Branching Out: Wendy Modic
After 19 years as the lead assistant at Fenway Golf Club in Scarsdale, N.Y., Wendy Modic is moving on. She will succeed Kammy Maxfeldt as the head professional at Birchwood Country Club in Westport, Conn., although the position is not one she ever aspired to.
“The reality is, it’s more challenging to be a female head professional than it is to be a male just because it is what it is,” Modic says. “I always thought that I didn’t really want the headache. I love teaching. I love doing what I’m doing. I like being a No. 2.”
Modic always thought she’d retire from Fenway. But over the past couple of seasons, she started thinking about how long she wanted to teach. She was already doing many of the things a head pro does, and she liked doing them, especially the mentoring part, she says.
“And then, when I went to Kammy’s retirement party at Birchwood in October, I don't want to say I was shocked, but I was really taken aback and impressed by the support that she had in that room, and I thought to myself, ‘I wish I had actually applied for this position,’ but they had already started the process.”
Nevertheless, a PGA career services consultant convinced her to send in her résumé, and she’s glad she did.
“It’s a milestone to become a head professional,” she says. “Not everybody does it, and I’m honored and excited about it.”
Her accomplishments are many. She was the Metropolitan PGA Women’s Player of the Year four times and won the 2020 Met PGA’s Women’s Championship. But she’s best known as a top instructor. Golf Digest has included Modic on its Best Teachers in Every State list.
“I will still be teaching for certain,” she says. “Oftentimes the workload or the division that a golf professional faces is 70% administrative, maybe 30% teaching. I think this is almost a little bit of the opposite. I own the golf shop now, so this is definitely something new for me. That’s going to be the big difference.”
While two other women – Angela Aulenti at Sterling Farms Golf Course in Stamford, Conn., and Kelley Brooke at Bethpage State Park and Montauk Downs State Park Golf Course on Long Island – are head pros/directors of golf among MGA clubs, Modic is the only woman head pro at a private club. However, it’s nothing new to Birchwood members.
“That’s huge,” Modic says. “Kammy was there for 21 years, so that makes a difference for sure, but wish me luck.”
Something says that Modic isn’t going to need it.