Roddy finds a home at Erin Hills

For Tim Roddy, life in the golf course management business has rarely kept him in one place for very long.

For nearly six years, Roddy and his dog, Dozer, traveled the country from one golf course construction project to another, Roddy working as a skilled course shaper with Dozer — pun intended — going along for the ride.

But with that nomadic life in the rearview mirror, Roddy has settled down and settled in at Erin Hills, site of this week’s U.S. Open, as the club’s head equipment manager for the past 16 months.

“(Coming here) was an opportunity that I just couldn’t pass up,” says Roddy, a three-year GCSAA member. “The places that I worked before were all great places, phenomenal operations. But this was a chance to get to that next level, be a part of something special like a U.S. Open.”

Roddy has worked in golf since the age of 15, when he landed a job mowing greens at Interlachen Country Club in Minneapolis. After earning a college degree in landscape design and construction, he found work in the world of golf course construction, spending most of the early 2000s crisscrossing the U.S. with Dozer as golf’s building boom reached a fever pitch.

But when that work began to dry up, Roddy began to look for his next challenge.

“I’ve always been mechanical, so decided to go back to a small-engine school,” he says. “I put myself through school by flipping lawn mowers and snow blowers on Craig’s List, going to school all day.”

When he graduated, Roddy landed an assistant equipment manager job at Spring Hill Golf Club in Wayzata, Minn. Soon after, he earned his first head equipment manager position at Bear Path Country Club in Eden Prairie, Minn. Following a three-year stop in a similar role at Edina (Minn.) Country Club, the opportunity at Erin Hills came up, and it was one he couldn’t pass up.

Those experiences leading up to the move to Erin Hills clearly left their mark on Roddy. “I had the chance to work for three guys that have about 135 years of combined experience in the turf industry,” he says. “I kind of took bits and pieces of how they each did stuff, what worked well and what didn’t and tried to adapt it to my philosophy.”

This week, Roddy will be camped out in the expansive shop at Erin Hills on an almost non-stop basis. He’s received plenty of support from colleagues in the area, as well as representatives from both Jacobsen and Toro, and will be running two crews whenever possible, one supporting morning preparations and the other focused on afternoon duties.

“I believe in a team environment here,” Roddy says. “We have a little bit of a younger crew here, but they’ve bought into my mindset as it relates to equipment. All these guys take pride in the equipment, cleaning and taking care of them the way I want them to. So far, that’s extended to all the volunteers that are here, too. It’s been a great experience.”