• Job: Golf teaching professional, Alpharetta
• What I do: "Golf is supposed to be fun," said Willa D. Blasko, the teaching professional at Deer Valley Golf Range in Alpharetta. She boosts people's enjoyment of the game, giving them lessons and individual help.
Willa D. Blasko gives some golfing tips to student Mike Poynter at Deer Valley Golf Range. Blasko said it's important for her, as a teaching professional, to make sure she can practice what she preaches.
"When you hit it perfectly, you get goose bumps," she said. "That's a great feeling, when you hit a pure shot."
Blasko is certified as a teaching pro by the U.S. Golf Teachers Federation. She works as a contractor at the golf range, and her students range in age from 8 to 70 or older. Lesson packages include basic to advanced golf skills, and she teaches beginners as well as golfers looking to refresh their abilities.
"If [clients] get professional help, golf can be something they enjoy for the rest of their lives," Blasko said. "Instead of paying $40 for more balls, pay $40 and get a lesson."
Lessons can last an hour, or Blasko might offer a five-minute mini-lesson to a regular student practicing at the range who needs a quick pointer.
"It's up to them what I teach," said Blasko, 50, a 7-handicap golfer. "I teach them what they want to learn."
Many of her students are women who want to learn to play golf to enhance their careers.
"The goal is to make them the best players they can be — happy with their golf game," she said.
She also works with young people as golf instructor at Holy Redeemer Middle School in Alpharetta.
Blasko uses her time at the range to keep her skills sharp, practicing for up to two hours a day. "I have to keep my game where it should be to demonstrate [proper techniques] to students." Still, she said, she teaches more than she plays.
Asked if she'd like to be a tour professional, Blasko said, "Oh, yeah," adding that she'd have to try for the LPGA Legends Tour.
• What got me interested in this: When she was 8, Blasko had a "phenomenal" golf instructor, she said. "I wanted to help people feel the way I did when I was with him."
Blasko said she grew up beside a public golf course near Pittsburgh and began playing junior golf there. She said she started late as an instructor. She worked in public relations at a hospital in Pennsylvania, where she played golf regularly, before moving to Atlanta with her husband last year.
"It was the perfect time to make a change," she said.
Blasko
• Best part of my job: Seeing the grins on students' faces when they "hit the ball, and it does exactly what they want," Blasko said. "It's that look in a student's face that they can accomplish their goals."
• Most challenging part: "Trying to figure out how a person learns," she said. Some students learn better by seeing the technique demonstrated, some by feeling the club and swing, and others by learning the technical aspects of a swing.
Blasko works to build trust with her students and learns from them which parts of their golf games need the most work.
• What people don't know about my job: "Once you are a teaching pro, you can't just wait for people to come in," she said. Blasko said she has to market herself and her lessons.
"You have to pay attention to what you wear, your social skills have to be top-notch and you have to practice all the time," she said. "If you don't look like a pro, people won't take lessons from you."
• What keeps me going: "The challenge for myself is to get my game where it needs to be and to do the best job I can," she said.
• Preparation needed for this job: Getting certified as a golf teaching professional involves taking a weeklong course and a test administered by the USGTF. It includes knowing U.S. Golf Association rules, how to dissect a student's game and improve it, and how to teach a person to play golf.
You also have to be a pretty good golfer, Blasko said.
The USGTF is unlike the PGA and LPGA in that additional training is not offered in golf course management, tournament organization or pro shop merchandising.
"I wanted to be a teacher," Blasko said. "I didn't want to work in an office. . . . I wanted to be outside, teaching."
Besides public relations, Blasko also worked as an administrator at a hospital and taught at a health club. She has an associate's degree in computer science from a two-year college in Pennsylvania.
- By Karl W. Ritzler, for ajcjobs. Got an interesting job that you love? E-mail your story to jobseditor@ajc.com.