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By Kurt Kragthorpe

The 2012 U.S. Amateur Public Links has a place in history as the first United States Golf Association event staged in Utah. The match-play bracket included future PGA Tour winners Bryson DeChambeau, Xander Schauffele and Talor Gooch.

And there’s much more lasting significance. The Publinks at Soldier Hollow Golf Course served as Eric “Doc” Iverson’s introduction to volunteer opportunities in golf. Now immersed in the game as a rules official, Iverson is the 2021 winner of the Utah Section PGA’s Wesley Ruff Golf Citizen of the Year award.

It all started when Iverson noticed a call for Publinks volunteers in Fairways magazine. After retiring as a high school principal in his native California, he had moved to Orem, where his mother and sister lived.

His primary role during the tournament was as a shuttle driver, taking golfers from the hotel to the course. “It was good fun,” he said. “That’s what got me hooked on the golf thing.”

“Hooked” means Iverson spends 50-plus days on the golf course as a rules official from March through September in a role he relishes. He’s “amazed how appreciative the players are of you being out there … from high school all the way up to the professional level.”

Iverson added, “Golf is a fraternity of people, men and women. It’s not that way in a lot of sports. You meet lifelong friends in the game.”

Now, about that nickname. It turns out that the former principal and current rules official skirted a requirement as a high school cross country runner, signing a doctor’s name on the form for a physical exam. His coach played along, calling him “Doc” in what became a permanent moniker.

By Kurt Kragthorpe

The recent renovation of Alpine Country Club gave Superintendent Jake Ebner and his staff renewed direction in their care of the golf course, but that’s really nothing new. Ebner’s crew outlines an area of emphasis every year.

“We always come up with something new,” Ebner said.

The strategy is working. Ebner is the Utah Section PGA’s Superintendent of the Year for private facilities in 2021, a year after receiving the same award from the Utah Chapter of the Golf Course Superintendents Association of America.

Alpine was showcased this year as the host of the 123^rd Utah State Amateur, giving contestants a glimpse of Ebner’s standards. He strives to create “tournament conditions every day,” so that an event such as the State Am doesn’t require extraordinary preparation.

Alpine is known for an avid golf membership that expects high-level conditioning. Ebner is no different. “I’m a fairly decent golfer,” he said, “and even when I go out to play, I want it to be the best possible conditions.”

Advances in technology and equipment have aided Ebner during his 15 years as Alpine’s director of agronomy. The challenge stems from wind that blows down American Fork Canyon and disrupts overnight watering patterns. “It takes a lot of hand watering to keep everything consistent,” he said.

The staff’s biggest innovation in 2021 was regulating the growth of the greens during the day, because afternoon players want the same, fresh-cut speed of the morning. One wrinkle for 2022 will be the use of wetting agents on the fairways.

Photo: Bradford Schaub, Alpine Country Club

By Kurt Kragthorpe

Steve Carter walked away from his interview for the superintendent’s job at Cedar Ridge Golf Course fearing that Cedar City administrators were seeking someone with much more experience.

Now, 18 years later after landing the job, Carter probably has enough material to fill a book about his experiences at Cedar Ridge.

The main characters in that story? Prairie dogs and sprinkler pipes. The path that has taken Carter to the Utah Section PGA’s Superintendent of the Year award for public courses has been riddled with holes of various shapes and sizes. Everything looks much smoother now on a layout that Carter describes as “one of the hidden gems of the state of Utah.”

Carter initially worked at Logan River Golf Course while attending Utah State and spent four years as an assistant to Randy Oldham at the Logan Country Club. Oldham won this award in 2020.

If he were a PGA professional, Carter would be a great candidate for the Bill Strasbaugh Award for club relations, based on his work with city and state agencies in addressing Cedar Ridge’s issues with irrigation and prairie dog infestation. The shorter version of those stories is that Carter’s cooperation with government entities, including the Utah Dept. of Natural Resources, has steadily increased Cedar Ridge’s playability level.

Carter cites “just a great opportunity to work with all those organizations.”

He’s also thankful to veteran pros John Evans and Jared Barnes for being so supportive of the superintendent’s role at Cedar Ridge.

By Kurt Kragthorpe

Ashley “AC” Cox is a marketing expert, making him a valuable resource to his fellow PGA professionals.

