For the love of the game

After making the decision to shun the corporate world and come back to the game of golf, Peabody’s Jen Webster has seen her career blossom

By Gary Larrabee

Jennifer Webster has always been blessed with an unassuming inner confidence.

It showed while she starred for the Peabody High girls’ basketball team and was named a Boston Globe All-Scholastic. It was evident when she won two state high school girls’ individual golf championships as a Tanner in 1991 and ’92. It remained part of her makeup when she accepted a women’s basketball scholarship to Drexel University, where she played two years for head coach and fellow Peabody native Kristin Foley, then followed Foley to Temple University and played two additional years and captained the Lady Owls her senior season.

But her iron-willed self-assurance never loomed larger than when she graduated from Temple in 1998 and earned her MBA in Finance. Now she was at a crossroads in her young life. She had a critical decision to make.

Does she take a generous, relatively comfortable job offer in corporate finance in one of two cities, Philadelphia or Pittsburgh? Or does she opt for the truly unorthodox, do a career 180 if you will, and get into club professional business, even though she hadn’t spent any time with the game during her college years?

“The night before the deadline arrived for my job offers,” Foley remembers, “I called my parents and told them I wasn’t taking either [job]. I’d decided I wanted to get back into golf, even though I hadn’t touched a club in five years.

“I didn’t have a job, but I was confident I could get a good start somewhere.”

Webster was right. Now, eight years later, Webster, the step-daughter of Middleton Golf Course’s highly regarded teaching pro, Chris Costa, is the assistant professional at the esteemed The Country Club in Brookline and is considered one of the top assistant pros in the country.

Take it from Golf World Business, the sister publication of Golf Digest, which selected Webster one of the 25 Best Assistant Pros in America for 2005, based on a nationwide poll conducted with industry insiders and fellow professionals.

After seeing Webster’s work up-close and personal, Brendan Walsh, Webster’s boss at The Country Club, is prepared for the inevitable.

“I’m going to be sorry to see her go,” said Walsh, in his ninth year at the site of the 1999 Ryder Cup. “Jennifer is an extremely talented young woman who is going to make some club an outstanding head professional, sooner rather than later. She has a passion for her job that leads to exceptional success.”

“When I started out fresh, I gave myself five years to make progress in the field,” Webster said. “Needless to say, thanks to people like Brendan Walsh, and before him Ron Beck at Fox Hopyard in Connecticut, I’m still working at it.”

Of course, anyone who knows Webster and her rich golf roots is not surprised with her dramatic career advancement.

As Costa, who is in his 35th year teaching at Middleton, noted, Jennifer has always been a go-getter.

“She doesn’t wait for things to happen; she makes them happen, or tries to anyway,” Costa beams. “She’s basically done all this by herself. I’m proud to have maybe gotten her started in the right direction in the game, but that’s about it.

“I have to admit that when she got out of college and she said she wanted to be a golf pro, it didn’t seem right to me, and I’m a club pro. She’d been an A student, gotten a great offer to go into finance, but she went the golf route and began working for a lot less [money] than what she’d have started making in finance.”

It came down to a simple wish, Webster, now 30, explained.

“I wanted to go to work every day with a smile on my face and have a good chance of enjoying what I was doing,” she says. “I saw too many people miserable with their lives and their work. I didn’t want that happening to me.”

And it hasn’t. Moving forward with the unqualified blessing of her parents, Webster spoke to Coach Foley, who directed her to her twin sister, Kim, who at the time was head women’s basketball coach at Central Connecticut University.

“Kim offered me a job as an assistant coach. That allowed me to work in golf in the spring and summer,” Webster says. “I got a job through the Connecticut PGA with Scott Knights at Glastonbury Hills Country Club and had three educational years there.”

Then came three years as No. 1 assistant at Fox Hopyard under Beck.

“Ron told me Jennifer was one of the best assistants he’d ever had,” said Walsh. “She’s lived up to all that Ron said and then some. She’s very motivated, a self-starter; she’s always a step ahead of me. I never have to ask her to do something. She’s usually already doing it.”

That’s important at The Country Club, one of the most prestigious private clubs in America and one of the most demanding for its golf staff.

“We foster a philosophy that we all need to be good at everything we do as a golf professional,” Walsh said. “We help each other become better pros for our members and ourselves, and Jennifer has embraced that philosophy beautifully.”

“It’s been a phenomenal experience at The Country Club,” Webster said. “Few things in life exceed our expectations, but in this case the complete experience as a member of The Country Club pro staff has exceeded my expectations. The tradition, the history and the membership have been a wonderful part of my work life.”

No doubt, Webster’s ascendancy in the assistant pro ranks has been significantly impacted by the high grades she has received from Walsh.

“Brendan is the epitome of a teacher/mentor,” Webster said. “I learn every day from him.”

From a unique perspective, Costa has relished his stepdaughter’s success.

“She’s working hard, having fun and moving forward,” said Costa. “I’m not surprised. She’s personable, she enjoys selling and teaching the game, and she enjoys being a student of the game herself.”

Most important, added Walsh, Webster “respects the game and everything about it, including the value of being a good player.”

Webster accepted the honor from Golf World Business humbly.

“This is a team award,” she said. “It’s a product of how well we work for Brendan as a team, all of us assistants. You can’t do anything well in this business without a solid group of fellow workers.”

Webster’s duties are varied at Brookline.

“We all do a little bit of everything,” she says, “Whatever provides the best service for our members. I do some purchasing, teaching, playing, wherever I’m needed.”

Webster figures she is close to being ready for the next career move in her golf journey, but for this season she’ll thrive in Year 3 on the TCC staff.

“Eventually I’d like to become a head professional or golf director at a private country club,” says Webster, who resides in Brookline. “But for now I’m keeping my options open.”

She’ll be keeping in touch with Costa, too, as she has done throughout her golf career.

“I’ve learned a tremendous amount from Chris,” she said. “I took lessons from him from since Day 1 and I still get help from him. I watched him teach. He’s always been there for support and encouragement.”

As for her own game, it’s a gradual work in progress, she admitted. She was in second place of the first round of last year’s New England Women’s Open before finishing in the middle of the pack.

“I passed the playing test my first year as a member of the PGA, but since then I’ve concentrated on teaching and the business side,” she says. “[Last] year I made some swing changes working with Brendan and our teaching professional, Kevin Rhoads. Maybe I’ll see more progress this year, but the working side will always come first.”