Those who are certified professionals of the Professional Golfers Association of America spend just about every day of every year helping people enjoy the game of golf. Their services are renowned and sought after, with most golf courses employing both a head and teaching professional.
Sabrina Bonanno serves in the latter capacity at Sahalee Country Club in Sammamish, Wash., a major championship layout where golf clubs become akin to scalpels as they launch balls skyward on wings and prayers that they do not snap left or right into the wooden abysses of Douglas fir, hemlock and red cedar trees that define the place’s mind-bending, narrow playing experience.
Put in fewer words, you’ll need excellent help to get that place down.
Bonanno teaches a variety of golfers, here giving a putting clinic for a group of women.
For your consideration, Sabrina’s the name and golf is her game. PGA certified since 2024, she has maintained a rather nice playing career that has seen her compete in the last three PGA Professional Championships. She also recorded a T9 finish at the Washington Open in May 2026.
A great player? Certainly. But in addition to that reputation, Sabrina has earned another as a trailblazer, as those and other championships feature fields that are predominantly male. In 2024, while employed at Sycamore Hills Golf Club in Indiana, Sabrina became the first woman to win the Indiana PGA Professional Championship.
And at the most recent iteration of that national tournament, held at Bandon Dunes Golf Resort in Oregon, Sabrina turned in another strong effort.
“I didn’t approach it any different,” she said of what went into her T31 finish at the 2026 PGA Professional Championship. “I just try to play my own game and go from there.”
It’s a game Sabrina has known and trusted for about three decades. Now 30, Sabrina is originally from the Chicago suburbs, where she first started playing at the age of three and made golf the only sport she played while growing up. After a bountiful junior career, Sabrina earned a spot on the University of Arkansas at Little Rock’s women’s team, where she earned multiple Sun Belt Conference awards and graduated with a marketing degree. Staying at that university, Sabrina completed a master’s degree in business administration in 2020.
But, of course, certain global events were disrupting the job market at the time.
Sabrina recalls in jest, “COVID hit when I graduated with my MBA, and no one was going to hire me for a marketing job.”
So, turning to the industry of the discipline she had known for years, Sabrina returned to the Midwest to work at Sycamore Hills, an upstanding and respected Jack Nicklaus-designed layout that has hosted its fair share of state and national amateur golf events.
While at Sycamore, Sabrina began and completed the necessary steps to become a PGA Professional, which included seminar classes at the PGA of America’s Frisco, Texas headquarters. There, she met Jack Whealdon – her would-be fiancé – before returning to Indiana.
Sabrina earned her PGA certification in 2024 and quickly found the community to be special. Whealdon became certified, too, and soon became head professional at the historic Tacoma Country and Golf Club, way out in the Pacific Northwest.
Beginning to consider a new adventure while making do her relationship with Whealdon a couple thousand miles apart, Sabrina spotted the sudden opening at Sahalee and emerged from the process with the position.
Recently engaged, Jack and Sabrina had some quality time together during the PGA Professional Championship at Bandon.
“Playing at Sahalee is such a privilege because you are tested from the tee to the middle of the fairway to the green,” Sabrina said, while also describing the necessary calibration to the Northwest’s softer, wetter conditions. “It’s just awesome.”
In just over one year as a teaching pro, Sabrina has seen and felt the level of enjoyment that can come from such a career.
“Every time I come to work, I get motivated by seeing a student of any talent see themselves get better each day,” she said. “Seeing them leave where they've got something to work on and something to achieve is very rewarding to me,”
She adds, referring to her status within the women’s game, “It’s something that I didn't realize how powerful it could be until I started to see the impact that myself and other female professionals have,” she said. “It's been fun to see how the wives or significant others of clients will go tell their partners about me, and it just grows into making the women in golf happy.”
As for her PGA-certified relationship with Jack, it continued to thrive once both were out West and on staff of two of Western Washington’s more storied golf courses. On a return trip to Frisco in November 2025, Sabrina answered in the affirmative to Jack proposing to her, at the very same place they had met. The cinematic moment of true love was shared across the PGA’s official social media channels, eliciting waves of congratulations throughout the golf world.
Whether by blood or the purest of water, the people in Sabrina’s life have maintained a level of importance as Sahalee’s teaching pro continues to thrive. Her calls to longtime Sycamore Hills Head Pro Tim Frazier are continually answered, as are supportive measures from her parents and even her very first swing coach in Chicago.
And while Sabrina settles in Sammamish, her goals revolve around keeping the symbiotic relationship between her teaching and playing side blossoming further.
“If I really shot for the stars, I'd love to qualify for the U.S. Women's Open,” she said. "But honestly, I prioritize work a lot because it's something that I find passion in. I feel like when I'm playing my best, it's because the work part of my life is also going really well, so it's rewarding for both factors.”
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