,” he says.
Years of basketball ruined his knees. His left shoulder was shattered from rotator cuff surgery, exacerbated by a fall, and he’s dealing with heart failure. It’s not hard to just walk. Traveling is stressful, though it doesn’t get in the way of work, given all the students who want to come to it. Well respected before Chang came along, Bennell benefited from the post-Rose boom, the only downside being that he couldn’t accommodate all the interests.
However, it is accessible. Get the main number of So. Cal Golf Academy and you’ll get a Pennell cell phone.
“I want to be able to help as many people as possible,” he says.
At this week’s Pebble, he’s there to help Zhang. Already, he had corrected a small problem with her grip. But otherwise he says, “Rose doesn’t need much hand-holding.”
There will come a time when he won’t be there for her, and even limited travel will become too much. People ask him about retirement.
“My response is always the same,” he says. “It will either be when my health fails me or they stop listening to me.”
He hopes this will be the first.
“I wouldn’t take it well if they stopped listening,” he says. “I like training very much.”