Adam Schriber stares out at the ocean as if he’s never seen a sunrise. The clouds are clearing and it’s a wonderful mix of yellows and oranges. You can hear the waves splashing on the shore and smell the sea breeze in the air. He doesn’t break his gaze when he speaks.

“Different kind of day, huh?” he says.

Schriber means this in the best way possible — and he would know. He’s seen this thousands of times. He’s just not sick of it.

He sits atop his electric bike — hat backwards, long, wild hair sticking out the sides, sunglasses hiding his piercing blue eyes — ready to “rip it” (his words) up this salivating stretch of Atlantic coastline. An adrenaline junkie, he can rattle off his broken bones and torn tendons like he’s reading from a grocery list. It’s the price of living the only way he knows how.

The 64-year-old Schriber (known to most as “Schribes”) is one of the top instructors in professional golf, but he’s not your country club cutout. He thinks differently. Looks differently. Acts differently. Who else crisscrosses the country in an RV, camping from one PGA Tour stop to the next?

His son Sam describes him as a surfer-bro golfer, as a softy at heart with a rough exterior. J.J. Spaun, his most famous pupil and the reigning U.S. Open champion, calls him the ultimate golf geek.

“He’s a really good dude and he doesn’t have a bad bone in his body,” Spaun says. “It shows, because everyone on Tour loves the guy.”

This morning, Schriber’s on Vilano Beach, a chip shot away from the St. Augustine, Fla., RV park where he’s deposited his 27-foot Airstream Midnight Flamingo for this week’s Players Championship at nearby TPC Sawgrass. He’ll head to the course soon, but first, there’s no time to waste. He nudges his e-bike forward and, well, rips it.

ADAM SCHRIBER NEVER expected to end up in golf.

The youngest of four, he lost his father to leukemia when he was a kid and was raised by his schoolteacher mother in South Florida. He kept busy with sports and surfing but didn’t give golf a try until a YMCA summer program at age 12. He owned only a few clubs, and his mom couldn’t afford a bag, so she bought fabric, bent two hangers together and sewed him a pocketless one he’d go on to win tournaments with. He later earned academic and athletic scholarships — he says he missed just one math question on his SATs, taken after a night of hard partying in Fort Lauderdale — and chose Michigan’s Ferris State for its golf management program, a fallback in case his pro-golf dreams didn’t pan out.

Schriber bounced around the mini-tours and Monday-qualified into some PGA Tour events, but those aspirations died when, in his late 20s, he shattered his ankle in a game of pickup basketball.

He turned to teaching, landing a job with David Leadbetter in 1989. But it was a reluctant meetup with scientists on topics like force and friction in sports that forever changed the way he taught. It was his introduction to biomechanics, and Schriber became a trailblazer in what is now one of the sport’s foundational teaching philosophies.

Using fitness-focused training, his approach is rooted in feel over thought. Schriber calls his drills “mouse traps” — subtle cues that guide players into the right positions without conscious effort. Spaun, a skateboarder growing up, imagines a “back-side flip” to trigger the movement he wants in his feet while swinging.

“Change is feel, right?” says Schriber, who blends surfer slang with a monotone delivery. “How do you teach somebody to feel something differently? With all the science we have available now — about ground forces, biomechanical data, all the launch monitor stuff — you can test s— more than ever. I can make you throw a medicine ball or have you swing something heavy and test your ground forces. Do they produce what we’re after? And if they do, I’m like, ‘Come on, dude — it’s up to you now. Figure out what that feels like.’”

Now the director of instruction at LochenHeath Golf Club, just north of his home in Traverse City, Mich., and a longtime GOLF Top 100 Teacher, Schriber has taught winners across decades — from Brandel Chamblee in the late 1990s to current pros Spaun and Korn Ferry winners Sam Ryder and Dylan Wu.

He’s also known as the coach who helped turn Anthony Kim from a promising junior into a PGA Tour and now LIV Golf winner and star.

The RV lifestyle is unique and fun, but it’s the teaching and competition that’s Schriber’s true passion. He talks often about making it all mean something, not just in golf but in life. Every Christmas, he helps organize a Tips for Toys benefit, where he and other teachers wrangle silent-auction items and offer free lessons in exchange for money or food donations. And his 2025 U.S. Open win with Spaun wasn’t even his favorite finish last year. That honor goes to the high school girls’ golf team he helped start three years ago in nearby Elk Rapids. They took third at state; Schriber was a volunteer assistant.

“He loves helping people,” Spaun says. “He wants everyone to succeed and he’s so dedicated. He’s there mentally and emotionally for your game.”

