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On a late afternoon at Del Paso Country Club in 1951, an 11-year-old boy from Sacramento, California, arrived to caddie for the first time.
Poor fortune brought Ken Morton Sr. to the course that day. His father, Arthur, was blind in both eyes and couldn’t work until cornea transplants allowed him to secure a job at the local grocery store. His mother, Charlotte, worked at a Campbell’s Soup plant. For much of his childhood, the family lived on his grandparents’ ranch where he milked cows and picked peaches while wearing only secondhand clothes and never having the luxury of a new toy.
So when he discovered that another kid at his school had been cobbling together cash as a caddie – $1.75 plus tips for each loop – Morton, as he frequently has in his life, saw an opportunity. He may have started with the idea of earning enough money to buy himself his own clothes, but he quickly learned his real motivation for caddying and being around the game rested in the service of others, facilitating a path for people of all backgrounds to discover meaning and purpose.
That first day, he pushed around the bags of a husband and wife. Decades later, the woman remained a disciple of Morton’s as he became an influential PGA professional, taking lessons from him until her mid-80s.
That has been a microcosm of Morton’s life. The now 80-year-old who has worked at Haggin Oaks Golf Complex in his hometown since his teenage years – first as a club repairman before developing into the owner and operator of that facility plus several other courses in the city – is set to retire from day-to-day operations on April 1 after an illustrious 63-year career.
"I came from literally nothing to having a life I never could have dreamed up. It’s completely beyond comprehension and I still marvel at how fortunate I’ve been along the way."
Ken Morton Sr.
Morton is a five-time PGA national award winner inducted into the organization’s Hall of Fame and has built Haggin Oaks into what has been described as both a golf village and carnival. While walking around the property for the first time noted instructor Henry Brunton aptly said the facility “just smells like golf” as you meander through its 36 holes, a feverishly busy driving range that does more business at night than during the day, a Super Shop that has become a gold standard of golf merchandising and event space that hosts a booming wedding business in non-pandemic times.
Morton did not just develop Haggin Oaks into a successful golf facility. He created a place so invigorating that other golf course owners and head pros are willing to travel from all parts of the country, sometimes the world, to grasp why members of the Sacramento community and beyond are fiercely proud to call Haggin Oaks home.
The gravitational pull that keeps everyone coming back stems from Morton’s early days in the industry. Frank Minch, the pro at Del Paso where Morton caddied, noticed the boy’s work ethic and offered to teach Morton how to play the game, coming in early every Saturday morning.
“He didn’t come in until 9 a.m. on Saturdays so I thought it was asking too much and I told him that,” Morton said. “And he said, ‘Well do you want the lessons or not?’ For the next three years, I came out every Saturday and he made me a pretty darn good player.”
Morton won the Northern California High School Championship and later the State Junior College Championship while attending Sacramento City College for two years. He could have played professionally, and at one point a group from Haggin Oaks wanted to sponsor him so he could take a shot. But only the top dozen or so players on tour back then were turning a meaningful profit, and Morton decided his happiness had little to do with playing and far more to do with serving others.
As Morton took lessons from Minch, he started to work for him beyond the caddie realm, learning the basics of how to manage a golf shop while also getting schooled in club repair by another employee who specialized in it. In 1958, when original Haggin Oaks pro Tom LoPresti asked Minch if he knew anyone with club repair experience, Morton was an obvious choice.
“I have just the young man for you,” Morton remembers Minch saying. “And he’s going to be a great golf pro someday.”
Morton, at 18, worked 40 hours a week while going to college full-time and also playing on the school’s golf team. In the ensuing years, Morton’s education in golf continued. He started to give lessons, manage merchandise and learn about customer interaction from LoPresti, who had started at Haggin Oaks in 1932 and worked there for 62 years.
“I had reached my lifetime goals and ambitions by 23 years old,” Morton said. “My life has been spent trying to give back what Tom LoPresti and Frank Minch did for me. I came from literally nothing to having a life I never could have dreamed up. It’s completely beyond comprehension and I still marvel at how fortunate I’ve been along the way.”
LoPresti won the National PGA Professional of the Year award in 1962 and Morton won the same honor in 1998. They are the only two pros from the same facility to have earned the distinction, and their cumulative amount of time working at Haggin Oaks will be 125 years upon Morton’s retirement. In 1971, the two pros went in as partners and co-head professionals and LoPresti remained in that role at Haggin Oaks until 1994, just four months before he died at age 89.
If you ask others to put into words how Morton maintained a presence in Northern California and throughout the PGA professional ranks for so long, the answer always comes back to his insatiable desire to learn. Early in his career, Morton became a PGA faculty member conducting head pro seminars and would go to lunch with a dozen or so other faculty members as everyone shared their ideas. For more than three decades, Morton would take three to four ideas from those lunches each year and apply them to Haggin Oaks.
