Four years ago I received a phone call from an old acquaintance of mine, James Kilgore. James and I had passed our PGA playing test on the same day two years before, and in the time since then our lives and careers had taken different paths.
James had toiled away as an unsalaried assistant professional at the U golf course until the opportunity arose to ascend to the head job. On the other hand, I had nearly washed out of the business entirely and hit rock bottom. After losing my starter job at Rose Park Golf Course with Salt Lake City, I had spiraled into a morass of unemployment and depression and was living on a buddy’s couch.
When James’ phone call came, I had just taken an entry-level, hard labor job as a greens keeper. He offered me a chance to be an independently contracted instructor for the University of Utah’s Junior Golf Academy. The grueling work that summer nearly killed me, but at the conclusion of our final academy, James offered me a job as his assistant professional. I was finally on my feet, and finally had a chance to live my dream!
In the years since, I’ve had the opportunity to work with some of the best people I’ve ever met.
We must be doing something right up at the golf course because we’ve had the same core group of guys working at that shop for the last four years. In a business with traditionally a lot of turnover, that’s really saying something. We have become more than just coworkers — we think of ourselves as a family.
So imagine our horror when we found out that our home is about to be ripped right out from under us.
The public perception of golf as a stuffy sport for rich guys doing rich things has, until recently, probably been spot on. My family didn’t have a lot of money, so when I decided that I liked golf and wanted to take up the sport, I had to take a job at the local course when I was fourteen just to be able to afford to play.
Imagine my surprise when I arrived at the U course and found that college students and old folks could play nine holes for just four bucks, and everyone else could play for just seven.
The characters that would come out to play our track were second to none. Some of these folks are on fixed incomes and spend $175 every single year for a discount card that reduces their greens fees to $1.
Some of these guys have overcome major health problems with the exercise they get every morning at the U course. Ralph Frandsen, a member of a group we call “Kirby’s Crew,” had a stroke two years ago. It was partially his love for playing the U golf course that got him out of bed and on the road to recovery.
Jeff Heninger, who made the U golf course his home track when Salt Lake City’s courses did away with an affordable pass rate, has taken the news of the course’s closure particularly hard.
“I just don’t understand why the university doesn’t recognize the value that this place has,” he said. “To allow an outside business to take over the golf course when there is plenty of room at other locations, to me, is asinine.”
We also cater to a number of student patrons. I’ve had the opportunity to see college kids come up to the course as freshmen, play nearly every day during the school year for four years straight, and graduate in the spring. The U golf course is like a country club for college students who feel like they belong here.
Three years ago I started a weekly golf league for students that has doubled in size every year — from 20 in 2005 to more than 80 players now. Our new Super League is almost as large as some of the more established leagues around town, and I can only imagine how much bigger it would be if some of the higher-ups in administration would have allowed us to advertise.
My thoughts always run back to my coworkers and what we’ve accomplished in such a short time. The golf course literally hemorrhaged cash for years and years. We worked to bring some fresh ideas to the way the business should be run, and within two years we became one of the few campus auxiliaries to actually turn a profit. As a business that doesn’t see one dime of student fee money, that is an extremely difficult task to accomplish.
In the last couple of years, we’ve also been able to absorb increasing expenses at the urging of the campus auditors — such as a larger water share, grounds maintenance, administrative costs and a “tribute” to the president’s office — and still finish in the black. If there’s one thing the golf course most definitely is not, it’s not a leech on campus resources.
But it’s all going to end soon.
How soon? Nobody seems to have a straight answer, which makes our jobs twice as difficult. It’s tough to market our business as a viable entity when there are constant rumors swirling around. We’ll be around at least until December 31 — anything after that is bonus. We may be around all next year, and we’re making plans for next year the same as we always have done — but not knowing when the hammer is going to drop is the scary thing.
There are people’s lives that will actually be affected when bulldozers hit. For our staff, this is how we earn a living. I may barely make enough money to pay my bills and not live in a slum, but this is my job! With the prospect of losing our livelihoods in a situation where the market for doing what we do is extremely tight, I’d be lying to you right now if I said I wasn’t terrified.
Even though we have no idea when this is going to go down, what I can promise to everybody out there is that we will not slack off or lower our level of customer service one iota until the day we are forced to close. We will provide the highest-level experience we are capable of until it’s over.
In fact, when that day comes and there are a bunch of millionaires standing on No. 5 tee-box in their suits holding silver shovels, glad-handing and patting each other on the back over the fact that their backroom deal finally got done, I want the most striking part of that soon-to-be front-page photograph to be me, on a greens-mower, cutting the fourth green in the background.