Even though he’s no longer working directly in the golf industry, he’s committed to helping other pros. That explains why he’s a member of the Utah Section PGA board of directors and how he earned the Section’s PGA Professional Development Award as a Salt Lake Community College associate professor of marketing and marketing department coordinator.

While immersed in the academic world at SLCC for six years, Cox has been determined to stay involved in golf. That’s partly because he recognizes the importance of diversity in the profession, and believes he can inspire other Black golfers to pursue PGA careers. He wants them to know, “This industry is OK for you, too.”

Having attended Mississippi State, Cox was the second Black person in the country to have graduated from a college’s Professional Golf Management program. He received an MBA from Campbell University and is pursuing a doctorate.

As a former GolfTEC manager in Colorado, Cox said his 20 years as a PGA member have been “rooted in educating professionals.” Along the way, he was nominated for the PGA Professional Development Award (formerly called the Horton Smith Award for education) in both the Carolinas and Colorado sections.

His expertise is in “understanding consumer behavior,” which obviously relates to the golf industry and why golfers make certain choices in deciding where to play and what to purchase. He’s eager to share that information.

By Kurt Kragthorpe

Considering how Rob Krieger started teaching golf as a teenager, it seemed likely that he someday would launch his own business. The name of Red Rock Golf Instruction is the twist in the career arc of the Ohio native, who’s the Player Development Award winner in the Utah Section PGA.

Krieger headed west in 2009 while working for Troon Golf’s operation in Mesquite, Nevada, and remained in the area. His headquarters is the driving range of Southgate Golf Course in St. George, the city-owned facility where he works with students of all ages and abilities.

Even in high school, Krieger became “intrigued by why certain people learned certain things in golf and other people didn’t learn,” he said. “As a junior golfer, I wondered why I didn’t play the same way every time; what every golfer goes through. I like to help people figure out the ‘why?’”

His teaching philosophy is captured by the “Swing your swing” slogan, emphasizing that there’s not just one way to hit the ball. He’s a technology devotee, using 3D motion sensors, launch monitors and video software. “I have so many different programs that I’m teaching right now,” Krieger said. “It’s fun; it adds a lot of variety.”

The Player Development Award recognizes Krieger’s efforts to promote the game, beyond teaching advanced golfers. He’s involved with programs such as PGA Hope and The First Tee of Utah and appreciates the support of other southern Utah pros, notably Colby Cowan, St. George City’s director of golf.   

By Kurt Kragthorpe

Thomas Barksdale makes selling sound simple. In purchasing products for the pro shop of Talisker Golf Club at Tuhaye, he asks himself one question: “What do the members want?”

Barksdale obviously has found the answers. By concentrating on “brands that make sense for the mountains,” he has become the Utah Section PGA’s Merchandiser of the Year for private facilities.

The award stems from what Barksdale labels “a three-year build” in his job at Tuhaye, tied into a new ownership group and “added enthusiasm from the membership,” he said. Barksdale came to Utah in 2019 from a country club in the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex and has thrived.

He views the group of PGA Professionals in the Park City area as an informal chapter of the Utah Section PGA, bonded by working at clubs with distinct memberships, compared with other courses in the Section.

Barksdale treats merchandising as an extension of the membership experience. If members like the way they’re being treated, they respond loyally. “There’s no magic to it,” he said. “It’s everybody getting together and turning our shop into a special place.”

The timing of his arrival at Tuhaye was good. As many pros would attest, the pandemic has been “probably the best thing that ever happened to our industry,” Barksdale said. Talisker members, including owners of second homes, have been eager to visit and play golf, coinciding with ownership’s commitment to “making the club what it should have been, the whole time,” he said.

Increased merchandise sales are just one of those effects.

By Kurt Kragthorpe

Anyone who walks into the pro shop of Timpanogos Golf Club in Provo for the first time is likely to feel somewhat out of place. That’s the goal, anyway.

“We want to be different,” Head Professional Brett Watson said.

The vintage, rustic feel of the golf shop is part of the renovating and rebranding of the former East Bay Golf Course, giving Timpanogos an entirely new look. Or maybe an “old” look is a more accurate description, as the redesign of just about the whole property celebrates the city’s golf history of nearly 100 years.

Watson has maximized the rebranding opportunity, a major reason why he’s the Utah Section PGA’s Merchandiser of the Year for public courses. “It’s been an absolute blast,” said Watson, who credits many staff members for pitching in with merchandising ideas, even borrowing some concepts from ski resorts.

