Golf Ambassador: Michelle Edgar

Michelle Edgar had a goal. The rising star in the PGA Professional ranks and an Assistant Pro at Royal Oaks Country Club in Dallas wanted to start her own business. She knew what she wanted to do but didn’t know how to handle all the logistics.

Edgar, 25, turned to The Indoor Golf Shop. Weeks later The Golf Suite was born.

The Golf Suite is a 24/7 indoor golf facility with a private bay, simulator and golf instruction in the Dallas area that has been open for a year. Members pay a monthly fee, then they’re eligible to book time at The Golf Suite whenever they wish. They can also book lessons with Edgar when she’s not busy working with Randy Smith and the team at Royal Oaks.

“I had an idea and I brought it to them,” Edgar said. “They said they could make it happen. They have so many options, different setups that I could choose from, simulators that I could choose from, they really helped me figure out what I needed. Everything I’ve learned is from them and their expertise and knowledge.”

A Foresight GCHawk launch monitor is mounted on the ceiling and there is a large hitting space where the ball can be tracked. Edgar says it’s an extremely user-friendly option and is easy for her members to operate whether they’re right- or left-handed. She trains them all on the system when they first join.

Edgar came to golf via an unconventional path. When she was just 9, her mother took her to TopGolf in Dallas and let her swing away. She was hooked immediately then started playing frequently at Tenison Park in Dallas and took lessons from Scott Akers, who is still there today.

It’s not lost on her that she started in the game by beating balls onto a grid and watching a monitor to see her results and now, 16 years later, she owns her own facility where people learn the game in a similar way.

Edgar, a former college player at the University of Texas at Dallas, has been a PGA Pro for three years now and completed the certification program in less than a year. Her coaching philosophy is simple: let people swing their own swing and don’t force anyone into a box. 

Although technology is a big part of her teaching, she does teach a lot of children where the main goal is to have fun and play games. If she has an adult beginner who comes to her, she doesn’t bother using technology there either. Traditional teaching methods will help more than trying to use a simulator to explain the angle of attack.

But Edgar knows that people, mostly, are visual learners so having videos and statistics to help make a point about how a student can improve is extremely valuable.

“It helps me and gives me an extra tool to explain what’s going on in the swing and how we can fix it,” she said.

That was always the mission for creating The Golf Suite.

“Having it be completely indoor is like having your own private little room,” she said. “You don’t have to worry about other people watching you at the range. We’re hitting balls on the simulator so you’re going to immediately get that feedback you would’ve get on the range. We don’t have to worry about the elements.

“It’s so great for growing the game. You’ll have people who don’t know that much about golf, but this provides them that access and the ability to practice whenever they have time. Maybe they don’t have time to practice during normal hours.”

Edgar has plans to grow her business but for now, just starting out in her young teaching career, she’s proud of what she’s already accomplished. She’s working full-time at a course that helped produce World No. 1 Scottie Scheffler and her entrepreneurial venture is going swimmingly after its first year.

While Edgar has put in a lot of overtime over the past few years, she remains quick to insist that The Indoor Golf Shop helped her vision come to life, simply saying, “The Golf Suite would not have happened without them.”