“I brought every secret I could back to our place,” Morton said. “What we’ve done here is a culmination of fellow PGA pros, bringing a variety of their skill sets and attributes to Haggin. People saw me as a visionary, but I really just learned from other people who were successful.”
That is a primary reason Morton’s respect among PGA pros ranks among the games most storied club pros.
“Since the early days of my career in Northern California, I have admired Ken Morton Sr. as one of the most knowledgeable, inspiring and iconic PGA professionals in the game,” PGA of America president Jim Richerson said. “A PGA Hall of Fame member, Ken has served as a legendary figure in golf for over 60 years. Acclaimed as a PGA master professional and five-time national award winner, including 1998 PGA Golf Professional of the Year, Ken’s legacy includes a family who have followed in his footsteps to reach the peak of our profession.
“Morton Golf continues to achieve a high standard of excellence through their groundbreaking growth-of-the-game programs and merchandising innovations. The PGA of America is proud and grateful for the countless contributions Ken Morton Sr. has made to his fellow PGA members and the golf industry.”
Morton’s work in the last quarter of his career likely will be remembered as some of his most influential. The business became a family affair as Ken Morton Jr. took over Haggin Oaks’ merchandising and marketing efforts, evolving into one of the most respected merchandisers in golf. He’s written several books on the subject, and he served as president of the Association of Golf Merchandisers. Tom Morton, meanwhile, thrived on the instruction side. He has won two national PGA awards, the 2014 Youth Player Development Award and the 2017 Player Development Award, and is a talented player himself having won the 2017 Northern California PGA Match Play.
The elder Morton never pushed his kids to play golf, but they grew up around Haggin Oaks and stepped into the family business when Morton decided to take on more golf courses in California and Oregon. He was a part-owner of Auburn Valley Country Club, 35 miles outside Sacramento, for 15 years and also was a partner in the company Golf Resources which eventually sold to Meadowbrook Golf, a large, publicly held management company.
Without the willingness of his sons, neither Haggin Oaks nor the extra projects would be what they are today. But after all, it was Morton Sr. who set the example.
“He’s the greatest generational compass that ever was,” Morton Jr. said. “He has always been a North Star I modeled myself after. Right now, I’m just feeling overwhelming gratefulness. I’ve been privileged beyond belief.”
Both Tom and Ken Jr. express that the most underrated part of their father’s legacy is what he gave back to his community beyond just being a golf professional everyone knew. Morton Sr. founded Sacramento Area Youth Golf Association (SAY) in 1983, which was well ahead of its time – in 2001, it became one of the first three chapters of The First Tee. He helped create the Northern California PGA Foundation in 2010 and also created the Morton Golf Foundation in 2011, each to provide grants and opportunities for those who couldn’t afford it. One of the first kids helped was Cameron Champ, now a two-time PGA Tour winner.
“It’s been all walks of life,” Tom Morton said. “We’ve never turned a child away for not being able to afford it. Growing up watching him at work and seeing him make a difference in people’s lives through a game we both loved had a massive impact on me. We’ve catered to people who are diehard golfers and we’ve catered to people just wanting to dip their toe into the water.”
“What we’ve done here is a culmination of fellow PGA pros, bringing a variety of their skill sets and attributes to Haggin. People saw me as a visionary, but I really just learned from other people who were successful.”
For all of this, the golf industry has taken notice. David Maher, the CEO of Acushnet, has worked closely with Morton throughout his career and calls him a good friend.
“Ken Morton Sr. has spent his lifetime building and promoting Haggin Oaks, which has become a treasure in the global golf landscape and a shining example of how the sport of golf and its facilities can have far reaching, positive impacts on their communities,” Maher said. “Ken has been a trusted role model and mentor to me and many of my teammates at Acushnet. It has been my great privilege to work with and learn from Ken over the past 30 years.”
For several years Morton has given up duties as he entrusts his sons and others to handle the business. He’s taken RV trips across the country for nearly 100 days at a time with his wife, Kathy. While he’ll still technically be a partner, the time arrived for him to relinquish day-to-day operations.
“Everyone else is more than capable to run the company,” Morton Sr. said. “I really want to go out the right way and spend time with my wife who has dedicated her entire life to me and our kids. We also have 13 grandkids and I intend on doing some things with them over the next few years while we are still in good health.”
If anyone deserves it, it’s Ken Morton Sr. He’s lived the American golf dream.
Top: Ken Morton Sr. will retire after 63 years of working from bottom to top at Haggin Oaks Golf Complex.
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