By sean fairholm
Seattle Golf Club is in the midst of an extensive modernization, completely redoing four greens and remaking its bunkers, among other tweaks to a course that once hosted a Walker Cup, U.S. Amateur, U.S. Senior Amateur, Western Amateur and multiple Pacific Coast Amateurs. As you can imagine, modifying a historic layout requires a long-range planning committee and several years worth of foresight.
Recently, one of the members of that committee fell ill with terminal cancer. On his deathbed, a fellow committee member asked if he had any parting wisdom about the course changes he had worked on at length.
“No, I don’t,” the member said. “As long as you have Doxsie involved, you’ll be fine.”
That inherent trust hasn’t just been handed to Doug Doxsie, the 60-year-old head pro who has spent the past 27 years as Seattle Golf Club’s fearless leader and is one of only four head pros in the club’s illustrious 122-year history. Doxsie has earned it the hard way, owning his own golf shop, range and cart fleet – a practice that was once common but today is rarer than an albatross – while perfecting the lost art of the old-school golf pro.
His lengthy resume includes being a three-time Pacific Northwest Section Professional of the Year, a two-time Bill Strausbaugh Award winner for outstanding mentorship and a PGA Merchandiser of the Year for private facilities. A long career in section governance has recently led him to be the District 14 director on the PGA of America Board, a responsibility that has him providing a voice for thousands of club pros across both the Pacific Northwest and Southwest PGA sections.
When you think of a consummate professional with a fierce passion for all elements of running a golf operation, it’s hard to find anyone who fits the bill more than Doug Doxsie. That’s why he is the Global Golf Post Pro’s Pro of 2022, an honor that focuses on legends of the industry.
“Some serve to be selfish but Doug does it because he wants it done right,” said Greg Manley, the former longtime head pro at Meridian Valley. “He’s a servant leader. He’s never given up, he’s always been involved. That’s just who he is.”
Born and raised in Seattle, Doxsie came to golf later in childhood. He worked in the bag room at a small, nine-hole private club called Glen Acres Golf & Country Club and picked up tricks of the trade from PGA professionals Ted Naff and Paul Longwell. Developing into a talented player, Doxsie stayed close to home and played for the then-Division II University of Puget Sound where he was an All-American in 1982 and 1983, later becoming the first and only Logger golfer elected into the school’s athletic hall of fame.
Doxsie tried his hand at professional golf but didn’t make it far. Having earned a business degree in school, he figured his next move was to become a stockbroker.
That’s when he got a call that would change everything. Bill Tindall – the longtime pro at Seattle’s Broadmoor Golf Club who is known as the godfather of Pacific Northwest club pros – called Doxsie to see what his next move would be. When Doxsie told him about the stockbroker route, Tindall bristled at the idea.
“Oh, you don’t want to do that,” Doxsie remembers Tindall saying. “Be a golf pro, you’ll be great at it. Just try it for six months. Come work for me and see if you like it.”
Tindall owned his golf shop, which appealed to the business-savvy Doxsie. It was no surprise that Doxsie fell in love with merchandising and accounting, two areas he still handles on his own to this day. But becoming a passionate instructor was something Doxsie didn’t see coming.
“I just loved teaching, and I grew a following at Broadmoor,” Doxsie said.
He worked at Broadmoor under Tindall for four years. By the age of 27, Doxsie had his own head pro job at Meridian Valley where he hired Manley as an assistant. Raising a young family at the time, Doxsie meshed with the vibrant family club and played a great deal of competitive golf. He was there for nearly six years.
“I probably never would have left,” Doxsie said. “But Seattle Golf Club is a crème de la crème job up here.”
First designed by two-time U.S. Amateur champion Chandler Egan, Seattle Golf Club is considered one of the pearls of the Pacific Northwest. It’s a heavily seasonal membership as most of the members are older and head south for the winter months, but the golf season is lengthy with a robust tournament program. Nestled amongst gigantic douglas firs, the course and club is quintessential Seattle golf.
When Doxsie got the call in late 1994, it was an offer he couldn’t reject. He took it and ran with it. Although his predecessors didn’t teach much, Doxsie gave around 600 lessons in his first year and has never stopped teaching.
