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This past Monday, before the PGA Championship, Ben Cook was going through his practice routine on the range at Kiawah Island before looking up to realize he had two powerful neighbors.
Behind him stood Bryson DeChambeau. Ahead of him, Tony Finau.
Cook, a 27-year-old from Caledonia, Michigan, and one of 20 PGA club professionals who competed last week by virtue of their finish in the PGA Professional Championship, acknowledges he looked out of place in comparison with the tour stars. However, that didn’t stop his name from floating around the leaderboard near the game’s elite across four windswept days. He parred his last two holes Friday to make the cut on the number before shooting 3-under-par 69 in the third round, at times threatening the top 20. He finished T44.
His strokes gained off the tee heading into the final day stood at No. 3, one spot behind the video game-esque DeChambeau. Jon Rahm, Rory McIlroy, Dustin Johnson, Justin Thomas, Collin Morikawa – all of them had either missed the cut or were otherwise trailing a man with two different gigs in the golf industry.
“It’s pretty surreal to be in that position,” said Cook, who was playing in his third consecutive PGA. “But the more opportunities I’ve had, the more I’ve gotten used to it.”
It’s special anytime a club professional makes the cut at the major championship, considering they aren’t putting a full-time effort toward competing on a grand stage against gifted athletes who obsess about every minute detail for years on end. Yet Cook’s performance stood out for two reasons.
The first is that his summer facility, John’s Island Club in Vero Beach, Florida, had three assistant professionals– Cook, Brett Walker and Tyler Collett – make it into the PGA Championship field, a first in the event’s history. And secondly, Cook is actively trying to become a professional golfer who lives solely off of earning paychecks with his play, not his instruction. He’s not the only John’s Island assistant in that position, in part because the facility has created the most unique club pro development system in the country.
Upward of 25 to 30 PGA-affiliated members, apprentices or interns are on staff at the 54-hole facility during the busier winter season, many of them annually rotating from outside operations to working inside the golf shop to instruction and running tournaments. A housing complex was built on site specifically to host the abnormally large club pro population. The playing ability of these individuals is high across the board and competition is encouraged as they also rapidly learn each aspect of the industry.
“I’m not aware of a single facility that staffs the way we staff,” said John’s Island director of golf Steve Hudson. “We really want people who are invested in the member experience, invested in their own career trajectory. When we find those people, we try to hold onto them.”
Cook graduated from Ferris State University’s PGA Golf Management program in 2017 where he also was a Division II All-American on the golf team. He had a mutual connection between one of his internship stops and Ken Weyand, the former John’s Island director of golf, so Cook decided to head south. The arrangement worked out well as Cook has continued to spend each winter in Florida before going back up to Yankee Springs Golf Course in Michigan in the summer where he serves as the full-time director of instruction.
“We had about 10 of my family and friends in their three-bedroom house. Every couch and bed was taken. They didn’t care at all, they just said, ‘The more the merrier, this is great.’ ”
Ben Cook
It’s common for PGA pros to have two seasonal jobs like Cook does, but he’s particularly fortunate to have John’s Island given his goal of trying to make it as a player. Cook works two days a week at the facility’s West Course, which is offsite from the 36-hole main property, and he has been more than supported by the John’s Island membership in his pursuit of playing professionally. That’s actually a gross understatement that applies to all of the assistant pros. When Collett qualified for the PGA Tour’s Puerto Rico Open earlier this year, the membership raised more than $12,000 to cover his expenses so he could fully experience life as a tour pro for a week. Collett didn’t spend all of the money and gave about $3,500 back, but when the three assistants all punched their ticket to Kiawah, another pool of money started and more than $135,000 was raised for their expenses this week and to be used in the future for other assistants with playing opportunities, educational experiences and more.
“The members have been overwhelmingly generous,” Collett said. “The fund they raised, it’s a great incentive for assistants to come to J.I., it’s a great selling point. It’s so overwhelming, I couldn’t even tell you.”
