The Hobbyist #5: An Interview with Golf Professional Liz Breed
The icon also known as Shank Haney talks social media superstardom, not reading the classics, and more
Graphic design courtesy of Thomas Euyang
There is no feeling on this Earth quite like a perfectly struck golf shot. It could be a tee shot with a driver, an approach shot from 60 yards out with a wedge, or a 5-iron on a par 5 that leaves you the perfect distance for your third shot. There is something that happens to the chemicals in your brain when the club makes contact with ball in just the right way, in the center of the face, that is spiritual and eternal and objectively good.
Because things can’t exist without their opposite also existing to help define them (I took a philosophy class once), it must be true that there is no feeling worse than hitting a bad golf shot. Not just a mishit or a chunk or a hosel rocket, but something so stinky it makes you embarrassed and ashamed and introduces an idea in your head: “Maybe this golf thing isn’t for me.” Everyone has that feeling. It happens more than you would expect. It’s, perversely, what makes golf so great; the highs are in the fucking galaxy, the lows are beneath whatever conception of hell you fancy. The rest of the time you’re walking with nothing but your thoughts. A true test.
All this to say: I called up my golf coach, golfing professional and former professional golfer Liz Breed to discuss what she does when she’s not teaching recreational golfers how to suck less; pioneering her own series of golf trips, the Shank Safari!; or brand ambassador-ing for on of the best golf clothing brands in the biz, Manors.
Liz, who is quite popular on Instagram under the name Shank Haney, is an amazing coach. Her appeal lies in both synthesizing complex concepts in simple ways, and, on a more personal level, getting her students to suck less through a combination of affirmations, stirring rebukes, and a dash of razzle dazzle. She will tell you you suck to your face, but she will also jump for joy when you perfectly execute the thing she asks you to do — the thing that will make you a better golfer. Read on to find out how New York City’s best teacher (I said it!) winds down after a day of fixing some truly hideous golf swings.
I know you golfed at the University of Kentucky. Are you from there?
Liz Breed: No, I just went to school there. I’m actually from PA originally. I’m from the Gettysburg area of Pennsylvania. Like all annoying teenagers, I was like, ‘I want to go to school far away from here.’ I started getting recruited by schools and I was choosing between Michigan State, Kentucky, and South Carolina. I picked Kentucky because there was a home basketball game during my official visit and John Wall and DeMarcus Cousins were on the team. I was like, ‘Oh yeah, I’m going here.’
When did you realize that you were extremely good at golf? Not just like, ‘this is fun for me,’ but that you could do it at a higher level?
LB: This is a cringe story, but I was in seventh grade and there was one of those “what do you want to be when you grow up” kind of prompts. I was already prioritizing professional golf over everything else. The context is obviously so different for a kid. Every kid has these big dreams, and they should dream these things, but kids dream of doing everything — no matter how unrealistic. It’s funny that my little pea size brain was already down this funnel of like, ‘I'm going to play professional golf.’ It also helps that I started competing outside of my immediate friend group or little bubble when I was young. I realized, ‘Oh shit, I’m beating people that live in other states. I’m beating people regionally.’ It just grows from there.
Did someone bring you to the game or did you just pick it up after school one day?
LB: I’m not quite a nepo baby, but I grew up in golf. There is professional golf and then there are people who are golf professionals. So there’s playing golf, which is the PGA and LPGA tour. My dad was a golf professional. He ran a golf course in a holler town of West Virginia at this golf course called Tiger Lake. You could show up in jean shorts and it was very chill. When my older siblings were born, they had golf clubs in their hands when they were really little. When my parents moved to PA, I was born and I had a club in my hand since I was like three years old.
After you graduated from Kentucky, how long do you pursue professional golf for?
LB: I graduated in the winter of 2014, turned pro in the spring of 2015, and I played full-time until 2018. My last full year was 2018, and then I started teaching right after that.
Where did you start teaching?
LB: The teaching thing kind of fell into my lap. I was always around golf, even after my playing career was over. I actually worked for a club manufacturer for a little bit, but I was doing account management for them. That was my full-time job, but there was always a little side hustle of teaching. I taught at the course that I grew up at, it’s called Waynesboro Country Club. It’s got country club in the name, but it’s very casual. It’s more country than club. I started teaching there in 2019. When COVID really started to change the world, I took a little bit of a break from teaching and then got back into it in 2021 when golf courses started to open again. Now, teaching is 95% of what I do, so it has grown organically over the years to be my full-time gig.
When did you realize that being a social media star was integral to building a career as a teacher?
LB: [Laughs] Oh God. One of my friends is a tattoo artist, and he was kind of saying the same thing. That’s how people see your body of work in certain aspects. My worst nightmare is having someone who lives in Scotland watch a video of mine and they take my video to their instructor because my drill fucked their swing up. Because of that, I try to make my teaching content be more universal, less about why you hit a hook, here’s how you fix a hook.
Teaching, in its rawest form, is individual. You can’t really standardize it. I fell into the social thing a little bit. A pivotal moment for my social career was when a friend of mine got picked up for a series from Skratch [ed. note — shoutout Connor Laubenstein AKA The Bag Bandit!]. I also taught him lessons. When his series got picked up, he was like, ‘What could be a really enticing part of the series is that you teach and people can see your methodology and things like that.’ After that, there was just a huge bump on my platforms.
