How Family, Coach K & a Dream Led Jason Baile to PGA Teacher & Coach of the Year

Editor's note: This story originally appeared in the Feb. 2025 issue of PGA Magazine . Through nature and nurture, some people know exactly what they’re going to do with their lives from a young age. Jason Baile, the 2025 PGA of America Teacher & Coach of the Year, is one of those people. As the son of two parents driven by a passion to teach – and as someone with his own innate desire to guide others – Baile saw his career path open before him at a young age. “I knew early on there was never going to be a ‘Jason Baile, lawyer,’ or ‘Jason Baile, doctor,’” says the 53-year-old PGA of America Director of Instruction at Jupiter Hills Club in Tequesta, Florida. “From my family dynamic and from my passions, I was never going to have a ‘real job’ where I sat in a cubicle or worked 9 to 5. It was always going to be something in the coaching world.” Coaching runs in the family Baile’s premonition was prescient, though his early dream of being “Jason Baile, college basketball coach” instead found fruition as “Jason Baile, PGA.” Golfers from the highest levels of the world’s professional tours to beginners at Jupiter Hills have benefited from Baile’s pursuit of coaching excellence, which began by watching his parents – and by coaching some unique matchups in his own backyard. Baile was born in Jacksonville, North Carolina, a town in the state’s eastern region where his father was an English teacher who coached high school football and basketball. His mom started a dance studio that grew to more than 600 students learning tap and ballet. Baile and his siblings – three brothers and a sister – were all influenced by growing up in a coaching household. His sister is now the director of the dance studio his mother started, and Baile’s two younger brothers are tennis professionals. As for Jason and his younger brothers, backyard football games were an instructive early entry into the world of athletics. After watching their father run football practices, Baile was inspired to start his own coaching journey. “On Saturday mornings I’d make my brothers dress up in full gear and play one-on-one football in the backyard as I coached both ‘teams,’’ Baile remembers fondly. “Granted, there’s not a lot of plays you can run when you only have one player on each team, but they’d be in full gear and I’d have a clipboard on the ‘sidelines’ and I had them play until one of them ran into the other one too hard and it was over. “It was always fun, and it’s funny now to think about it. But I still compare notes all the time with my brothers, my sister and my parents about coaching – whether it’s dance lessons or tennis lessons or golf lessons, or basketball and football practice. It’s special that we share this family dynamic.” A love for basketball leads to golf Baile was 8 when the basketball bug bit, and he made it his goal to become a top college basketball coach – after his own successful on-court career ended, of course. His “adequate to decent” high school basketball career came to a close after he blew out his knee during his junior season, though he still harbored dreams of walking on to a college basketball program. As a high school senior, Baile was looking for a way to stay active in athletics and considered playing baseball. Instead, he decided to go out for the golf team although he’d barely played the sport. He couldn’t break 95 at the season’s start, but was breaking 80 by the summer, and was hooked for life. Though his own basketball dreams were passing, the sport did help plant the seeds of how Baile would eventually approach coaching golf. After growing up a North Carolina fan during the height of Coach Dean Smith’s legendary run, Baile’s father took him to a Duke University practice run by the school’s then-new coach. “On the first day of practice, Oct. 15, Coach Mike Krzyzewski would run a clinic and allow high school coaches to bring a couple of players and then watch his team practice, and my dad brought me along,” Baile recalls. “At this point I knew I wasn’t going to play basketball at a high level, but I was just infatuated with the coaching aspect of it and watching Coach K run a practice.” At that point, Baile’s favorite basketball colors turned a different shade of blue. And he also had the inspiration that would eventually guide his golf coaching career. “To see the culture that was being created, to see how the coaches went about their business and got their ideas across to the players, I was struck by the dynamic – no egos, nobody on an island doing their own thing,” Baile says. “It’s really a lot of the stuff I’ve tried in building teams in my golf coaching career, where there’s a real team approach and everybody who walks through the door is going to get a quality golf lesson and experience because we’ve built a team culture.” Learning from the best of the best While attending school at East Carolina University and Greensboro College, Baile started his journey in the golf business working on the outside staff at area clubs and weighing the