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When 39-year-old Charlie Schuyler considers his career in the game and his position today as director of golf at Saucon Valley Country Club, he cannot help but think of his family and growing up with them in Springfield, New Jersey.
Start with his father, Andy, a retired physician. “Dad was a serious, detail-oriented man who valued hard work,” said Schuyler. “He was my friend, but he was always my father first. Dad was pretty regimented, too. He had one of those Dymo machines with embossing tape and put color-coded labels on everything in the house. And he showed me how to use Microsoft Excel.”
Dr. Schuyler had a sporting side as well and enjoyed a game of golf. He also encouraged Charlie, who is the younger of his two sons, to take up the sport.
Schuyler’s mother, Jackie, also played a major role in his life. “She and my father were high school sweethearts, and she went to NYU, where she trained to be a physical therapist,” he said. “She was diagnosed with breast cancer when I was in high school and successfully fought that and other cancers through the years. No matter how sick she was, she always stressed that regardless of what I did in life, I should never give up.”
Brother Adam is three years older, and Schuyler describes him as his hero for his work as a biomechanical engineer, where his research is focused on finding a cure for ALS, that debilitating malady also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease.
“These three individuals set the standards in our family so high,” Schuyler said. “I felt it would be disrespectful to them all if I didn’t always give it my best.”
Influences came from other parts of the clan. Like his maternal grandfather, Bud, whom Charlie called Poppy – and who took Schuyler out to hit golf balls for the first time as a young lad.
Then, there is his wife, Lauren, who was studying at Penn State University and playing on the women’s golf team when Schuyler was earning a degree from the PGA Management program there. In time, they not only worked together as golf professionals but in 2009 also started a charity. It’s called Pros Fore Clothes, a vehicle through which Schuyler and his wife have gathered and delivered nearly 240,000 pounds of excess golf apparel to more than 200 shelters around the country.
Golf is most often seen as an individual game. But as far as Schuyler is concerned, it has always been a team sport, with his family by his side the entire way.
He also acknowledges the help and influence of several PGA club professionals who served as mentors.
Schuyler’s family was certainly there when he started playing regularly as a teenager, on his high school golf team and also at the Shackamaxon Country Club near their New Jersey home. “My parents were members, and I spent most of my summers there as a kid,” he recalled. “Practicing, playing with Mom and Dad. Caddying, too, and helping out around the pro shop. For some reason, I was always much more comfortable on the other side of the counter, serving the members as opposed to being served myself.”
It was at Shackamaxon that Schuyler met the head golf professional, Pete Busch.
“Pete took me under his wing and in time, I became his de facto assistant,” he said.
It wasn’t long before Schuyler decided that he wanted to follow in Busch’s footsteps and make his living in the game. “I remember taking notes and drawing pictures in my notebook during algebra class of what my golf shop would look like one day and what clubs, balls, shoes and apparel I would be carrying in it,” he said.
And when it came time to apply to colleges, Schuyler sent in only one application – to Penn State.
He graduated in 2005, and with a degree in hand began working at a succession of top clubs, starting with Baltusrol near his New Jersey hometown. Soon after, he took a winter job at Bonita Bay in southwestern Florida. Then in 2007, Schuyler moved with Lauren to Washington D.C. to work as an assistant at Congressional Country Club.
It was on that drive from Bonita Bay to Congressional that they hit on the notion of Pros Fore Clothes.
“We as golf professionals receive a lot of excess clothing through the year,” Schuyler said. “And we wanted to find a way to get that apparel into the hands of people in need. Some members at Congressional were incredibly generous with their time as we created a website as well as a 501(c)(3) corporation.
“Twelve years later, we are still going strong, having formed partnerships with companies like FootJoy, Peter Millar and Bobby Jones. And our hope is to get up to one million pounds all across the country.”
After three seasons at Congressional, Schuyler accepted his first head professional position, at Rehoboth Beach Country Club in Delaware. Then, in spring 2010, he worked his first Masters for Augusta National, helping the professional staff during the tournament. Four years later, in February 2014, Augusta National’s co-head professionals J.J. Weaver and Tony Sessa offered Schuyler a senior assistant’s position at the club. He held that job for four-plus years while also running the golf operations at Rehoboth Beach. Then, in 2017, Schuyler went full time with Augusta, earning during those years what can best be described as an advanced degree in PGA golf management from two of the best in the business.
“What I loved about Augusta was everyone’s commitment to the singular vision that its founders, Clifford Robert and Bobby Jones, laid out,” said Schuyler. “And that was the importance of continuous improvement. We could always do better, and we were driven to do so each and every day.”
Schuyler left Augusta in 2018 for his current job at Saucon Valley. Located in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, it boasts roughly 1,000 members, 60 holes of golf and next year will host its eighth USGA championship when the U.S. Senior Open comes to town.
That’s a big job for such a young man. And Schuyler is the first to admit that he had a lot of help getting there.
Top: Charlie Schuyler with kids after playing in a PGA Jr. League competition
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