Most of my content is just posting up in my lessons and wearing a microphone and letting the tape run. It’s such a balancing act. The Lady of Justice scales can get really funky.
Your Shank Safari events are selling out. Tell me about them.
LB: The Shank Safari is a golf training trip where you go with a small group of other golfers. You can sign up individually or in pairs. You’re a team for the week. We live together, we cook our meals together, we practice together. The first two days are full days of training, and then the final day is a tournament round.
It’s my dream.
LB: It’s so cool. There are so many things that I took for granted in my playing career. So many things are as real as it gets, like having no fucking money and playing golf all the time and achieving some semblance of glory. Then there’s the deepest levels of self-hatred in the same minute. But one of the things that I really took for granted is that people who are really into golf or people that are really good low single digits, they have to fit golf around their lives. When you play golf full time, that’s such a luxury — you just focus on golf. Sometimes it can be a fucking nightmare, but whatever. For the sake of the Shank Safari elevator pitch, it’s great. It just gives people who really love golf a chance to focus on golf for three straight days. Their meals, their transportation, their housing, what they’re going to wear—it’s taken care of. These are the training trips that I would go on for every single event I would play in. I would structure my week just like this.
It’s the closest that any of these people will ever get to tournament golf. Since your entire life is suffocated by golf, what do you do when you don't want to think about golf?
LB: Okay, I’ve been thinking about this. I’ve come to the conclusion that I don't have any hobbies. I have interests.
Luckily, we can make that work.
LB: To me, a hobby is something that you pursue. Maybe you put some money down for it. It’s not just a headspace. There’s a physical thing that you do. When you’re asking me how I unwind, it’s all just interests that I have.
I feel pretty close to being an expert in golf, truly. I think that my knowledge is really deep. I know a lot about equipment, technique, and training. I know how to practice. I know how to play. I know so many things about golf and I love that. In my personal life, I love the idea of knowing a little bit about a lot of really stupid shit. That’s the best way to describe my non golfing life.
I’m on Reddits about Castlevania and the video games. I am on the deepest web of the internet trying to get to the bottom of why so many planes are crashing right now. I like being pulled in so many different directions. I love teaching golf, don’t get me wrong, but it’s a one-on-one relationship with every person you teach. You’re almost serving as somebody’s therapist, in addition to hopefully helping their golf game. Even if I only have two or three lessons a day, there is not one second of downtime in that hour or 90 minutes that I’m with a student.
You may feel differently, but I would like lessons to be five hours long and cost half as much.
LB: It’s expensive! Pursuing golf is a really expensive sport. Again, the socioeconomic history of golf is just so…it’s a sport built on exclusivity. Even though golf is as accessible as it is now, there are still so many barriers to it. I try to give people my undivided, expensive attention for an hour. When I’m doing things outside of work, I need them to be mind-numbing. One of my failed hobbies this year was wanting to read a lot. So I made a list of different books. There was some Kurt Vonnegut, there was The Jungle. I got through Slaughterhouse-Five, and I was like, ‘Hey, this is really intense. I don't know if I can do this.’ Then I started to read The Jungle. I’ve been about 50 pages in since January 15.
[Laughs] It’s not very mind numbing to read literature.
LB: Nope! I need my hobbies to be the perfect level of scratching that itch in my brain. Everything just feels heavy and intense. Living in New York is basically like living in Gotham, so you want your downtime to sometimes be as silly as possible.
As very down as possible. Do you watch a lot of tv?
LB: I do. And movies. I have been getting into horror films—some good, some silly. I watched Heart Eyes the other night. It’s funny, it’s silly, it’s gory. It’s a movie.
So you get home from your long days of teaching golf and you just want to see blood on the TV screen.
LB: But in a dumb way. Dumb blood, not real blood. I’m not going to watch somebody get shot. I’m going to watch somebody’s arm get chopped off, and then blood is coming out at 75 miles an hour. That’s what I need.
One more golf question just popped in my head. How do you maintain your own competitive relationship with the game as someone that teaches full time?
LB: It’s conditioned learning. That will never go away. This has also bled a lot into my teaching. Bled? See what I did there!
I’ll never teach somebody who wants to play golf for fun. I’ll never be able to. I always want to push people to enjoy the competitive growth of golf. An intrinsic character trait of mine is that I am really competitive with golf. I lift, but I don’t care to necessarily get a whole lot stronger. I like where I am now in my fitness life. I love wine. I like increasing my knowledge of wine to a certain extent, but I don’t really care to know everything about it. When it comes to golf, I am insanely driven, insanely competitive. I want to beat all of my friends.
I relate a little too much to that idea of you not wanting to teach someone for fun. When I do something that’s bad, you tell me I suck. I hate it, but it’s important.
LB: That’s what I’m telling you. There’s never going to be a world in which I teach somebody who is just playing recreational golf for fun. Sometimes you really do need somebody to say, “Stop doing that, you fucking idiot.”
I think that’s important for every aspect of your life.
LB: It comes from a place of love and it’s a lot more caring. I like when people are coming at me in a direct way because it means they care about me.