About Dana Rader

School founder

Dana Rader grew up playing golf at Mimosa Hills Country Club in Morganton, NC, knowing the game would become an important part of her life. She was good enough to make the men’s golf team at Pfeiffer University, had the skills to make a run at the LPGA tour but she found that her real love for the game centered on teaching. The Dana Rader Golf School at the Ballantyne Hotel and Lodge in Charlotte is a testimony to 25 years of hard work and a plan that has resulted in the school becoming one of the premier golf schools in the country. She joined Myers Park Country Club in 1980 as an assistant professional, achieving LPGA Class A status in 1984. A group at Myers Park sponsored her run on the LPGA Tour but she says, “I competed for a while but found out I wouldn’t be able to make a living at that. It just wasn’t my heart and passion.”

A Passion for Teaching

Her passion was in teaching and it has taken her from the early 1980s to today as owner of one of the Top 25 golf schools in the U.S., as selected by Golf Magazine. She credits her outstanding staff for the school’s rise to the top.

Individually, Dana has been named as one of the Top 100 Teachers in the U.S. by Golf Magazine and as one of the Top 50 Teachers in the U.S. by Golf for Women magazine. In 1990, she was honored by the LPGA as its National Teacher of the Year. In 2003, she achieved LPGA Master Professional status. In 2007, Dana was named by Golf Magazine to its prestigious list of the Top 50 Teachers in America.

Dana had a group of mentors at Myers Park who were some of Charlotte’s most successful and influential businessmen. They helped her develop outstanding business, management and communication skills while she continued to improve her golf game and teaching abilities.

In 1982, she moved to Raintree Country Club in South Charlotte, where she founded the Dana Rader Golf School. She hired Julie Cole, a former LPGA tour player (1985-1990) and her current Director of Instruction, and Jay Reid, a PGA Class A professional (1990 to present) who in January 2007 became Director of Instruction at the new DRGS location at Statesville (NC) Country Club.

State of the Art Teaching Facility

Dana moved the Dana Rader Golf School in 1997 to Ballantyne Hotel and Lodge in South Charlotte. The state-of-the-art facility was the first structure on the site that now also features one of the best daily-fee golf courses in the Southeast and one of the country’s top resort hotels and spas. The combined complex offers amenities among the best in the world.

The school uses the Hotel’s course for on-course instruction and offers Stay and Play packages. The key is the school is not a part of a golf course operation but is a stand-alone teaching facility. It has putting greens, chipping greens, sand bunkers and tee boxes, featuring grass as well as the newest synthetic grass, for 30-plus students. Covered hitting bays are available during inclement weather.  “Everything here at the facility is about training and coaching,” Dana says. “We are student centered.  We can put you on a video analysis screen your first lesson. Then after a couple of lessons, we will put you on split-screen and show you the before and after.”

Rock Solid Golf – A Foundation for a Lifetime