I’m coming up on my eighth year as the Director of Instruction for the Professional Golf Management (PGM) program at Florida Gulf Coast University, one of just 16 PGA-accredited programs in the country and the only one in Florida.
In this role, I am responsible for our player development initiatives and serve as an adjunct instructor for PGA Teaching and Coaching coursework.
Recently, we decided to launch a new special topics elective focused on advanced golf instructional technology to provide students with cutting-edge, practical coaching tools.
Integrating Onform into our curriculum has been incredibly successful and has served as a blueprint for fueling both player development and instructional programming.
Starting with Player Development
Our journey with Onform began with the fall 2025 semester. We implemented the platform to support our player development curriculum. Every student entering the FGCU PGM program is required to pass the PGA of America’s playing ability test, which is a 36-hole tournament of sorts with very specific scoring requirements.
Because of this rigorous benchmark, our faculty member Lia Biehl Lukkarinen and I sought out a professional-grade video analysis tool to use during private lessons and class instruction.
We launched the platform with our player development students, and I quickly realized just how robust and effective the software truly is.
Expanding to Advanced Instructional Technology
Following the success of using Onform in our private lessons, I integrated the platform into our new Advanced Golf Instructional Technology elective for the spring 2026 semester.
We provided 15 students with full coaching access, allowing them to utilize Onform for case studies and gain practical experience with the exact tools used by professional coaches.
In this class, students learned to conduct comprehensive swing assessments. We started with 2D video analysis of club motion and shaft plane, and subsequently moved to 3D kinematic sequencing to quantify body mechanics.
This 3D functionality is particularly useful when working with high-level players where measuring subtle, quantifiable movements is essential. To test their analytical skills, I required students to complete voiceover case studies.
The voiceovers are a highly valuable requirement because it forces students to articulate their knowledge and reasoning out loud and in real-time, preventing them from relying on AI-generated content.
We also leveraged Onform’s group folder functionality to centralize student work. Students uploaded their swing assessments and case studies to a shared space, making them visible to the entire class for peer review, collective analysis and the sharing of best practices.
Onform’s Permanent Place in Our Curriculum
The feedback on the Onform platform from our students has been outstanding. They appreciate the ease of onboarding and navigation, as well as the cross-platform compatibility on both iOS and Android.
Our students also appreciate the high-quality camera adjustability and the ability to export content so that data isn’t trapped within a proprietary system.
Due to this excellent reception, we made the decision to make our Advanced Golf Instructional Technology elective a permanent part of our program. We plan to integrate the Onform platform into all mandatory Level 1, 2 and 3 instructional courses. This will ensure a progressive, technology-based learning path as students advance through their tenure in the program.
We also offered the new Onform University Level 1 Certification for Golf to selected Special Topic students in the PEL course to complete this past spring. Next year, we will be promoting the course program-wide to help build the tangible skillsets of our PGM students and provide a meaningful certification that they can add to their resumes as young professionals.
As we enter the new fiscal year, we are upgrading the department to two Onform licenses for full 3D functionality on our iPads. While our PGM students complete a core golf operations track, a growing segment of our graduates are actively seeking careers in coaching, club fitting, and other niche areas of the industry.
Exposure to technology such as Onform is absolutely essential for all of our students, as modern golf facilities increasingly expect professionals to oversee sophisticated player development operations.
Author Bio: Mark Komives is a PGA Professional originally from Medina, Ohio. He has served at Florida Gulf Coast University since 2018 in the PGA Golf Management department. He currently works as the Director of Instruction for the PGM program at FGCU and as an adjunct instructor for PGA Teaching and Coaching coursework.