PGA Tour rookie Michael Brennan's coach also teaches middle school math

PALM HARBOR, Fla. – PGA Tour rookie Michael Brennan has the only swing teacher among the pros who also teaches algebra to kids.

For the last decade, PGA professional Adam Harrell has doubled as a full-time math teacher – primarily sixth grade students – at Farmwell Station Middle School in Ashburn, Virginia, after spending six years teaching special education.

“Hitting a golf ball is not as important as learning to read,” Harrell said, “but it’s all intertwined in a way; teaching is teaching.”

Adam Harrell (right) has been teaching PGA Tour rookie Michael Brennan since age 12.

After school during weekdays and all day on Saturdays, he can be found coaching talented young golfers at 1757 Golf Club in Sterling, Virginia, where the 13-and-under and 17-and-under PGA Junior League teams each qualified for the national championships three years in a row. [Harrell doesn’t coach those teams but instructs several of the players.] Brennan, who won the 2025 Bank of Utah Championship in October and enters the week ranked No. 44 in the Official World Golf Ranking, began working with Harrell at age 12.

“It takes a certain type of person to be a middle school teacher,” Brennan said. “He’s patient and understanding and has a way of relaying information in a way that he doesn’t tell me but shows me the concept and we develop the feel together. I bet his teaching background helps with that a lot.”

Harrell, 51, began his career working at Burning Tree Club in Bethesda, Maryland, a famed retreat for U.S. presidents, politicians and officials. Charlie Briggs, the club’s longtime general manager, was impressed with Harrell’s hustle and work ethic and asked him one day shortly after he started on the job why he had wanted to get in the golf industry. To teach, Harrell answered. “I never really stated that to that point,” Harrell recalled.

Briggs arranged for a winter job working for esteemed teaching professional Jim McLean in Miami and that’s where he learned the skills that have made him a highly respected teacher of the swing in his own right.

“It really helped prepare me for this tremendously,” Harrell said. “I also never forgot that Jim made this statement in one of our staff meetings. He said, ‘Anyone can give a golf lesson, but to be truly a great instructor you have to develop players.’ I took that to mean I need to develop a kid and get them to the highest level.”

Enter Brennan, a native of Leesburg, Virginia, who was taught the game by his dad, a good player at River Creek Country Club, but who recognized that he had taken his son as far he could go. Seeking a golf coach to build on the solid foundation that he had laid, Harrell and Brennan’s father met at a local sandwich shop to discuss more than a lesson plan. Brennan’s father explained that he thought his son had the potential for greatness.

As swing coach for Michael Brennan, PGA pro Adam Harrell often caddied for Brennan during his junior and amateur career.

“He asked me a lot of poignant questions about my teaching philosophy, and I guess I said the right things because we started working together after that,” said Harrell, who also currently works with Alexa Pano, an LPGA pro, and Michael Meisel, a Korn Ferry Tour pro.

Brennan blossomed into a three-time Middle Atlantic Amateur champ (2017-19), the only player to win three in a row in the over 100-year history of the championship, and continued his success at Wake Forest, where he won eight times in college. Harrell recounted a time that convinced him that Brennan was headed for stardom. He was caddying for Brennan at the Virginia State Amateur and Brennan wanted to hit a gap wedge from 120 yards into the wind to a back flag at a par 3. Brennan’s shot landed on the green but it spun back, leaving a long birdie putt that he missed. Next hole, same yardage and Brennan pulled the same club. That’s when Harrell stepped in.

“I put the bag down,” Harrell recalled, “and I said, ‘Michael, would you like to learn how to play golf or not?’ He looked at me and said, “What do you mean?” I said, ‘I want you to hit a 122-yard shot with a pitching wedge, aim one yard left of the pin, hit it straight and if you hit your spot, it should spin back into the hole.’ So he takes the wedge, flights it a little lower and it lands behind the pin, one hop and spins back into the hole. I’m like, ‘Bam!’ So this kid takes direction very well.

“And in that singular moment, I’m like, ‘All right, we got a lot more growing to do but he’s on the path.’”

Michael Brennan poses with the trophy after winning the 2025 Bank of Utah Championship at Black Desert Resort.

Harrell helped develop Brennan’s swing to be both efficient and powerful, functional and aesthetically pleasing and a weapon that he can unleash at any time. “I’ve heard the commentators on TV say it looks like Adam Scott and I agree,” Harrell said before adding a caveat. “It’s Adam Scott with more power.”

Speed and power have always been goals that Harrell set for Brennan. When his clubhead speed was hovering around 105 miles per hour, he raised the bar, encouraging Brennan to reach 110 mph by the beginning of summer. Brennan achieved that goal by the first week in April.

“Since I was 12, he pushed being fast before it was a thing. He was ahead of the curve,” Brennan said. “Since I was in middle school I’ve been trying to swing fast. I was never the longest kid in junior golf but I’ve slowly gotten incrementally faster to where I’m fairly long. Adam always encouraged me to hit the ball as hard as I can.”

In his second season as a pro, Brennan dominated the 2025 PGA Tour Americas, recording three wins and topping the points list in the season-long Fortinet Cup Race, earning a pass to full-exempt status on the Korn Ferry Tour, a step he got to skip after cashing in on a sponsor exemption on the PGA Tour in Utah.

Brennan, who qualified for the Masters by being among the top 50 on the final OWGR at the end of 2025, averaged 351 yards off the tee and in one stretch hit 34 of 35 fairways at Black Desert Resort in Ivins, Utah, 100 miles up I-15 from Las Vegas, and thousands of miles from where Harrell helped shape his game. His 7.6 Strokes Gained: Off the Tee was the highest total on Tour last season. Brennan smashed one drive 411 yards at the par-4 12^th and made birdie en route to goingwire to wire to clinch his first PGA Tour win.

Harrell watched it all unfold at a party at Benjamins Tavern at River Creek CC, where 50-60 friends of Brennan’s packed around a TV. But his presence was still felt by Brennan, who noted that Harrell’s text message before the final round helped settle any nerves he may have been fighting.

“He said, ‘You don’t need to do anything special. Just go play Michael Brennan golf and that will be good enough,’” recalled Brennan. “That gave me all the confidence I needed that I could do it.”

This article originally appeared on Golfweek: PGA Tour rookie Michael Brennan’s coach teaches middle school math

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