Skip to content
Kip Puterbaugh and his sons, Jamie and Jason, make teaching golf a family affair at Kip's namesake Aviara Golf Academy in Carlsbad.
Kip Puterbaugh and his sons, Jamie and Jason, make teaching golf a family affair at Kip’s namesake Aviara Golf Academy in Carlsbad.

When asked what role golf plays in his family’s life, Kip Puterbaugh paused a few seconds before yelling out the question to one of his sons hitting balls in a bay at Aviara Golf Club in Carlsbad.

“Water, food, golf,” quipped Jamie Puterbaugh, one of two sons Kip teaches with at the Kip Puterbaugh Aviara Golf Academy. 

“Yep. It is a big part of our life,” Kip responded in what apparently qualifies as an understatement. “We never really planned on any of our sons teaching with me, but it’s pretty special that they do.”

In a sign that business and pleasure can mix, Kip, Jamie and Jason Puterbaugh are among the teachers at Aviara, where Kip has spent nearly 30 of his 44 years as a golf instructor. Along the way he has received several regional and national accolades that include being a fixture in Golf Magazine’s Top 100 Teachers list since it first appeared in 1996.

Even with those four-plus decades, not much has changed with Puterbaugh’s instructional ideas, with the emphasis remaining on stance, grip and posture.

“I don’t think any basic teaching philosophy has changed,” said Puterbaugh, who’ll turn 69 in August. “There are more ways to explain it, with videos getting better and easier access to everything, but it still comes down to the basics. I’ve modeled my teaching after what the great players do and pick out what they all have in common and pass that along to my students in a way they can understand.”

It’s the same for Jason and Jamie, both accomplished golfers in their own right before settling in with their dad at Aviara. Jason, 33, started instructing there in 2009 after seeing that the job market for schoolteachers was slim. Jamie, 32, joined the family business a few years later after spending a couple years in Singapore as an instructor there. Both played golf at Costa Canyon High and San Diego State, with Jamie winning the CIF boy’s golf crown twice and the San Diego City Amateur title four years in a row (2005-08).

“Golf runs in our blood, so it’s not a matter of being easier or harder,” Jamie said when asked about working with his father. “It’s more like we’re carbon copies, doing what we love to do and working alongside him.”

Jason also had a brief experience overseas, teaching golf in Spain. He had aspirations of playing professionally but realized that he needed to take a step back because he took his round’s outcomes too seriously. It’s a likely reason he relishes teaching youngsters and started youth clinics at Aviara.

“I really enjoy working with the kids,” he said. “They have such good energy and are basically blank slates and eager to learn. Working with them also fits into my philosophy of helping students understand the swing in the simplest way possible.”

Jamie, who also wanted to play professionally until several shoulder surgeries gave him second thoughts, adheres to the family’s philosophy of keeping things simple.

“A lot of the things that need to be worked on are static and have a pre-determination of what’s going to happen in your golf swing,” he said. “Because whether you have a weak grip or a strong grip, bad posture or good posture, every golfer wants to see something go up in the air and go straight. So, if you’re starting with a bad grip or bad posture and you’re tense as a board, you’re going to have to make a lot of compensations in the 1.4 seconds of the golf swing.”

How many more years, months, days, minutes or seconds Kip has left on the range appears to be a moving target. 

“I was going to slow down this year,” he said in early June. “But I keep turning it back. I’m down to four days now, so maybe three in 2017. But whatever I do, I know things will be in good hands.”