The accomplishments of longtime PGA professional Joe Assell qualify him for induction as both an administrator and a teacher. A leader in the Colorado and national golf communities, he rates among the most influential of the more than 28,000 PGA-member professionals in the country.
The PGA of America’s 2021 National Golf Executive of the Year, Assell co-founded Colorado-based GOLFTEC. As its president and CEO, the company has become a trailblazer in golf instruction, club fittings and training systems.
The innovative company that began as an experiment in 1995 with a single training center at Cherry Hills Country Club has grown to more than 260 locations in 100 cities worldwide. OptiMotion, GOLFTEC’s proprietary swing-motion-capture technology system, utilizes high-speed, HD cameras to collect an unprecedented 4,000 datapoints for every swing. The data instantly allow a PGA instructor to analyze the findings and customize a plan that results in improvement at a 96 percent rate and by an average of seven shots.
To date, GOLFTEC has provided more than 18 million lessons or club fittings to golfers of every handicap and skill level. The company employs 1,200 golf professionals, making it the second- largest employer, behind Troon, of PGA professionals in the world.
GOLFTEC also recently purchased the SkyTrak launch monitor company to enhance its clients’ at-home practice and in-studio learning experiences, and this year GOLFTEC’s OptiMotion enriched the analysis of CBS broadcast of eight Signature PGA Tour events, including the PGA Championship and the Masters.
Assell has also been extensively involved in community service, both in and outside the golf world. His involvement includes serving on the National Golf Foundation Board of Directors; the PGA of America Innovation Fund Board of Directors; the Golf Industry DEI Leadership Team; the Colorado PGA Finance Committee; and as a PGA REACH National Trustee. He spent 15 years on the associate board of the Boys and Girls Clubs of Metro Denver and currently serves on the St. Mary’s Academy Advancement Committee.
Under his direction, GOLFTEC Cares donates more than $2 million annually to golf and community causes.
The Colorado Section PGA has recognized Assell with five different annual awards—the most recent being the 2020 Warren Smith Award for lifetime achievement. Ernst & Young named him its Entrepreneur of the Year for the Rocky Mountain Region in 2008, and his alma mater, Mississippi State University—where he was enrolled in the Professional Golf Management program—included him among the top 100 Business School graduates of the last 100 years.
