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 J.C. "Golf Coach of the Year" Tony Manzoni Photo by GM Pinkston |
The men’s golf team at College of the Desert has reached the state finals each of the last two years; winning one state championship and earning coach Tony Manzoni a “Coach of the Year” award. However, the team’s top seeds from those highly successful seasons, men like Paul DeAmbro, Lance Dumbroski, Pat Weaks and Tim Stearns have all finished their JC careers and moved on to the next phase of their young lives. For Coach Manzoni, it means starting over.
“Yes, it’s going to be a rebuilding year,” says Manzoni, “but I’ve done it before so I think we’ll be OK. We do have some kids coming back who came very close to making it into the top six last year, Chris Cabillaro sticks out in my mind as one of them, and there are several others, too.”
The recruiting power of COD’s Golf Management Scholastic Program provides Manzoni additional reason to be optimistic. Every year the college’s golf curriculum attracts new students from all over the world and the coach knows there will always be some pleasant surprises in each new group.
“It’s always like there’s a little bunch of boxes of presents there and I don’t know what’s inside until I see them play,” Says Manzoni. “For example, I know we’ve got a kid coming down from Oregon this year who is supposed to be a really good player but I’ve never seen him. But with talent like he is supposed to have and the kids who almost made it last year now having a year’s experience under their belts, and with the ones who will come into the Golf Management Program for the winter semester, we should have a competitive team. I think we’ll represent the college well in conference play. I don’t really know how we’ll do in post season, but I’m a pretty determined person, I don’t like to lose. In fact, I hate to lose. So, with the talent we always draw, I’ll put my neck on the chopping-block and say we’ll be a contender.”
The team will get a good indication of where it stands in relation to the competition when it goes to the invitational tournament in Apple Valley early in the season. Most of the schools COD will face in conference play and at the regional level of post season will be among the sixteen to eighteen teams participating.
“We call it the pneumonia open because it’s always freezing up there,” says Manzoni, “especially after starting practice down here in the desert in August--it’s a real shock to the system. Long Beach and Saddleback will be there. They both do a terrific job of recruiting and always field formidable teams so we’ll come out of there with a pretty fair indication of how good we really are.”
In the eyes of coach Manzoni state championships and Coach-of-the-Year awards are obviously positive accomplishments, and ones to be proud of, indeed, but they are not what junior college golf is really all about. He takes great pride in developing young men into accomplished golfers and giving them the opportunity to move on to higher levels of competition. His greatest enjoyment, however, comes from helping his kids make a successful transition from adolescence into adulthood. He accomplishes this by ingraining in them the basic life-skills required to be successful in all phases of their lives and he relies heavily on support from the community to accomplish these goals.
“I can’t tell you how much we appreciate the help we get from the local clubs and the PGA professionals who run them,” says Manzoni. “We couldn’t do it without them. Our conference play runs right through the heart of the tourist season here in the valley. I’m a PGA professional myself so I know how hard it is for the clubs to work our practices and matches into their schedules and still manage to have financially successful seasons, themselves.”
“But the rewards in teaching are not financial, adds Manzoni. “The opportunity to help these kids grow up, to pass along the lessons required to succeed in life that I’ve had to learn the hard way, that’s what it’s really about. I try to be a role model for them. They see me driving my Porsche and they know I didn’t get that from my salary here at the college but from my golf related entrepreneurial activities. They know I was one of the founders of Callaway Golf Corporation and that gives me great credibility when I talk about our team and COD's Golf Management Program. It doesn’t usually take them long to begin emulating the model I try to set for them and to start being more adult and responsible in how they conduct themselves; to understand there comes a time to put youthful things aside and start growing up if they hope to achieve any kind of success in life. Heck, Hip-Hop music and three earrings in each ear are fine when you’re young. I understand that, I was a kid once, too. I did all the things young people of my generation did. But someone has to teach kids there are certain things that are expected of professional adults. You can’t wear your green hair and six earrings into a job interview and expect to be taken seriously. In the adult world you have to show up on time and conduct yourself in a responsible way. You have to have the drive and persistence to succeed at whatever you’re trying to do. Those same characteristics are what is required to excel in our scholastic program and as a player on this golf team. The rewards in teaching lie in the opportunity to have a positive impact on these kids lives, to work with them and watch them grow. That’s what seduces me into coming back each year.”