It’s not just money, as Cook will tell you. When he played in the 2019 PGA Championship, a John’s Island member with a house near Bethpage State Park offered it for the weekend.
“We had about 10 of my family and friends in their three-bedroom house,” Cook said. “Every couch and bed was taken. They didn’t care at all, they just said, ‘The more the merrier, this is great.’ ”
Cook currently has full status on the PGA Tour Latinoamérica and ranks No. 28 on the points list as he has his sights set on reaching the Korn Ferry Tour. If he were to make it, Cook says it would be the end of his day jobs. Collett, who works some 60 hours a week in peak season at John’s Island as the lead assistant at the West Course, is headed to Korn Ferry Q-School later this year after seeing a spike in his game.
Collett grew up in a small town outside of Charleston, West Virginia, and attended Eastern Kentucky University’s PGA Golf Management program. He won the PGM Jones Cup, an event where each university sends five of its best players, and was a player of the year three times amongst his aspiring club pros. After interning at the Country Club of York (in Pennsylvania), Collett had a mutual connection with Hudson at John’s Island and started going down in the fall of 2017 where he now works year round.
The West Course where Cook, Collett and Walker all work has an unmanned, grab-and-go pro shop and features one of the best practice facilities in Florida. In other words, the work is all outside with teaching, tournaments and being with membership.
“It’s a really hands-on job where even the head pro (J.P. Connelly) is outside with us all the time,” Collett said. “Most of us who work there are probably overqualified for the position we are in and the job they actually perform, but it’s such a unique experience and forming relationships with the membership, I think it’s worth it.”
Of the three who made the PGA Championship, Cook is identified as a free spirit who is rarely found having a bad day. Collett calls himself a fighter who offers every emotion possible on the golf course. And Walker, well, he is one of the more interesting human beings you will ever meet.
Coming from a small town in Northern California, Walker didn’t care for golf and didn’t play seriously until high school. He attended New Mexico State University’s PGA Golf Management program and walked on to the golf team there, where he won twice and made more than 40 starts. On the advice of PGA Tour player Cameron Tringale, Walker headed to Jupiter, Florida, so he could be around other good players while working winters at the Fox Club, a small private course in nearby Palm City.
Summers have seen Walker head up to Conway Farms Golf Club near Chicago and Sunnybrook Golf Club near Philadelphia, but two years ago he did something completely different: He taught himself to be a bartender at a small Italian restaurant.
Walker had expected to work at the Fox Club in summer 2019 but the club’s ownership changed and the staff was laid off, putting Walker out of work and not knowing where to go. That’s when he moved to upstate New York into a friend’s guest house and showed up to Di Prinzio’s Kitchen where he told them he knew how to bartend.
“I kind of lied, but I knew if I got in the door that I could learn,” Walker said.
Walker went home and scoured YouTube for hours, compiling about 20 index cards that described how to make each drink he needed to know. That same drive carries over to his golf game where he calls himself a byproduct of constant improvement, waking up before 4 a.m. to read books like Secrets of the Millionaire Mind before hitting balls. He quotes investor Charlie Munger in saying, “To get what you want, you have to deserve what you want. The world is not yet a crazy enough place to reward a bunch of undeserving people.”
Walker found his way to John’s Island this past winter and now goes back to Sunnybrook for the summer. His bartending days are behind him for now. As for playing professionally, Walker seemed less hurried to leave the club pro ranks.
“When I saw Ben and Tyler made the PGA Championship, I almost had a sigh of relief,” Walker said. “I had played a lot of golf with them and knew how good they were, so to be in the same context as some of the best club pros in the country with them, it was a real honor.”
Although each of the players in the John’s Island contingent has a different story and a different personality, the one trait they share is gratitude to the facility and the chance to take their careers in the directions they want.
It’s not something every facility could offer, so John’s Island deserves the headlines it received this past week.
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