Immigrant to incredible

Muhammad Ali has traveled six times between Sacramento, California, and Ghourghushti, Pakistan.

The two cities are on almost exactly opposite sides of the globe and, at first glance, they have little in common. Sacramento is home to more than 520,000 people within its city limits and is its state’s capital. Ghourghushti, on the other hand, is home to between 40,000 and 50,000 people, and isn’t the capital of its province (that would be Lahore), its district (Attock), or even its region (Hazro). Sacramento is relatively close to water, less than a couple hours from the Pacific Ocean if traffic is moving. Other than the nearly 2,000-mile-long Indus River, Ghourghushti is landlocked for days, almost 800 miles from where the Gulf of Oman meets the Arabian Sea. And the sports and culture! Big difference between the California combination of basketball, baseball and surfing, and the Pakistani preferences of cricket and bull riding. But still, both can be stiflingly hot, especially during the summer. Separated by a dozen time zones, their 12-hour clocks are identical most of the year.

And they are the only two cities the 35-year-old Ali has called home.

Ali was still a teenager in search of a new life with his wife when he boarded multiple planes for his first transcontinental journey. He had never tended to the agronomic needs of a golf course — had never even walked up a fairway or across a green — but he knew plenty about farming the land, he knew how to work, and he knew enough to ask plenty of questions. He still asks plenty of questions.

Ali launched his turf journey a little more than 15 years ago. He spoke no English back then. In just a decade and a half, he has climbed the proverbial ladder from a night waterer, to a crew member capable of mastering any job, to an assistant superintendent, to a superintendent tasked with one golf course, then two, then three. He is now in charge of 54 holes across three public courses, each of them owned by the city of Sacramento and managed by Morton Golf.

How much higher can he climb? His career mentors say his brain and work ethic could land him at just about any private country club, and Ali has never placed limits on himself. To answer that question, though — and to understand the drive, passion and discipline necessary for Ali to flourish quickly — we need to travel across those dozen time zones.

Ghourghushti isn’t that different, after all, from Sacramento — or from so many other cities across the United States.

Ali learned about tending to the earth early, but not as a seasonal laborer on a golf course or on a landscape crew, or thanks to a high school or college courseload.

He just stepped outside and walked across his family’s farm.

“I was on the farm every day,” Ali says. “Even before I started school.”

His father, Sher Bahdur Khan, and his uncle, Sardar Bahdur Khan, were part of at least the fifth generation of their family — their tribe, Ali says — to till the soil. They grew tomatoes, potatoes, wheat, grain, corn, squash, peppers and the cash crop that is tobacco, all on about 4½ acres. They milked cows, too, normally between five and 10, enough milk for the family and to sell to neighbors.

“I remember riding a horse in elementary school,” Ali says. “I wasn’t ‘working’ working, but I would watch them. And when I was in middle school and high school, I would do little things on the farm with them after school. Even in middle school, I knew how to milk cows, how to feed them, how to clean the barn, how to pick vegetables, how to harvest corn — the little stuff we do we every day.”

Ali learned how to work by watching, then by doing. Cows needed to be milked and crops needed to be planted, monitored, picked and sold. His father and uncle did those things – and so did Ali.

He would probably still be in Pakistan doing those things if not for his father’s health and the country’s medical insurance infrastructure. His father endured dialysis treatments for years, driving more than an hour each way from the farm to the nearest hospital. Medical insurance in Pakistan has improved since Khan started his treatments, but “it’s still in the very early stages,” Ali says, “and you have to pay money to get any kind of medical treatment. And if you don’t have any money, sorry, you cannot get treatment.”

That sparked Ali and his wife — whose family originally emigrated to Sacramento in the 1970s before returning to Pakistan — to consider a move to the United States. If he could become a citizen, his family could later move in with them, and his father could receive better medical treatment.

Ali and his wife had married in January 2005, and started working on his visa application almost immediately with the U.S. Embassy in Islamabad. Already a U.S. citizen, she sponsored his application. The process lasted almost three years — during which time she moved to Sacramento and gave birth to their first child, a son named Uzair.

He received a call from the Embassy during the fall of 2007, that his visa application had been approved. He picked up his passport and was free to travel to the United States.

After a series of flights, he arrived on Dec. 11.

The first seven months in the country were a blur. Ali met his son for the first time, and landed his first job, then his second job, then his third job. And they were jobs, not a career.

“I was working at a car stereo shop,” he says. “My father-in-law knew somebody.” For $35 a day, Ali swept the store, loaded and unloaded whatever deliveries came in and went out, and helped whenever the store migrated to a local flea market. “I did that for a couple months and then I started working with another guy. He hired me at $50 per day. We were selling area rugs. My job was to clean his store, unload and load his truck. Area rugs — man, are they heavy.”

Ali received another financial bump at his third job that first year in Sacramento — all the way to $60 per day selling cell phone accessories. “By that time, I knew a few English words,” he says. “‘How are you,’ ‘good morning,’ I knew numbers.”

But $60 a day wasn’t enough to provide a life for his family, and it didn’t provide any upward mobility. An uncle, Muhammad Nawaz, worked at Haggin Oaks Golf Complex, a popular 36-hole facility in Sacramento. He suggested Ali apply for an open crew position and helped him land an interview. Well, interview in the loosest sense of the word.

“There wasn’t a whole lot of conversation,” remembers Sam Samuelson, who worked as a superintendent for City of Sacramento golf courses from 1994 to 2011, and today is the superintendent at WildHawk Golf Club, also in Sacramento. “I had to explain to him, ‘This is what I need you to do,’ and he shook his head to say, ‘I can do that.’

