I hope you enjoy these thoughts, they are tempered by 45 years of planning, building, growing and operating a golf facility. My experience started back in high school when I was actually designing a routing plan for our first golf course, well maybe not REALLY the first. See when my brother and I were too young for dad to bring us to the golf course we decided to build a golf course in our yard. It was a 9 hole bounce it off the house kind of thing. Well, dad made us modify it bit! Anyway that is where the thought process started; with orange juice cans and tree branches for flag sticks and a push type reel mower on a 200+ yard executive course!
I was able to use my Walnut Creek routing plan with minor changes to complete the layout for the Walnut Creek Course before I was in college. My degree is in Agronomy/turf management. I tried to get a second major in L.A. but this was not possible with the schedule of lab times and doing it in the mandated 4 years that I needed to follow. I wish I could have continued with the landscape to further my education but I had to enter the school of hard knocks after graduation back at the family course. I don’t regret it in the slightest!
Build it and they will come seemed to be the mantra of the 90’s and there were no less than 4 potential new courses to be built within our 15 mile radius so we put our name in the ring also. We were the ones to make it happen, glad the others did not materialize. So now we have a 36 hole complex, really more golf than this community needs with the other 3 public and 2 private courses; but we are still surviving, not necessarily thriving but still having fun doing it!
I must acknowledge that without the wonderful and dedicated wife and children that I have, there would not be a Walnut Creek much less a Club Run Course. We could not have succeeded without all of them. They along with grand kids are still living on premise so that is all a mother and father could ask for! Certainly we could not have done it without a very hard working and dedicated staff, they are the ones that keep it in tip top shape ALL the time!
visit our web sites: walnutcreekgolf.com , clubrungolf.com and easternindianawifi.com