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| The evolution of a golf pro As the game of golf has undergone dramatic changes during the last few decades, so too has the life and job description of your local club professional By Gary Larrabee As Bob Dylan proclaimed in his 1964 classic tune, “The times, they are a changing.”
Nobody knows it better than the North Shore club professional. In fact, to be more precise, with apologies to the famous singer, “their jobs, they are a changing.” And they’ve been changing dramatically over the last decade. Just ask Tedesco Country Club’s Bob Green and Myopia Hunt Club’s Bill Safrin, two of the longest tenured North Shore club professionals who are also two of the most respected members of the New England section of the Professional Golfers Association of America. “The job has always been first and foremost about customer/member service,” says Green, 57, the head professional at Tedesco since 1980. “But in recent years, with the golf operations expanding to a greater scale at most facilities, public and private, we’ve become more managerial. We still like to teach and play with our members, provide them with the right equipment. But most important, we’re seen primarily as managers, responsible more for running our part of the club operation, staying within our budgets and contributing significantly to the bottom line.” “We’re more administrators than we ever were,” adds Safrin, in his 28th year as the head professional at Myopia, site of four of the first 15 United States Opens. “We have larger staffs, computer-driven operations, ever-changing technology in the equipment and balls we sell. Product cycles at one time were four or five years, now they’re a year at best. “We head pros have been given more fiscal responsibility in recent years. This is where the managerial duties have increased. We’re businessmen, if you will. We have to be bottom-line oriented more than ever. We’re at a higher accountability level.” The profession is, on the one hand, in a brave new world. Club pros are wearing more “job hats.” But on the other hand, it still boils down to providing the best possible servicing to the golfer, whether it’s a 40-year member at Salem Country Club or a 10-year-old newcomer to the game playing nine holes for the very first time at Lakeview Golf Club, Middleton Golf Course or Cedar Glen Golf Club. We might not have realized it at the time, but life was simpler a generation ago, circa 1980, and working as a club professional was simpler, too. The lines were drawn clearer when it came to selling balls and clubs and apparel, providing instruction on the practice tee, keeping the carts gassed. That’s not to put the kibosh on past North Shore club pro icons such as Myopia’s John Thoren, Salem CC’s Bill Barclay, Tedesco CC’s Les Dunn or Bass Rocks CC’s Bob Gillis. They would be the first to admit that their duties were geared to a few particular areas of the operation, most of it dealing directly with their members/golfers. That’s not the case in 2007. “We’re all dealing, for example, with golf outings on Mondays, what used to be days off for the golf staff,” Green points out. “It’s no big deal, but it means the head pro is often dealing with a seven-day work week and trying to squeeze in a half day off here and a few hours off there for family events or personal down time.” Shed no tears for the club professional. They love what they do. They’re fine with the 60-, 70-hour workweek. They appreciate their benefits. “I can’t speak for anyone else, but it’s my belief that most of us, when we started out, wanted to get into the golf industry in the worst way,” explains Safrin, a Philadelphia native. “We love what we do as club pros and get paid well for the most part. But as in most workplaces over the last five, 10 years, our jobs have become more demanding, but also more rewarding.” Don Lyons, head professional at Reedy Meadow at Lynnfield Centre, former president of the New England PGA and currently a regional vice president of the National PGA, has worked at both the private and public club venues. He’s seen the change in the club pro’s workplace from both sides. “The club pro is more of a salesman than anything else,” he says. “We’re competing for outings, for merchandise revenue with the golf stores, the giant sporting good stores and online stores. We’re competing with deep-discounting courses for the senior and junior greens fee golfers. “When I started in the business back in the mid-70s at Salem [CC], the membership wanted the head pro (the late Barclay) running the tournaments, taking them to pro-ams, teaching and keeping the pro shop stocked. It’s a lot more complicated today with the business and golf technology involved, the fact players have less time to spend on the course than they used to because of work and family obligations. That’s just the way it is.” “Even as our job description has changed to the point we’re adding more duties,” adds Toby Ahern, who holds the position of Director of Golf at Ferncroft CC, where he has spent the last 16 years, “we can never lose sight of what we’ve always done best. And that’s interacting directly with our golfers, our members, and their guests. Whether it’s teaching, selling or playing, you’ve got to maintain that face time with your golfers. It probably means managing your time better, while still taking care of all your behind-the-scenes work – your office, staff, inventory, e-mails/communications.” Jim Hilton has seen different trends during his 24 years at Ould Newbury Golf Club. “We’re twice as busy as we were in 1983,” he reveals. “Membership has increased 33 percent. The members want more bang for their buck, so they play more than they used to and we deliver more personalized service; service they can’t get over the Internet. At the same time, we handle more questions about equipment and try to be more informative, hoping the members will spend a little more for our expertise.” Mike Giordani, one of the promising new-breed club professionals in the region, is in his third year at The Colonial in Wakefield. The Reading native sees challenges and opportunities for his generation of club professional. “We new guys are eager to make a difference in the club pro business,” says Giordani, 26, a recipient of