Getting Started at Augusta Ranch
After talking with Karen, Rea decided to follow his heart. He left baseball, turned down the UPS offer and reached out to the Southwest PGA Section to start his education in the Golf Professional Training Program (GPTP) and look for a full-time job in golf.
Rea was soon hired to be part of the outside golf staff at Augusta Ranch Golf Club, a new public-access course that was opening in January 1999 on the east side of Mesa, Arizona. When the course opened, Rea was on the staff of PGA of America Head Professional Sean Ferris as a 32-year-old working alongside high-schoolers making $5.15 an hour.
“It was a big leap of faith, but I was determined to make it work,” Rea says. “In like a month I’d decided to retire from baseball and turn down a job with UPS to be in golf, and I’m cleaning clubs with 16-year-olds.”
That didn’t last long. Rea was promoted to the inside staff as an Assistant Professional two weeks later and started working in the golf shop while immersing himself in the GPTP curriculum.
“I loved going through the GPTP while I was new in golf, because I was learning about things that I was actually doing for the first time,” Rea says. “You know how sometimes in high school or college when you’re sitting in class and thinking, ‘How is this ever going to be applicable to what I’m really going to do?’ It was never like that. The work experiences and my learning applied to each other, from marking the golf course for a tournament to talking with the food & beverage manager or learning golf car fleet management, I just thought it was all so fulfilling and helpful.”
Rea also made an important pair of contacts among the adjunct faculty during his PGA Education. First was PGA of America Professional Dawes Marlatt, now the Senior Director of Education and Organizational Development for the PGA of America, who administered Rea’s Rules of Golf test during the GPTP. The two now give seminars together on the importance of the PGA Master Professional program, and Rea became the 447th PGA of America Member to attain that status last summer.
Second was PGA of America Golf Professional Curt Hudek, who would become Executive Director of the Southwest PGA Section before eventually becoming Rea’s friend and business partner.
“We really connected while Don was getting his PGA Education because we were both second-career guys who were late to PGA Membership – I had spent 10 years as a CPA before I got my PGA of America Membership,” Hudek says. “It’s been a great relationship and a great business partnership – Don’s so idea-driven and energetic, and I’m a CPA. Quite a combination.”
Beyond the GPTP, Rea was getting plenty of hands-on experience at Augusta Ranch. After joining the inside golf staff in January of 1999, he had another chance to move up later in the year when Ferris left the course to work at Karsten Golf Course in Tempe. Despite his relative inexperience as a golf professional, Rea’s work experience as an umpire, at UPS and Home Depot all led Augusta Ranch’s ownership to entrust him with the job of Head Professional. As 2000 drew to a close, Rea’s gamble on golf had paid early dividends.
The ownership group of Augusta Ranch also owned Eagle Mountain Golf Club, a high-end daily-fee course near Scottsdale catering to snowbirds and tourists. Augusta Ranch was expected to operate similarly, but Rea discovered it needed its own identity.
“The people playing August Ranch were not the same people who’d pay $195 to play Eagle Mountain, so we needed to pivot,” Rea recalls. “Ownership thought we’d be something like Mountain Shadows, but after that first year we had to immediately start changing how we looked at things by building programs, adding value for families and improving the food & beverage.”
Rea would go on to gain PGA of America Membership in 2001 and began working at both Eagle Mountain and Augusta Ranch as a Head Professional/General Manager. Over the next 15 years he worked with different ownership groups as golf went through ebbs and flows after 9/11 and the Great Recession of 2008. During this time, Rea had a spiritual awakening that strengthened his resolve to make Augusta Ranch a success.
“It was a tough time, with the recession and the housing crisis, and that’s around the time I started going to church and I got saved,” Rea says. “The reason that’s important to my golf story is that there was a moment one morning where I woke up and I heard a voice say, ‘One day I’m going to give you Augusta Ranch, and I want you to make it into a place that builds the community – a place that families can be, and where you can raise money for charity.’
“This was an overwhelming experience for me. I had to pull myself together and get a drink of water. There were ups and downs along the way, but I never doubted it would happen, and that idea of community and family is the foundation of what Augusta Ranch is today.”
By 2015, Rea and Hudek had already worked together on a company that packaged gift cards for golf courses. When it became clear Augusta Ranch was going to go through another ownership change the following year, the pair decided to take matters into their own hands. They laid out a business plan that called for the Augusta Ranch Homeowners Association to buy the course, then lease it to Rea and Hudek, who also became part-owners of the property. The deal closed in 2017, and the facility has since been transformed into a model modern public facility.
“When I first got involved with Don on Augusta Ranch, it was this par-61 course with a golf shop/snack bar in the same building and a driving range,” Hudek says. “Don’s such an energetic, visionary person, and he really saw what Augusta Ranch could be – how to expand the footprint of the business without expanding the physical footprint of the property.”
That vision led to a new building for the golf shop, allowing the restaurant to expand from a snack bar to the Scratch Pub & Grill – which now grosses $1.5 million a year. In 2019, the facility added 21 Toptracer bays to its range and has jumped from $100,000 in annual range revenue to $700,000. The area is now busy enough that Augusta Ranch has added a second food & beverage operation, called Buckets, to serve golfers playing and practicing on the range.
Augusta Ranch has also added PGA Jr. League teams, Op36 programming and PGA HOPE events. The facility has five full-time PGA of America Professionals on staff, with another two offering part-time coaching.
“Curt knew my vision for Augusta Ranch and what I felt like we were supposed to do there, and we basically decided to become our own funnel by bringing in Toptracer and seeing if we could get people who didn’t already play golf to come out and try it,” Rea says. “And it has been booming ever since. It’s like a darn amusement park out there with all the activities we have going on. We have weekly glow-ball tournaments, we’ve had tournaments that combined golf and fishing, and we raise plenty of money for charities.
“The mission of Augusta Ranch has come to fruition. You know, a little par-61 in east Mesa is getting pretty well-known, and the things that are happening there have been good for my soul.”
When Rea is home, he is energized by spending time at Augusta Ranch. He also enjoys spending time at home and at his cabin in northern Arizona with his wife, Karen, and following the exploits of his adult children, Don III and Katie.