So, how about a nice, warm group hug for the hardest-working and most under-appreciated and underpaid people in golf – the beleaguered assistant pros and outside-operations staffs and the maintenance teams that work nonstop in these days of nonstop golf at clubs around the country where tee times are booked straight through from 7 a.m. until dark.
That weekly 8:30 a.m. Sunday Mixed Shotgun Scramble Hullabaloo for 108 players finds the ops staff assembling the 54 carts starting before 5:30 a.m. Assembling means putting four bottles of water in each iced-up cart canteen, hanging a wet towel behind each seat, placing a dry towel onto each seat and affixing the names of the cart riders onto the front of the cart. Then, as the players pull into the staging area, the ops kids remove bags from cars and strap them onto the carts.
Meanwhile, the night before, after their day’s work presumably was done, the assistant pros worked OT as they tracked down the latest handicaps and indexes for those 108 players, created scorecards and scoresheets, made the pairings – mindful, of course, that Millie never wants to play with Sally, and Jeff won’t play with high-handicappers – printed out individual hole locations and all the special rules for the Shotgun Scramble Hullabaloo, particularly the acceptable length for gimme putts.
All in a day’s work?
Not really.
Once the Shotgun Scramble players finish their rounds, regular play begins with foursomes booked eight minutes apart … and then maybe the club has scheduled one of those Nine-and-Dine Money Makers for 5 p.m., which, of course, requires more scorecards and water bottles and towels and pin sheets and rules sheets.
Whew!
Welcome to the world of the director of golf, the person charged with making this all work, with coordinating a broad golf program/schedule overrun with far too many events – and, in too many cases, not enough support staff to manage all that work.
Oh, yes, and charged with placating irate members who clicked onto ForeTees two minutes late at 6:02 a.m., only to find the first starting time available to them seven days later was at 2:42 p.m.
With COVID, with so many golfers now working virtually, has come 24/7 golf – and there’s no end in sight as rounds at public and private courses everywhere continue to multiply. Some 120,000 rounds will be played this year at the 36-hole Sandridge Club, a very well-groomed public course in Vero Beach, Florida. “The more, the merrier …. it’s all great for growing the game,” Sandridge director of golf Bela Nagy said.
True … but.
The downsides of the golf boom are many.
“We strive to give our assistants a 40-hour week with two days off, but that gets difficult when the tee sheets get overcrowded during the holidays and spring breaks. Plus, we’ve had to manage all the COVID-related protocols ...”
Steve Hudson
Maintenance teams now find themselves showing up at 4 a.m. or earlier, under the gun to get courses ready for those early morning shotguns and member games – and clubs now schedule lucrative corporate and charitable outings for days when they traditionally have been closed to give the course and the staff a day of rest.
The innocent victims of the post-COVID golf boom, though, are golf pros and assistant pros. They mostly work ridiculously long hours for low wages, rarely get to play golf on courses now overrun with member activity, have lost their sensitive work-life balance – and are turning away from the game in growing numbers. And the younger generation no longer sees the position of golf professional as a desirable occupation. Enrollment in collegiate professional golf management programs is down by 65 percent across the board.
“When I was a freshman at Mississippi State in 1990,” Nagy said, “there were 150 students in the PGM program. Twenty-five graduated with me, but today only three of us are in the golf business, and just two of us are golf pros.”
Jeff Voorheis has been the executive director of the PGA’s Metropolitan Section for some 15 years and fears that the burnout factor is forcing pros out of the business. “We used to see a turnover of one or two pros in our section each year,” Voorheis said, “but this year more than a dozen pros walked away for a combination of reasons, mostly burnout but a few because of age. Three of our pros in their early 50s said they no longer could do their jobs – and left.”
Voorheis says that the situation with assistant pros has reached crisis proportions.
“One of our clubs – a club with a history of paying assistants top dollar and with a history of sending assistants off to top head pro positions – needed a new first assistant this year and posted a job application on our website. Would you believe that the club received not one resume … not one application for the position? It was mind-numbing to me, but that’s what’s happening in golf these days.”
Assistant golf pros tend to lead rather nomadic lives, working at Northern clubs in the summer and then fleeing to the South and West for the winter. All for jobs that pay less than $15 per hour without benefits at most clubs. In the pre-boom days, they got to play a lot of golf. For many of them now, not so much — if any. And finding affordable lodging down South or in the desert during the winter months is almost impossible.
“When you make $13 or $14 an hour without benefits and your rent each week runs about $150,” said one young assistant pro, “you need a second job to make ends meet.”
Steve Hudson, the director of golf at John’s Island Club, a 54-hole private facility in Vero Beach, recruits as many as 25 seasonal assistants annually to handle all of the duties mentioned above; two of the club’s courses are on the main club property along the ocean, and the third course – site of the 2015 USGA Mid-Amateur Championship – is five miles away in the Dunes.
“We strive to give our assistants a 40-hour week with two days off,” Hudson said, “but that gets difficult when the tee sheets get overcrowded during the holidays and spring breaks. Plus, we’ve had to manage all the COVID-related protocols – and each of our three courses has been shut down for extended periods at different times these past three years for re-grassing and other major maintenance. Managing the staff is a real balancing act.
“To be successful in any business, any industry, you must make sacrifices. My job is to ensure that those sacrifices will pay off for them down the road.”
As Hudson sets off on his recruiting trips during the first week of June, he carries a strong wild card with him. Three John’s Island Club assistant pros – Ben Cook, Tyler Collet and Brett Walker – qualified for the 2021 PGA Championship, and Collet played in the PGA again this month. Playing in major championships, or even minor and local events, is an expensive proposition.
Mindful of that, members of John’s Island – independent of the club – created what became a substantial assistants fund to pay for all tournament-related expenses, including travel, lodging, caddies, meals, etc., incurred by JI assistants.
“This fund has been a lifesaver for me,” Collet said from Tulsa, Oklahoma, site of the 2022 PGA. “No way I could chase my dream without the assistants fund.”
The week before the PGA, Collet worked a full five-day schedule in the John’s Island Club pro shop. He hit balls each morning before 7 o’clock, and raced around the course to play a fast 18 after the shop closed at 5 p.m. Collet shot 79-71 at Southern Hills and missed the cut but finished second among the 20 club pros in the field, then flew home so that he could play with two members Monday morning and return to work in the shop Tuesday at 8 a.m. “The life of the assistant pro,” he said, “you have to do what you have to do.”
Said Hudson, “The fund is a big selling point, not only for recruiting assistant pros but also retaining them. We can’t thank the members enough for their ongoing generosity to our pros.”
So, what is the message here?
It’s time for clubs everywhere to step up, to recognize that their golf staffs have been overwhelmed and mostly understaffed post-COVID, and that the almost bare-minimum wages and long hours are forcing pros to abandon the game and seek alternative careers.
Step up – and be counted!
The golf pros deserve better.
Mark Mulvoy was the managing editor and/or publisher of Sports Illustrated from 1984 to 1996. He now plays golf on all days that end in “y.”
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