“We turned him into a night waterman and he was just phenomenal. We still had old quick coupler irrigation at that golf course and he was the best I’ve ever seen do it. He had never touched it before, I don’t think ever. His uncle went out there with him one night and showed him how to do it and that was it. He didn’t need to be showed more than once.”

Ali realized that thanks to his farming background and tireless work ethic, golf course maintenance could provide stability and a steady income. He applied for a second crew position at Timber Creek Golf Club in Roseville, about 14 miles northeast of Haggin Oaks. He was hired there, too, and was suddenly working 16 hours most days. Mornings and afternoons at Timber Creek for superintendent Jim Ferrin, afternoons and nights at Haggin Oaks for Samuelson.

“Employees can be headaches sometimes,” Ferrin says. “Finding people can be difficult and you don’t really have the dedication. I don’t remember him missing a day. Mr. Reliable.” Ferrin still regrets that he couldn’t work longer with Ali. “I’ve always said he’s the one who got away,” Ferrin says. “But it’s a good thing that he got away because it made him strive for other and greater things.”

With his visa secured, family growing and career starting to blossom, Ali seemed to be situated perfectly for years to come in late 2008. The financial world then crumbled, and the economy crashed.

Incredibly, he navigated that mess even better than his then-nascent golf course maintenance career.

“I was able to buy my first house in 2010,” he says. “The prices were so low. There were four houses next to me and nobody was buying them.” He had saved enough in just three years in the country to purchase a three-bedroom, two-bathroom home with his brother-in-law, Imran Khan, for $68,000. “He had one kid, I had one kid, we paid cash,” Ali says. They all lived there, together, for five years before reselling for a comfortable profit.

Around the same time that he purchased his first home, he managed perhaps his greatest accomplishment since arriving in the United States: becoming a U.S. citizen.

“That was the one thing I wanted to do,” he says. Earning U.S. citizenship would allow him an opportunity to apply and be hired for better municipal positions. He would also be able to welcome his mother to live with him — his father, whose illness spurred Ali’s move, died in 2015. “And I wanted to know more about this country. Getting to know the country, getting the full benefit, adopting the culture — this country has given me so much, and if I’m going to be here, I’m as much American as I am Pakistani. This country played a big role in my success. Embracing that was part of it.”

The next six years included one highlight after another: landing back on the day shift at Haggin Oaks … working under superintendents Jim Daly, who encouraged him to pursue his Certified Applicator Certificate, and then Stacy Baker … not only learning English but gaining comfortable fluency … welcoming his second son, Muazzam, and his daughter, Mahira … and, in October 2017, being hired as superintendent of Bing Maloney Golf Course.

Ali increased his responsibilities, from groundskeeper to irrigation technician to de facto assistant superintendent, soaking up information “like a sponge, just wanting to learn the business” Baker says, and impressing all the right Morton Golf decisionmakers.

“Stacy didn’t tell me anything, but I think he went to the ownership and he fought for me,” Ali says. The superintendent job was not without lots of challenges — a 70-year-old irrigation system spread across 27 holes chief among them — and he jumped at it.

Less than three years later, he landed the same position at Bartley Cavanaugh Golf Course, and, after the retirement early last year of superintendent Bob Cline, at 9-hole William Land Park Golf Course, too.

“I talked to a couple people in the industry and they all said, ‘Don’t do three golf courses, you don’t have a family life.’” Ali says. “But I decided to try it. Honestly, it’s not everybody’s thing, but I can do it with the help of three very strong assistants and a couple really strong people on each crew.”

He counts just six crew members including assistant Brandon Salinas at Land Park, six including assistant Matt Smith at Bartley Cavanaugh, and 11 including assistant Leo Moreno at Bing Maloney — 23 total, with four or five seasonal workers across all three courses.

Maintaining golf courses today, he says, is far easier than managing the family farm even a couple decades ago.

“Especially back in the day in Pakistan, the technology was not there,” he says. “Now I have an iPad to water my greens. It was a different story then. I didn’t have a cell phone until I was in high school — it wasn’t available, or it wasn’t affordable. I was in the countryside. I remember my mom used to cook on fire. We never had gas growing up. It was a different life.”

This is a dream fulfilled, a success story still in the middle chapters. Someday, Ali says, he would like to own a little farm here. Buy some land, do some of what he did growing up, “just for fun” and some peace of mind. Until then, there is plenty to do on every golf course.

“I’m really proud of him,” says Ferrin, who still talks regularly with Ali and recently helped him during an elementary school field trip at Bing Maloney. “So proud. Not only is he growing his career, he’s growing golf. The man has made all the right decisions.”

“I’ve been a superintendent for 45 years and I’ve been working on golf courses for 53 years,” Samuelson says. “I’ve known many superintendents, but I’ve never seen anybody with the dedication this guy has. I’ve gone out to play his golf course with a couple buddies of mine on a Sunday. I’ll leave the course at 1 o’clock and he’s still out there working. No superintendent does that.

“Words can’t say enough. He may be one of the next superstars in this business. I’m not kidding. The guy is that good.”

What is the secret? What does it take to travel halfway around the world with next to nothing, to succeed on every rung of the ladder, to thrive in a new country and a new career?

“There are lots of things we can do, people just don’t try,” Ali says. “I go for it. I try things normal people don’t try.

“Once you decide what you want to do, it’s just easy.”

Matt LaWell is Golf Course Industry’s managing editor.