How PGA Pro Todd Kersting is improving lives, one golf lesson at a time

Todd Kersting was supposed to be a tennis player. At least, that what his mother thought.

“She wanted me to be a tennis pro,” he said.

Everything changed when Kersting was 9 years old. While picking up tennis balls at the Los Altos Tennis Courts in the summer of 1974, he peered over Interstate 40 and saw the winding, green fairways of nearby Los Altos Golf Course.

“ Something in me said, ‘That’s where I belong,’” Kersting said. “I went home and told my mom I wanted to play golf.”

That following week, his mother signed him up for a golf clinic. While at the clinic, he chipped a golf ball into the hole to win a Pepsi, and the rest was history. Thus began a 50-year love affair with the game of golf that has allowed him to not only live out his dream, but help many others along the way.

In the 1980s and at the age of 21, he began his golf instruction career at Arroyo del Oso Golf Course, where he worked with junior golfers on the fundamentals of a golf swing. It didn’t take long for Kersting to realize that “passing my knowledge on to my students and giving them that same dopamine rush I felt when I was learning the game,” he said.

In 1991, he received his Professional Golf Association or PGA card and continued his teaching career. In 2004, he became one of the resident professionals at Puerto del Sol Golf Course, where he remains to this day.

Since he began teaching, Kersting estimates he has given more than 26,000 golf lessons. In that time, he’s taught athletes like major league baseball player Alex Bregman, has helped people struggling with substance abuse find a more constructive passion through golf and offered a sanctuary from the stresses of work for Albuquerque’s first responders.

“Golf is a great way to help people recharge,” he said, “and I want people to know how easy it is to start playing.”

That same safe space golf offered his students would suddenly become a retreat for Kersting himself. Tragedy struck his family in August 2022, when his brother-in-law Rosario Zito was killed in a robbery-turned-shootout. Police say Zito died after exchanging gunfire with Sylvan Alcachupas, who was attempting to rob Zito’s employees at his restaurant, Giovanni’s Pizzeria.

Zito’s death is still a very raw topic for Kersting to discuss, so he opted to keep himself occupied with golf and teaching until Alcachupas’ trial, which is expected to start in October.

“I remember when (Zito) passed, I had lessons the next day,” Kersting said. “When I showed up, I was able to stay focused on my lesson and it helped my mind. Golf helped me.”

Since that day, Kersting has also dedicated his time to helping both recruit more people to become first responders and offer lessons to existing first responders as well.

On July 30, in honor of his efforts to support the city’s first responders, members of Albuquerque Fire Rescue Ladder 13 brought a fire truck and parked it near one of Kersting’s clinics. That day also happened to be the 50th anniversary of his golfing life. According to Kersting’s sister, Dana, in typical Todd fashion, he decided to host a learning clinic that night and made the occasion about others, not himself.

“He’s all about helping Albuquerque and the community,” she said. “That’s Todd.”

While his passion for the game is still there, Kersting, now 59, has had to slow down his teaching schedule due to a diagnosis of multiple sclerosis he received in 2020. He’s had to cut back on the number of lessons and when he can teach due to the disease, but it hasn’t impacted his love for help people discover the game of golf.

“I love teaching people and I’m so fortunate that I can continue to coach,” he said.