You can also call them coach

The men and women who spend their lives maintaining and improving golf courses have an abiding passion for their work. They also share an affection for the game of golf. And some are sharing their love of the game by serving as high school coaches, and helping their players grow and mature, not just as golfers but as people.

Steve Hammon is starting his 27th year as the superintendent at Traverse City Country Club in Traverse City, Michigan. He is also the golf coach at Frankfort High School.

An Iowa native, Hammon started playing golf at age 7. After his family moved to Michigan, he played high school golf and spent a year competing for Grand Rapids Community College before enrolling in the two-year turf management program at Michigan State.

He was named golf coach at Frankfort High when his predecessor retired from teaching and coaching. Hammon’s first season as coach in the spring of 2020 never really got started. The season was cancelled because of the pandemic (Michigan has a spring high school golf season), denying him the chance to coach his second son, Luke, who was a senior that year. His youngest son, Elliott, is currently on the roster. His oldest son, Evan, is also a golfer.

Hammon notes that his ties to the golf industry have allowed him to provide certain amenities for his team.

“I can make phone calls to driving ranges that are in our area and on our way to a match when maybe (the host team) doesn’t have a range,” he says. “Or play practice rounds around the region … access through our golf professional with great pricing. I’ve got access to flight scope, we can look at the smash factor, clubhead speed, ball speed spin rate distance, everything, and really let the kids see the data.”

Hammon has a 45-minute drive to work each day, so finding time to coach while still taking care of responsibilities at the club is a balancing act, one that would be impossible to pull off without support from his greens committee and board of directors, and, of course, his staff.

“I have a great team here at the club,” says Hammon, who also serves on the GCSAA board of directors. “I’ve got a brand new two-year experienced equipment manager (Mitch Hunt) in our shop and he’s doing an amazing job on our equipment. My assistant (Dan Spoor) has been here longer than I’ve been here. He’s doing an amazing job leading the team and the second assistant (Scott Werly) is a seasonal guy. I count on those people, and I tell them, I need them to lead when I can’t be here to lead. I’m counting on them to work hard, and be responsible, and communicate.”

Hammon says one of the most enjoyable aspects of coaching is listening to his players talk to each other on trips to matches.

“I just sit and listen to the kids talking about life or school,” he says. “There’s the rite of package with the upperclassmen trying to lead the underclassmen and help with classes and projects or help with their games. It’s really a nice fun, private little world listening to the kids in the car to and from our matches. They make me much younger than I am.”

Golf is virtually instilled in Luke Rogers’s DNA. Rogers is the assistant superintendent at Florence (South Carolina) Country Club, where he manages daily operations for superintendent Richard Brown. The job is just one of Rogers’s ties to the game. He was drawn to the sport during his growing-up years, when he was playing golf with his friends at Marlboro Country Club in Bennettsville, South Carolina. He then played golf at Marlboro County High School.

“When I was a kid, we grew up going to the golf course every day,” Rogers recalls. “Playing every day and hanging out at the golf course, it was kind of where we went. But there’s not many kids playing golf at Marlboro Country Club anymore.”

Last spring, Rogers took the job as boys’ golf coach at his alma mater at the request of his predecessor, as a way of giving back and as a way of generating interest in the sport that has meant so much to him. He makes the 40-mile trip to Bennettsville when his work day is done. “To me, it doesn’t seem more or less like a job,” he says. “The coaching part, I enjoy it a lot. I enjoy it so it doesn’t seem like a very stressful thing.”

When it comes to instruction, Rogers focuses on the basics.

“My team (which last year consisted of six players) is pretty inexperienced,” he says. “Mostly, it’s guys that have just started or have only been playing a year or so. Most of it is beginner-type things that I’ve been teaching them. I like to focus on putting and chipping because, to me, that’s the most important part of golf, putting and chipping. But I do help with the swings.”

Rogers, who is just 26 years old, admits he didn’t know what to expect when he first took on his coaching job. But he is embracing his role as a coach and mentor.

“I think the kids really like me, so I’m excited to continue doing what I’m doing, coaching the kids and hopefully grow the sport here in Marlboro County,” he says. “It is very satisfying, and in the future, it’s going to continue to be satisfying and be more and more satisfying as I go. I think I’m making an impact on these kids’ lives.”

David Ferris views golf through the eyes of a golf course architect. Ferris is a partner in Sanford Ferris Golf Course Design in Jupiter, Florida, and a past president of the Florida Chapter of the American Society of Landscape Architects. He’s also the assistant girls’ golf coach at William T. Dwyer High School in Palm Beach Gardens. His wife, Emily, who teaches at the school, is the head coach.

Teaching and coaching runs through Ferris’s family tree. His father was a golf professional in upstate New York, where he grew up, and his brother is a coach. Ferris has also coached youth soccer.

“It’s kind of following in the family footsteps,” he says. “I really, really enjoy working with all the girls. I’m not a swing coach. I try to help them more with strategy and having coached soccer you can kind of bring that coaching mentality into golf a little bit. You can create the team atmosphere and that kind of thing.”

To help educate his players about course management, Ferris creates yardage books for them. “I cater them to more of (his players’) skill level,” he says. “I’ll point out 150 to 180 yards off the tee which is going to be about where they drive it, where they should hit it.”

Ferris’s first season with the program was 2020 when the team had difficulty gaining access to a golf course because of the pandemic.

“The clubs around here weren’t opening their doors,” he says. “So, that year we practiced on the outfield of the baseball field on the school campus. The girls used mats. It wasn’t great, but there was no damage to their playing surface. We played our matches at a public course, and we had to pay for each round, both for our team and the other team since we were hosting.”

That first team Ferris was a part of featured a roster consisting largely of freshmen plus one senior and one sophomore. But the program has made tremendous strides since then.

This past fall, the girls’ golf team became the first girls’ team from Dwyer to qualify for the Florida High School Athletic Association state tournament. And it was Ferris’s daughter Ellie who brought her team across the finish line at the regional tournament that qualified it for the state event.

Ellie Ferris was the last player from Dwyer left on the golf course; her four teammates had completed their rounds as she played her finals stretch of holes. Teammates were following her progress on their phones while her father could only wait. At that point, the Panthers were in fourth place. Three teams would advance. “(The other girls) were saying ‘Coach, you can’t watch, you have to go in the clubhouse, you can’t watch,’” Ferris says.

Ferris found a sanctuary indoors while Ellie finished her round. She turned in a score low enough to give her team third place and a spot in the state tournament, although she didn’t know it immediately.

“I saw her after her round when she was signing her card,” Ferris says. “She was her normal self, and I asked her, ‘Do you know what you did?’ She had no clue. I told her ‘You played so well that your team is going to states.’”

Rick Woelfel is a Philadelphia-based writer and frequent Golf Course Industry contributor.