Golf has been called a good walk spoiled, but the 29 million active golfers in the U.S. beg to differ. The activity offers challenges and camaraderie along with outdoors exercise and skills development, including anger management. Golf may be a mental discipline but it promotes fitness, flexibility and fun.
The majority of American golfers are married, male college graduates over 40 with an average household income of $95,000. This significant segment of the population (9%) contributes to the GDP with their purchases of golf clubs, GPS and golf club memberships. They invest in golf instruction and training aids to improve their game and better enjoy their avocation.
Valley businesses cater to the needs of golfers, whether residents, Winter Texans or other visitors. From the golf pro who assesses a golfer’s strengths and weaknesses to the golf cart sales and repair golf shop, golf — abounding in life lessons — is a microcosm of the economy.
Courses
Blessed with 24 18-hole courses and nine 9-hole courses for year-round play, the Rio Grande Valley lets golfers pick and choose between private, public and semi-private courses. Most private courses have reciprocal agreements with other Valley clubs. The Club at Cimarron, among others, offers members privileges at courses around the world. Yet only in the Rio Grande will you find a course like Fort Brown Memorial, where an accidental shot could land your ball in another country, or a course like River Bend Resort where an international boundary (the Rio Grande) is a no-penalty hazard.
What determines the best Valley golf course depends on your criteria. Tierra Santa, Los Lagos, Cimarron and South Padre Golf Club are known for their resort-style layouts. Treasure Hills, designed by Robert Trent Jones Sr. and Tony Butler, both along the Arroyo Colorado, may have the most natural rolling terrain. The 27-hole Martin Valley Ranch, built in a former citrus grove, caters to Winter Texans. Valley International in Brownsville, opened in 1910, is the oldest course. Shary Municipal has been ranked among the top 25 Texas municipal courses.
Between 35,000 and 40,000 rounds were played last year at Los Lagos, the Edinburg municipal course that offers three-month and annual memberships. The course’s appeal is due in part to its contemporary design, according to Eddie Anderson, PGA, Los Lagos’ director of golf. “It is definitely the newest 18-hole course in the Valley and the most challenging. Los Lagos is one of the few public facilities designed by Von Hagge. It has a fantastic layout with a lot of character and mounding. Golfers like the challenge.”
Last year Tim Elliott, owner of Elliott’s Custom Golf, played almost every course in the Valley. “Los Lagos Golf Club was probably the best maintained, condition-wise, of the public courses at the time, with Tierra Santa and Palmview very close behind. McAllen Country Club and Harlingen Country Club are always well maintained. You’re going to be a better golfer if you play different courses, but it will show you’re not as good as you think,” he added. Golfers, being creatures of habit, tend to play one course where they know the ins and outs well.
To get out of the comfort zone, golfers can tackle some of the Valley’s toughest holes: McAllen Country Club #16, Diablo #10 at Rancho Viejo, Cimarron #8, Los Lagos #9, Tony Butler #21 and Fort Brown Memorial #18.
Improving your game
“Everybody needs to take a lesson,” said Wendy Werley Bullock, director of sports and wellness at Rancho Viejo Resort & Country Club and LPGA member. “All the pros have teachers. They know they need a second set of eyes on them. They all need be enlightened.”
That’s an interesting word, because in Deepak Chopra’s book Golf for Enlightenment, the golf pro Leela was based on Werley and her real-life role as Chopra’s teaching pro. “Leaving that first lesson, I heard him reciting the basic seven spiritual lessons for golf,” which became the basis for the book, she said. Although she went on to teach at La Costa and the Chopra Golf Center, Werley has been the teaching pro at Rancho Viejo for two years now.
In January, Carlos Berriochoa, manager of international operations for Trimac in Brownsville, took his first lesson with Werley. After finding out the aspects of his game he wanted to improve, Werley coached Berriochoa. “Because he’s so well versed, very much a visual learner, he picks things up quickly and implements them,” she said.
Werley frequently instructs golfers who, in their business lives, are used to making rapid decisions. “They have to get into a routine where they purposefully slow themselves down and understand how much energy they are putting into a swing. Like in life, there are things you can control.”
Werley herself began playing golf at age 3 and is enthusiastically committed to teaching golf to children. She has developed several programs such as the Junior Golf Practice and Play for those 18 and younger. U.S. Kids Golf named Worley one of the top 50 golf teachers (out of a field of 750) for 2013 and 2014.
“I make it simple and repeatable,” Werley said. “I don’t do that much different with the adults than I do with children.” She compared adults taking golf lessons to regular car maintenance or getting annual medical checkups: keep things working.
Werley, like Chopra, sees the value in applying golf’s lessons to life as a whole. She recalled that Colorado corporations used to take job applicants out for a round of golf, where they assessed the potential hires’ integrity, kindness and anger management skills.
Equipment
While pro shops are standard at golf courses, independent pro shops have a lot to offer. “The niche that sets us apart is custom fitting,” said Tim Elliot at Elliott’s Custom Golf, where he builds after-market clubs. “Making sure clubs fit you — are built to your height, strengths and weaknesses — is essential to enjoying the game and getting better.”
Plus, the appeal of sitting in the golf shop and talking to other golfers draws in many customers, particularly on cold days. Elliott noted the number of independent pro shops has decreased in recent years. Nevertheless, his sales nearly quadruple from November through April, with the simultaneous arrival of great golf weather and Winter Texans.
“Golf is a hard business with Internet competition. You’ve got to work at it all the time.” But Elliott takes every other Saturday off to play golf.
John Bradley and Mike Zinda used to play nine holes of golf after work before they opened RGV Carts in 2009. Running a business put an end to those rounds. The company is a dealer of Club Cars, which Bradley said has captured about 85% of the local golf cart market because it has an aluminum, rust-resistant frame.
More than half the golfers who live at country and golf clubs own golf carts, Bradley added.
Golf cart use is becoming widespread among residents of RV and senior parks, too. Golf is providing yet another lesson, this time in mobility.
For more information, see edinburggolf.com, customclubs.net, Fortbrowngolf.com, harlingencc.com, mcallencountryclub.com, rgvcarts.com, rvrcc.com and spigolf.com.
February 2014 cover story by Eileen Mattei