a PGA of America accredited bachelor’s degree in business from Methodist College in North Carolina, with a concentration in golf. “We have a duty and obligation to offer new skills to our golfers that the veteran club pro might not be familiar with. They keep track of the trends through the PGA education programs, but that information probably doesn’t compare with what we received during our four-year college PGA program. “A good example might be the most up-to-date time management skills I learned while at Methodist (not surprisingly an NCAA Division III golf powerhouse),” Giordani says. “We have to juggle so many facets of the job every day, then try and find time to work on our own game and be with our families. We have a tendency to spread ourselves too thin. These new ideas in time management can benefit all the people who come in contact with us on a daily basis, especially the golfers.” Giordani concedes, “We’re golf businessmen first. Golf is a big business. It’s our business as club professionals to do whatever we can to make the game more enjoyable for our golfers. It’s that simple. My generation sees great potential in this ever-changing technology. I’m talking computer software, computer enhancement, videos, measuring brainwave activity. These tools can be the future of the game, at least for improving our students, the players.” Interpersonal skills, a primary topic in the PGA program at Methodist, remains a critical component for a club pro’s success, Giordani points out. “In my case, I’ve got member and public play, so it’s important that those of us on the golf staff treat everyone the same,” Giordani explains. “The golf staff is all about salesmanship. Along those lines, the more often we can think outside the box with fresh ideas, the better off we’ll be. “I’ve found that our Colonial golfers, member and fee players alike, are always interested in new approaches to their grip, their swing, their stance, their chipping and putting, their equipment. That’s the nature of most golfers – that constant yearning to improve. I’d like to think we, the youngest of the club pros, might have novel approaches to offer.” Reigning New England PGA champion and veteran Kernwood Country Club Head Professional Frank Dully says the most important aspect of the club pro’s job will never change. “That’s service,” he says. “Everything a club pro does should start and end with the best imaginable service to your golfers. Everything else is secondary. “With an overall decline in play in recent years, the service factor looms even larger. We’ve become marketers whether we’re at a private club or a public course. We have to work harder to keep our members improving their games,” Dully continues. “If the game’s too hard, they’ll play less or not play at all. And we know, as the club pros, that a majority of our members are finding less and less time to play. We pros, more than ever, must work to keep our current golfers involved and hopefully enjoying the game and at the same time bring our juniors along. After all, they’re the future of the game at every conceivable level.” Steve Carter, the 12th-year Ipswich Country Club head professional, realizes that most area pros “now drive the bus.” “We don’t teach and play very much. That’s what most of us got into the business for,” he says. “But now we’re more the administrators that oversee the teaching, the merchandising, the revenue activity. We’re budget managers. We’re membership directors in some respects. We’re here to keep our members happy with the golf program, to retain those members and to bring in new members.” Jim Lane, the head pro at Winchester CC for the last 22 years and the current president of the New England PGA, says there have been dramatic changes to the game in recent years, thus dramatic changes in the way the club professional does his job. “We’ve had a tremendous influx in new golfers in the last 10 years thanks to Tiger Woods,” says Lane. “They have a somewhat different mindset than the older golfer or member. The new golfers have greater expectations on what their club, their pro and their equipment can provide. “They expect the courses they play to be immaculate. The technology connected to the equipment these days raises false hopes for the golfers, as improved as that equipment is. We try and temper their enthusiasm, bring it to a more reasonable level.” Peter Hood is in his 14th year as the man in charge of the Bass Rocks Country Club in Gloucester. He has one mission when he checks in every morning. “The key for me is making sure everybody is having a good time,” Hood says. “If we on the golf staff succeed in that respect, everything else falls into place. We can take care of their equipment issues, their apparel issues, whatever they need. We simply strive to make sure they’re having a good time, no matter what they’re doing while on club property.” Tom Waters, who has shared the head professional duties at Essex County Club for almost 15 years with his wife, Jean, says his job description has not changed in all that time. “Jean and I are teachers, we’re club fitters, we’re managers of the golf staff, we repair clubs,” Tom Waters says. “Put those together and they translate into one goal we try and achieve with every Essex member – to make him or her a better player every opportunity we get; to use whatever means possible to improve the flight of their ball, to improve the effectiveness of their chips, putts and sand shots. “Granted, there has been a major change in the manufacturing aspects of the industry the last 15 years, be it for equipment, shoes or apparel. We have had to become more creative because of the competition from retail and online. “But as far as I’m concerned, our most important task has never changed. We’re supposed to help Mrs. Smith make good contact with her 7-iron and get that ball in the air.” Not that Tom and Jean Waters ever lose sight of the fact they must wear many “job hats” on a daily basis at their fabled Manchester-by-the-Sea club. They have a framed poster hanging in their pro shop, provided by the PGA of America, that states exactly how many hats they, in fact, wear as PGA professionals. A list of more than 30 job titles, such as: • Trained instructor | |
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