Timpanogos already has an iconic logo that incorporates a tree, arrowhead and mountain to varying degrees, depending on one’s perspective. Several versions of custom sweatshirts have been popular, and Watson has tried to go beyond “typical golf stuff” in his offerings. He figures that tournament players who receive shop credit can accumulate only so many hats, shirts and balls, so he targets “something that’s different.” One example is an old-fashioned camp mug.

“If you go to any public golf course,” Watson said, “you see the same stuff.”

Not so at Timpanogos, where, as Watson noted, “We found a niche.”

By Kurt Kragthorpe

Charley Carlson hardly makes his job sound like work. As he said, “I basically get to go around and talk to my friends.”

He’s good at both traveling and talking, resulting in his Utah Section PGA award as the Jon Unger Salesperson of the Year.

Carlson is a non-traditional winner of the award, as one of relatively few independent manufacturers’ representatives in the golf industry. He likes the freedom that comes with that job description, while considering himself more of a partner to PGA professionals than a salesperson.

“If I could say one thing that has helped me do a better job, it is teaming up with the pros,” Carlson said. “How to improve their shop sales; that’s all I want. … We just decide what to order for (their) shop.”

That requires considerable flexibility, while working with some of Utah’s least pretentious public courses, the most exclusive private facilities and everything in between.

Having grown up in Ogden as a son of a manufacturer’s rep, Carlson started in the business nearly 30 years ago after attending the University of Utah. Aligned with JC Golf Accessories and Bushnell, among several other companies, Carlson is committed to Utah and other nearby states that tend to be overlooked, he said.

“Independent lines have never really concentrated on Utah,” he said. “I just try to do a good job with all the little guys.”

By Kurt Kragthorpe

Stacey Camacho readily acknowledges having some moments of disappointment during his professional career, while missing opportunities for other jobs. Yet some good advice and a health issue along the way have given him an outlook that led a golf student to describe him as “one of the happiest people I know.”

The attitude of making the most of his current job is validated by Camacho’s 2021 Assistant Professional of the Year award in the Utah Section PGA.

Having learned to play at Nibley Park Golf Course, where he would spend the first three years of his golf career, Camacho has worked for more than a decade in the Salt Lake City Golf operation. He’s in his second stint at Mountain Dell GC, where Head Pro Jeremy Green is “such a great mentor,” Camacho said. “He works with me and takes my input. We work together to make decisions.”

Camacho credits Keith Soriano, a career consultant with the PGA of America, for encouraging him to “take your situation and make it better” as he sought to move up in the profession. He also points to golf as a driving force in his recovery from a stroke seven years ago at age 36. The game helped him “find myself again,” said Camacho, who has helped other survivors learn or relearn to play in the Saving Strokes program.

Summarizing his career as an assistant pro, Camacho said, “The best part about it is the learning. I’ve been lucky to be around a bunch of great head pros.”

By Kurt Kragthorpe

Tele Wightman’s role in building the PGA Jr. League program in Utah already made him deserving of the Youth Player Development Leader award. Winning a national championship only added to his credentials.

As the captain of Utah’s 13U team, Wightman helped produce one of the Utah Section PGA’s biggest stories of the year. The eight-player squad that included his nephew, Jordan Ofahengaue, won the PGA Jr. League national title in a Golf Channel-televised event in October at Scottsdale, Arizona.

That achievement was far beyond anything that Wightman pictured six years ago when he put together a team of 10 players representing The Ranches Golf Club in Eagle Mountain, competing against three other groups. “It slowly started to get bigger and bigger,” Wightman said.

As a son of Via Wightman, a revered golf professional in Massachusetts, Tele was modeling his father’s commitment to junior golfers, with a twist via the PGA Jr. League program.

“Being part of a team can be really fun,” Wightman said. “Golf is an individual sport, but (a two-person scramble) is a fun format where there’s less pressure. Playing a scramble is a fun way to learn the game.”

In 2019, Wightman took the program to Thanksgiving Point Golf Club as director of golf. His bosses at Troon Golf are supportive. So in 2022, he expects to expand his oversight of the PGA Jr. League from 64 to 72 golfers in two leagues. “It’ll be a busy summer,” he said, and that’s the way he likes it.

Photo: PGA of America