IN 2008, THE SCHRIBERS’ BLACK LAB, BIRDIE, a family gift from Anthony Kim years earlier, roamed their Michigan neighborhood and returned with a malnourished, 24-pound chocolate Lab in tow. No owner surfaced, so the Schribers took him in and named him Yoda. The trusty pooch was still around in 2017 when Sam, the youngest of Schriber’s three sons, graduated high school and made his dad an empty nester. The Tour season loomed, but he wasn’t about to kennel an elderly dog, so he made what was, for him, the most logical choice: He sold his house, bought a camper and hit the road with Yoda.

Two things happened on those highways: Yoda became a minor celebrity on Tour and Schriber realized he loved the life. He outfitted his camper with all sorts of his favorite toys — kayaks and surfboards, longboards and paddleboards, mountain bikes and e-bikes. He even added a bicycle trailer so Yoda could ride along to beaches and paddleboard sessions.

When Yoda died in 2024, Schriber tried the more practical Airbnb route, but that life just wasn’t for him anymore. In January, he and 27-year-old Sam, now traveling and working together, picked up their fourth and newest RV amid a Cleveland snowstorm. Their first night back on the road was the best sleep Schriber had in six months.

Since then, 7,000 miles and counting: Palm Springs. San Diego. Phoenix. Pebble Beach. L.A. All to a Pandora soundtrack of the Grateful Dead and Zach Bryan.

Now they’re parked in a sandy RV lot 20 miles south of TPC Sawgrass, where the grill is still warm and there are traces of bacon in the air. Folding chairs are spread atop an area rug. Workout equipment and training aids are tucked beneath the camper; a longboard leans against it. Inside, there’s a small eating and living area, kitchen, bathroom and bedroom in the back.

The surfboards didn’t make this trip, but the e-bike, which Schriber takes off-roading and rides to tournaments, did. The Tour’s security corps is used to him by now.

“Here comes the wacky coach on the e-bike,” Schriber says.

His kids wish he’d be a little more careful. He recently had to be talked out of buying a bike that reaches speeds of up to 70 mph. The current one tops out at 45 — and when he flipped it three years ago, he broke his pelvis for the second time (the first was snowboarding with AK). Couldn’t walk for six months.

“He has glass bones and paper skin,” Sam jokes. “I don’t know why, but he’s always fighting himself.”

He has learned that this lifestyle isn’t always romantic — the 2 a.m. flat tires, the breakdowns, the endless packing and unpacking. It’s hard. One of those maddening moments came during a pivotal time in Spaun’s 2025 season. Driving from Orlando to Jacksonville for the Players, Schriber’s RV snapped an axle. He spent the week on an air mattress in a rented cargo van. Days later, Spaun complained to his coach about bad luck.

Schriber saw it differently. He knew Spaun had struggled with diabetes and nearly quit the game years ago. Schriber had had his own health scare in 2008, when he nearly lost his vision. And because his father died young, Schriber has always pondered his own longevity.

“What if it turns out,” he told Spaun, “that you and I are the luckiest people in the world?”

Something clicked. Spaun lost that year’s Players to Rory McIlroy in a Monday playoff, but banked $2.7 million and, three months later, hoisted the U.S. Open trophy. In the rain, as Spaun celebrated on the 72nd hole, Schriber embraced Spaun’s short-game coach, Josh Gregory. A video clip of the moment went viral.

“You did this,” Gregory told Schriber. “Nobody works harder than you.”

“We all did this,” Schriber replied.

Chamblee, his former student, watched and saw something different.

“You’re talking about a guy that has been giving his heart and soul to the game and to his players for 35, 40 years,” Chamblee says. “And he finally had a horse that won the Kentucky Derby.”

BACK ON THE BEACH, Schriber maneuvers his e-bike past morning walkers and foraging gulls. It feels good to get it out again. It was recently repaired after he accidentally set it on fire while trying to fix damage from a West Coast Swing downpour.

The biking, the surfing — Schriber isn’t stopping.

“I can’t watch from the sidelines,” he says.

He has always craved this kind of excitement, even though the waves he now conquers aren’t nearly as gnarly as the ones he surfed decades ago. He loves that Sam is now beside him. They’re a team, truckin’ down interstates together, laughing over the minor inconveniences of life on the road, chasing twilight tee times and grilling steaks well into the night. What dad wouldn’t want that?

“I’m in golf, and I probably shouldn’t be,” Schriber says. “I’m not from that side of the tracks. But there are a lot of weird combinations that have got me here. I just want it to mean as much as possible.”

His hair flaps in the wind as he cruises the shore. The beach, the water, this sunrise — it’s one hell of a view. Schriber must think so too. Lost in the moment, he cranks the throttle and disappears up the coastline.

Lucky? Sure. Alive? You bet. Because Adam Schriber has figured out what that feels like.

This story was first published in the May/June 2026 issue of GOLF Magazine. You can reach the author at joshua.berhow@golf.com.

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