Continuing the family legacy

Katherine Jemsek grew up in a golf family, and liked the game, but stopped playing after high school and planned to be an elementary school teacher. “My mom used to say they didn’t know who would run the business but they knew it wasn’t going to be Katherine,” she said recently at Cog Hill Golf & Country Club in the southwest Chicago suburb of Palos Park. “I didn’t have as big an interest in golf. When I was a kid, I played golf for ice cream. We’d go to Apple Orchard (a course in suburban Bartlett), but only if my dad bribed us with ice cream. So we went to Baskin-Robbins afterwards. If we weren’t, I didn’t go.” So who’s the president of Jemsek Golf, overseeing Cog Hill as well as Pine Meadow in north suburban Mundelein and Summer Grove in suburban Atlanta? Yep. Katherine Jemsek. An education major who switched to business while at the University of Central Florida, she decided the retail side of the business would be her forte.

“I worked in the pro shop when I was in college,” Jemsek said. “When I graduated in 1995, I was going...