MyTurn
by JIM DUCIBELLA
Larkin’s Ascent
Erika Larkin
has built a
loyal following
throughout the
country.
Y
ou could sift through all of Vir-
ginia’s PGA teaching profes-
sionals and not find a story as
unique as Erika Larkin’s. It helps
explain her distinction, promoted by Golf
Digest and selected in part by fellow Vir-
ginia pros, as the state’s No. 1 teacher in
2015-16, 2017-18 and again in 2019-20.
Larkin, whose maiden name is Zwetkow,
is the daughter of a Russian immigrant
from Venezuela who once was executive
chef to the Mellon family and Klaus and
Sonny von Bulow and is now a master dis-
tiller. Her mom, raised by a single parent,
hailed from Bridgeport, Conn. Golf was not
a family tradition.
Raised in Queens, young Erika’s vista
from her apartment roof included the
Empire State Building. She could walk
to LaGuardia Airport. Cool stuff for a
kid, right? Not so cool was the fact that
the family lived five subway stops from
something approaching a golf facility,
a pitch-and-putt in Flushing Meadows.
She was 8 when her parents first gave
golf a try and the three of them spent two
years pitching and putting before finding
a real course.
40
“It was fun that we did it together,” Lar-
kin said. “Golf was more special to me
because it wasn’t right in my backyard.”
She compensated for not receiving
instruction until her mid-teens by watching
videos and reading voraciously. She clipped
tips out of her dad’s magazines, stored them
away in plastic sleeves and binders and car-
ried them to the range to experiment.
“I was like an average consumer today,
except now it’s all online and you can con-
sume so much instruction information it can
be overwhelming.” she said. “Having a little
less information was a blessing in disguise.”
With some help from a PGA profession-
al named Frank Darby, she earned a golf
scholarship to James Madison University.
She graduated in 2002 with a degree in
marketing and took a job in sales and mar-
keting with American Golf. An overworked
colleague asked her to help him teach a
course or two for beginners. Suddenly,
the kid who fashioned her own scrapbook
of tips and how-tos found herself doing it
again, this time for others trying to learn
the game. She hasn’t looked back since.
Larkin has melded the marketing fun-
damentals she gained at JMU with her
V I R G I N I A G O L F E R | M A R C H / A P R I L 2 0 2 0
passion for teaching the game. There
are Larkin videos on YouTube, a Larkin
book, Larkin-authored magazine articles.
She’s cultivated almost 14,000 followers
on Instagram. The director of instruc-
tion at Creighton Farms in Aldie, Larkin
has students come to her from southern
Pennsylvania and other northern out-
posts. Snowbirds find her on their way to
and from Florida. Online pupils seek her
advice. Business professionals who live in
California but work in D.C. (Aldie is located
between Chantilly and Middleburg) drop
by monthly to meet with her.
“I’ve spent a lot of time the last several
years putting myself out there to the pub-
lic,” she said. “I think that’s been recog-
nized by my peers when it comes time to
vote. People realize that I’ve gone the extra
mile to really be creative. It happens fairly
regularly that when I ask people how they
heard about me, they say they saw me at the
top of the Virginia list.”
What you won’t find among all of these
clients are the famous or fame-seekers,
players competing on the professional tours.
That, she said, is not where her passion lives.
“I really enjoy teaching different levels
of players,” she said. “I feel like I can teach
a 3-year-old and in the next hour switch
gears and teach a scratch golfer. Sometimes
I think I should have more of a niche, but I
think my message and philosophy have res-
onated with the average mid- to high-hand-
icapper, the guy who’s trying to understand
how to make a golf swing feel good. Hopeful-
ly, they can hit it a little farther when they
start to relax and play tension-free.
“It’s fun to be a part of the journey of
a talented player when they are winning
tournaments and even working with tal-
ented juniors. But when you can reduce
someone’s scoring average by 10 or 15
strokes, inspire them to play, keep them
in the game longer—and they’re having
fun—that’s when I get excited.”
Larkin isn’t sure, she said, that her phi-
losophy makes her a better teacher than
others. Plenty of her peers apparently
think it does.
vsga.org
A unique golf upbringing has molded the teaching style of Virginia’s top instructor