pros and cons of golf vs. basketball. “I needed to figure out what to do, and golf and basketball coaching looked a lot alike in some ways: The hours were going to be long, the money was going to be bad in the beginning, and I was going to have to move around a lot,” Baile says. “It seemed like golf professionals got fired a lot less than basketball coaches, so I decided I’d go the golf route, and I got lucky with some really great mentors who guided me along the path.” Baile credits renowned PGA of America Golf Professionals like Jon Tattersall and Phil Owenby as early influences that brought him along at facilities like Country Club of Landfall in North Carolina and Virginia’s Kinloch Golf Club, and during a stint as head professional at his home course, Jacksonville Country Club. Baile was elected to PGA of America Membership in 1999, and his biggest break came when he joined the staff at Georgia’s Sea Island Resort. “When I got the opportunity to go to Sea Island, that’s where I was really able to focus on coaching and learn from some of the best,” Baile says. “(2010 PGA Teacher & Coach of the Year) Todd Anderson, Gale Peterson, Mike Shannon and, of course, (1995 PGA Teacher & Coach of the Year) Jack Lumpkin … I mean, I felt like I was taking batting practice with the New York Yankees every day when I stepped onto the range.” Sea Island’s legendary staff embraced Baile, and in turn he set about adding to his coaching arsenal with golf fitness knowledge. He became an early proponent of TPI through Dr. Greg Rose and PGA of America Member Dave Phillips, and credits them and golf performance expert Lance Gill with giving him the tools to help golfers of all skill levels. “I feel like adding an understanding of how the body moves to my toolbox was a turning point in my career,” Baile says. “It was part of my maturation as a coach. I was always pretty good with how the club moved, but TPI and what people like Dave and Greg, and (2018 PGA Teacher & Coach of the Year) James Seickmann and (2020 PGA Teacher & Coach of the Year) Mark Blackburn taught me helped me identify some things I couldn’t do earlier in my career.” Building the dream at Jupiter Hills Armed with his experiences from Sea Island, Baile returned to the Carolinas PGA Section at Belfair in South Carolina, where he won the Section’s 2018 Teacher & Coach of the Year honors and built a thriving coaching business. During that time, he started working with a number of tour professionals, navigating the world of splitting time between lessons with club members and some of the game’s best players. The desire to work with both club players and tour professionals spurred Baile’s move to Jupiter Hills, where he found the time and resources to build a coaching team that included fitness professionals in an area close to where many tour players live year-round. He was named 2022 South Florida PGA Teacher & Coach of the Year, and immediately made an impact on the culture at Jupiter Hills. “My move to Jupiter Hills was a catalyst in the bigger things that have happened in my career because they let me dream, then allowed me to build my dream,” Baile says. “We’ve created an unbelievable culture, and they let me empower my staff to dream as a team and give us the leeway to explore how good we can make the experience for our members. “Most of our members have done big things in their careers, so they understand that letting us do the same thing creates the motivation to do big things for them.” Those big things at Jupiter Hills include bringing in Gill from TPI to help blend golf performance with instruction, and experts like longtime PGA TOUR player and putting guru Brad Faxon to work with members. Meanwhile, Baile works with his coaching staff on building their skills, while also taking time to travel to tour events and work with students like 2009 U.S. Open Champion Lucas Glover, Bud Cauley, Peter Uihlein, Hayden Buckley and Ryan Gerrard. And, like anyone with a lifelong fascination with coaching, Baile continues to seek out new ideas and perspectives. He listens to podcasts and reads in his spare time to spark inspiration, and enjoys networking with other PGA of America Coaches in his travels and at events. Now his goal is to keep learning and coaching, all while making time for his wife, Mollie, and his three daughters. “Winning PGA Teacher & Coach of the Year is a dream, but I’m just going to keep working hard and immersing myself in learning and getting better, and helping other PGA of America Coaches get better,” Baile says. “I’m fortunate to have been successful in this business, but I’m never going to relax or think I’m done with exploring. That’s what got me here in the first place, and I don’t want to sleep on that. And I’m still trying to figure out how to coach smarter, not harder, and that’s been a huge motivating factor over the past few years.” From coaching one-man football teams in an east North Carolina backyard to becoming 2025 PGA of America Teacher & Coach of the Year, Jason Baile is still looking for ways to make players – and himself – better every day.