The explosion in public and resort course construction that occurred here in the early 1980s changed the complexion of golf in the valley forever and brought with it a critical need for trained professionals to work in the area’s burgeoning new golf oriented tourist industry. Hundreds of skilled personnel were needed to manage the new facilities, provide qualified instruction to club members and the public and to man the pro shops. Seizing the opportunity, and relying upon the same entrepreneurial skills that had served him so well as one of the founders of Callaway Golf Corporation, PGA Professional Tony Manzoni created the golf institute at College of the Desert to fill that need.
Today, the fine reputation of the COD Golf Management Program attracts students from around the world. Its graduates staff and manage facilities from Europe to Shanghai and it is difficult to find a course in the valley that doesn’t employ one, if not more, of the program’s alumni. But even an idea whose time has come can be a tough sell. Getting the program off the ground initially proved no small task.
“The college saw the need and loved the idea,” says Manzoni. “The problem, of course, was money. COD had the land available but we needed to raise two million dollars to build the facility and staff the program. There are a lot of very affluent people here in the valley, people who give away millions of dollars in philanthropic donations to universities every year. The problem was they all wanted to give their money to the Berkeleys, UCLAs and USCs, already rich schools, instead of the underdog community colleges who really need it. And, having only twelve students the first year, we were an unknown entity. That didn’t help the fundraising either. Finally, a good friend of mine, Dick LaBue, gave us a half-million dollars and another fine gentleman, Jude Pointer, gave us three-hundred-and-fifty thousand dollars and a museum. This was out-of-pocket money, unbelievable, and unheard of as far as community college donations are concerned--I still can’t thank them enough for helping get us started.”
The program still suffered some initial financial ups-and-downs. Those problems were resolved, however, when the college formed a public-private partnership with the Family Golf Center Corporation. FGC now operates the for-profit public driving range and pro shop and provides the staff for the institute’s public golf instruction and junior’s programs. The public-private cooperation provides the COD program both a practice facility and the financial stability that should allow it to continue long into the future.
COD’s golf management curriculum is offered in two forms; a two-year Associates of Arts degree program and a one-year, core-curriculum-only, certificate program. The AA program consists of thirty units of vocational education directly related to the golf industry, fourteen units of general ed. and eight units of electives. The certificate program includes the identical thirty units of core curriculum but does not require the general ed. and elective classes.
The degree program is designed for the younger student who needs the general ed. classes and electives to round-out their education. The certificate program caters more to adults who may all ready have some college background but are interested in making a career change.
The core curriculum includes golf instruction methods, fundamentals of the game and its rules, plant science, turfgrass management, golf course design, club design and repair, golf car maintenance, pro shop operations, even food and beverage department operations. General business administration and accounting classes are also an important part of the program.
Some parts of the program are designed to teach the student everything required to go out into the industry and start doing the job. Other parts provide more of an overview of specialty knowledge designed to allow the golf facility manager to understand and communicate on an intelligent level with industry specialists such as greens-keepers and agronomists.
“Our teaching methods class, for example,” says Manzoni, “is a full semester. Compare that to the PGA Apprentice Program where you get one week of instruction on how to teach the golf swing to the students you will have once you start working at a club somewhere. I think our program beats the heck out of theirs.”
“I’m extremely proud of the job we do here,” adds Manzoni. “Especially with the diversity of our program. We’ve had great success both with international students and with the many minority students we’ve graduated. There still exists some cultural resistance to minorities in the golf industry. We’ve done a pretty darn good job of teaching this program to minority kids and placing them in decent jobs. They’ve succeeded in those jobs--and that makes me feel pretty good."
© Gary M. Pinkston, 1999.
