Ace of Clubs

Images by Terrell Manasco

The sun hangs overhead like a monolithic radioactive basketball in a robin’s-egg blue sky.It’s just before nine a.m. and already it feels like high noon in the Mohave Desert. Phil Green steers his golf cart away from its parking space at the pro shop, down a steep incline, banking around a curve, and crossing a small wooden bridge. To the right you can hear the faint whooshing of a low-level waterfall. The golf cart silently glides smoothly along a narrow pathway and around a grove of trees, passing an early morning golfer, his head reverently bowed in silence, as if beseeching the gods of golf to guide this one into the hole.Reaching the crest of a small hill, the wheels curve left off the path, then sharply back to the right in a U-turn, finally parking underneath the shade of a majestic pine tree. Dressed in cream-colored khakis, a baby blue cotton pullover shirt, and white golf cap, Phil flashes a grin as warm as this Alabama morning and kills the motor. In the branches overhead a quartet of birds are warbling a lively symphony that rivals Mozart’s finest. Phil leans back in the seat, one hand resting on the wheel, surveying the endless rolling green acreage spread out in all directions. But on this Wednesday morning, Phil is not here to play eighteen rounds. Today, at least for him, is a work day. For almost a quarter of a decade, the title on his business card has read PHIL GREEN, GOLF PROFESSIONAL.“Some people say, ‘Yeah, you’ve got it made, you get to play golf every day,’ ” Phil says affably. “Yes, I play some, but it’s not at all like that. It’s service. I’m in the people business. Country club is an earned luxury. If we have five hundred members, I have five hundred bosses.”Phil Green’s life journey began in 1953, in Kansas City, Kansas. His father was an insurance underwriter for Employers Insurance of Wassau, the only job he ever held in his entire life. “My mom and dad both played golf recreationally, but I never really played golf until we moved to Dallas in 1966,” he says.He remembers playing baseball as young as six or seven. By the time Phil was thirteen, he was pitching on a Little League team. “Everybody in Dallas on the team played golf, so that’s where I started to play,” Phil shrugs. His parents were members of the Brookhaven Country Club in Dallas, a fifty-four hole facility. “Within three years of starting to play, I had won the club championship. It was quite a victory,” he chuckles.Phil actually began working in golf at the age of fourteen, when he and his older brother Dave befriended the owner of a small driving range in Dallas. “The fellow that owned it lived in a trailer at the driving range, and we got to know him pretty good, and would help him at the range,” Phil explains. “I would help around the pro shop and my brother would help maintaining the grass and the grounds. Well, guess what? I ended up being a PGA golf professional my whole life, and my brother ended up as a greens superintendent. I’ve been involved in golf since I was fourteen years old and it’s all I’ve ever done, as far as a job.”In 1971 Phil graduated from Richardson High School, then enrolled for two years at North Texas State in Denton. A casual visit with Dave at Horseshoe Bay Resort in 1974 led to his first job in the golf business. “My brother was the greens superintendent there and I went to visit him one summer. I’d been playing a lot of golf tournaments and actually played in a few mini-tour events,” Phil says. “The golf pro said, ‘I’m looking for an assistant pro, would you be interested?’ Well, guess what? Here I sit, forty-two years later, still doing it, I still love it, still enjoy doing it.”After stints as an assistant golf pro at Horseshoe Bay and later Canyon Creek Country Club in Richardson, Phil was offered his first head pro position at Lake Forest Yacht and Country Club in Daphne, Alabama. While there he met a young lady named Pat and in 1985 they were married. Not long after, Phil took a couple of years off to play on the mini tour in Orlando, something he’d always wanted to do. “That was a lifelong dream of mine, to play golf professionally,” Phil says. “I gave it my best shot. I always tell everybody I was the leading money-spender, instead of the leading money winner.”Phil worked six years as a PGA Professional at Lake Forest, then another six at a country club called The Greens, in Oklahoma City. By this time he and Pat had been searching for opportunities to move to Alabama to be near Pat’s aging parents, who were from Bessemer. Then they heard of a job opening at Musgrove Country Club. Soon Phil, Pat, and their two sons, Justin and Brandon, were packed and moving to Jasper. “I had known Travis Hudson [the original golf pro] for years through my association with the PGA. One thing led to another, and I’ve been here twenty-four years,” Phil says.Then one night the tectonic plates shifted and Phil Green’s world drastically changed in the blink of an eye. Pat took a bad fall at home late one night in 2010 and suffered a serious head injury. She was airlifted to a Birmingham hospital but doctors were unable to save her. Within only a few hours she was gone. “It was a tough, tough time for the boys and I,” Phil says in a more solemn voice. “I have to mention the support received from the members of Musgrove. It was tremendous. We are a big family. When you work here for twenty-four years, you really get to know the people. They came to me and lifted me up. It was just a wonderful thing.”In nearly five decades of playing golf, Phil Green has met and worked with perhaps hundreds of golfers, but a recent chance encounter reminded him that golfing is actually a small-knit world. “About a month ago we had the Women’s State Amateur Championship here,” Phil says. “When the tournament was over, the winner was announced: Elaine Wood from Spanish Fort. I went up to shake her hand and congratulated her, and her caddy came over to me, who happened to be her dad. He said, ‘I think I know you. Were you the golf pro at Lake Forest, down in Daphne?’ I said,’Well, yes.’ He said, ‘I played in my first junior tournament at your golf course back in the late seventies.’ So here I am, what, thirty years later, and he’s saying he started playing golf at one of my events. That’s pretty neat.”When Phil is not helping golfers work on their swing, he’s often busy helping the Walker County Humane Society with animal rescues. “I do whatever part I can in helping rescue dogs,” Phil says. “We run them to transports and send them to different rescues up in Illinois and Minnesota. I’ve even put a kennel out by our driving range. When a stray dog shows up at the golf course, we will put it in the kennel. I can't tell you how many dogs over the years we have found homes for. I get a lot of satisfaction from helping,” he says.As you might guess, Phil has a few four-legged friends of his own: Tessa, a German Shepherd, and Tillie, his cat. “Pat got Tessa for me probably about three weeks before the accident,” he says. “That dog means the world to me. And Tillie adopted me.”Not every day of his life has been as sunny this one. There were certainly some dark days when he lost Pat but Phil Green has much to be thankful for, and he knows it. His and Pat’s two sons are now successful young men; Justin, 31, is an attorney, and Brandon, 27, is a digital operations specialist. He has enjoyed many great friendships over the years, including his predecessor. “I’m very fortunate to have known Travis Hudson like I did. I got to know him really well when I came here. He was one special individual and for me to be able to follow in his footsteps means the world to me.”And he has a job that he loves. “I am very fortunate that I do something I enjoy doing,” Phil says. I look forward to coming to work every day, even more than when I started. I enjoy the interaction with people. It’s kind of special to see players progress and know that you might have helped them a little bit along the way, so it’s very rewarding. I’ve known the same people who come to play in our tournaments for years. I know them by first name. I’ve got guys who have been coming every year for the twenty-four years I’ve been here. That’s what it’s all about, taking special care of people.”And as the ever-warming sun inches higher to its midday position, Phil Green turns the key in the ignition, starts the engine, and with a smile on his face, rides across the fairway. 78/>