18 INTERVIEW Mark Mungeam found the game of golf not through family or friends, but with the help of an unconventional Little League Baseball coach. The new ASGCA President is still not quite sure whether the coach was more interested in working on young Mark’s fielding, or his own golf game, but recalls racing around the outfield catching wedge shots in his mitt. Before long – and this is where the fielding practice argument falters – the coach had Mark caddying for him on the course. Regardless of the coach’s motivation, Mark was captivated. He began hitting plastic golf balls around his backyard with a cut down five-iron, then crafted some rudimentary holes to practice on. “That was my first interest in golf course design, and I didn’t even realize it!” Here, the new ASGCA President answers our questions about how his career began, the importance of public golf, and what he hopes to achieve in his year of leading the Society. After those first forays into backyard golf design, how did you get your start in the business? While at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, studying civil and environmental engineering, I spent summers as a greenkeeper at the nine-hole Berlin County Club in Massachusetts. The owner’s son and I were a two-man maintenance staff. I mowed tees, greens and collars, changed cups and moved tee markers. The owner wanted to lengthen the course, so I bought a USGS topo map, enlarged it for the course, and started to sketch out possible new tee and green positions. To learn more, I borrowed a copy of The Golf Course, written by ASGCA Past President Geoffrey Cornish and Ron Whitten, from the local library. The book hooked me, and I decided then that designing wastewater treatment plants was no longer my future, and golf course design was. Mr Cornish was instrumental in my entry into the golf course design profession. I wrote to him, and he advised me to contact golf course builders about a job when I graduated from college. This led to work with Moore Golf of Culpeper, Virginia, an early member of the Golf Course Builders Association of America. Two years after joining Moore Golf, I was assigned to oversee construction of Ocean Edge Golf Course on Cape Cod, a Cornish & Silva design. I worked By Design speaks with Mark Mungeam, the new ASGCA President, about his unconventional route to golf course design and his passion for public golf. Public service through golf
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy NzQ1NTk=