36 BILL KUBLY INSIGHT Straight out of college, I joined a small golf course design and construction company. Other than the secretary, I was the only permanent employee. That was my start in the golf industry, in 1971. In that era, there were probably 80 to 100 golf courses being built in the United States at any one time. I had graduated in landscape architecture from University of Wisconsin and studied golf course design in two semesters – so on my first day at the office I sat at the drawing board, ready for work as an architect. Then, a truckload of 40-foot pipe came in for a golf course that was being built. My decision to chip in to help unload it would prove crucial in shaping my career. Golf course construction in those days was more a mom-and-pop business – small companies doing one or two golf courses. There were only a few bigger builders around. By 1976 I had started my own company, Landscapes Unlimited, and began with a small irrigation project. In short order I got my first nine-hole golf course – Lakeview in South Dakota. The architect was Dick Watson, the owner of the company that hired me from college. He taught me how to build a golf course – and Lakeview made for a great early job for my own firm. I was lucky to have learned how to run a business from Dick. My recommendation to anybody that wants to get into the industry is to get a good base working for a builder or architect firm. Learn, and grow slow. My early projects were mainly for regional designers. However, things started to change once I got my first job with one of the big-name architects: Tom Fazio. For someone from Wisconsin to go out to Oyster Bay on Long Island was a real experience. I have since constructed about 30-35 courses for Fazio, a good reflection of the success of our collaboration. In my early days, I would move to wherever we were building a golf course. Those projects can be the most rewarding – living on a remote site in a location such as South Dakota for a year, where you can experience life a little differently, is a bit of a selling point for me. For the first five or six years I was in the business I would travel to jobs and rent an apartment where we were building a course. For my first Rees Jones project, the people in our building nicknamed us the vagabonds! As the construction business he founded approaches 50 years of operation, Bill Kubly reflects on his life in golf. Five decades in the dirt
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