Russ Myers, CGCS, knew that 2009 would be an eventful year, both professionally and personally. He just didn't realize exactly how eventful it would become.
Shortly after the superintendent at Southern Hills CC in Tulsa, Okla., played host to August's U.S. Amateur and following his marriage and subsequent honeymoon in September, the 15-year GCSAA member decided to add another wrinkle to the mix — a change of professional address halfway around the country as the head of golf course maintenance at storied Los Angeles Country Club.
In the same year that his close friend and former roommate at SUNY-Cobleskill, Craig Currier, made a similar high-profile move from Bethpage (N.Y.) State Park to the private Glen Oaks Club on Long Island, Myers is leaving a facility where he hosted the wildly successful 2007 PGA Championship for a course on the verge of a major restoration of its famed North Course.
"People say this a lot in these situations, but it really was the hardest decision I've ever had to make," Myers told GCM. "I knew that by leaving I'd be giving up on a perfect working situation, where I was working for great people and a great club that trusted me enough to do what needed to be done on the golf course.
"But by the same token, I am excited about the goals of (LACC) and the work that's ahead of us on the golf course. There are a lot of opportunities ahead."
Specifically, those opportunities surround the restoration project of the George Thomas-designed North Course, which will be guided by noted golf course architect Gil Hanse. Work actually began earlier this year with a fairway bunker project, completed under the supervision of the previous head of maintenance at LACC and a former GCSAA president, Bruce Williams, CGCS (now with Valley Crest Golf Maintenance). Work on the North is to begin in earnest in mid February, and Myers says it will be like nothing he's been involved with before.
"A lot of people do renovations, but this is something completely different," he says. "They really want that classic, old look back. When they say they want that dry, firm, rustic look, they mean it in everything. It's written into the master plan. Everything that would make the course look like it did in a prior era. There's nothing more unique to me than that. It's a whole new challenge."
Of course, that didn't make leaving Tulsa and Southern Hills, a well-renowned golf course in its own right, any easier. Myers "absolutely wasn't in the market" when he was approached about the position, he says.
"In fact, I was certain I was going to spend the rest of my career at Southern Hills. I had a great job at a place I loved, working for people that I really enjoyed working for. Even when I was first contacted, I didn't think I would have any interest because I just didn't think I could find a better position than the one I had."
When Myers departs Southern Hills at the end of the year and begins his new position in Los Angeles Jan. 15, he will be taking a brave new step professionally; "I've never stepped foot on a golf course with a lot of Poa before," he laughs. But the challenge is one he's embracing.
"It's kind of exciting to know that you'll be facing new decisions every day and encountering things you've never encountered before," he says. "There is no book to read that tells you what to do in every situation you'll find on a golf course. But I know what the results they're looking for are and I'm confident that I know how to produce them."
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