Dan Lyon drove up to the clubhouse on a cold morning in February of 1997 with hopes of booking a lesson. Doxsie took out his notebook – he still uses the same type of book today – and asked how many lessons Lyon wanted.
“I said, ‘Put me down for every Wednesday until I can kick your ass,’” Lyon remembers. “We laughed and that was the start of our friendship. I’m still taking lessons from him. And over the years, sometimes it was a lesson, sometimes it was just catching up on life. He was always so generous with his time. You never felt like he was rushed or needed to go anywhere.
“If you go down to the range and see him teaching a student, even if you are a close friend, he isn’t going to start a conversation with you. He’s dialed in to that student. He’s never distracted, talking to other people. There’s a lot of activity going on with guys joking, having fun. But when he’s with you, he’s really with you.”
Mentorship has also been a critical component of his career. At least 16 of Doug Doxsie’s assistants have gone on to become head professionals or attain other high-ranking jobs in the industry.
And that relentless attention to detail is the defining trait of Doxsie’s career. Manley remembers Doxsie telling him “these shirts don’t have a voice” when it comes to presenting apparel – perfectly folded, or else – in the golf shop. And when it comes to owning the shop, range and golf cart fleet, Doxsie’s relentless numbers-crunching and problem solving figured out paths to make it work when other pros around the country had to cede control of their operation.
“You’re paying employee healthcare, retirement,” Manley said of owning a shop. “On top of being a golf professional, you have to be a business owner who is savvy, smart. You have to shop insurance, make deals with golf cart companies – all in the name of making that work for you and your family.”
Doxsie hasn’t shied away from tough decisions. When the club’s caddie program ran into an issue because caddie fees were more expensive than cart fees, leaving caddies sitting around and unable to make money, Doxsie created a caddie subsidy fund supported by members. The caddie fee was brought down to $20 per round, lower than the cart fee, but the caddies were paid a higher rate through the subsidy fund. He created the program knowing it would decrease his cart revenue, but the health of the caddie program was critically important. It’s an annual routine for multiple caddies from SGC to earn an Evans Scholarship, often to the University of Washington. That pairs with a junior program of 35-50 juniors actively participating – back when he started, there used to be virtually none.
Mentorship has also been a critical component of his career. At least 16 of Doxsie’s assistants have gone on to become head professionals or attain other high-ranking jobs in the industry.
“That came from Bill Tindall because he had a long career of advancing assistants,” Doxsie said. “I always thought, ‘That’s really cool, I have to do that.’ I wanted to give back and make sure these guys and gals are successful.”
He’s enjoyed it so much that he has done it on the largest scale possible. It started when Doxsie was at Broadmoor, one of the professionals, Ron Hagen, implored him to chair the chapter and section assistant committee.
“You need to be in governance, that’s how you will go somewhere in your career,” Doxsie remembers Hagen telling him.
“I’ve had other opportunities over the years, but this place is really special. It’s home for us … I’ve lasted this long, so something must be going good. My key still works so that’s always a good sign.”
doug doxsie
Doxsie climbed the ladder, first becoming a chapter officer, then a chapter board member officer, then a section board member officer, then each chair in the section and eventually section president. Even after being president, he was always the chairman of some committee or task force.
“I love helping other pros, helping our industry,” Doxsie said. “One thing all my jobs have done is allow me to do that. They want me to be involved and be a section leader. I’ve just never stopped.”
It all led to a three-year term as the District 14 director on the PGA of America Board. Doxsie is currently in the last of those three years and considers his term an enormous responsibility to thousands of club pros out west.
“It’s been fascinating because the PGA of America is such a big business,” Doxsie said. “I’ve learned a lot and have hopefully made some contributions along the way.”
This is the career Doxsie always wanted, and he’s not going to give it up. His kids were toddlers when he started; now they are 30 and 27 years old living in the Seattle area.
“I’ll probably ride this into my retirement,” Doxsie said. “I’ve had other opportunities over the years, but this place is really special. It’s home for us … I’ve lasted this long, so something must be going good. My key still works so that’s always a good sign.”
But one day, when he does go, Doxsie may be considered right alongside Tindall as the godfather of Pacific Northwest golf.
Lyon described Doxsie’s influence best: “When Doug leaves, we’re going to need at least two or three people to replace him.”
Top: Doug Doxsie (second from right) with Seattle Golf Club members on a recent golf trip