On the right course

This week in Orlando, Florida, the golf industry will gather for the annual PGA Show, and GGPWomen will highlight some of the interesting women who work in the golf industry. We trust you will enjoy these stories.
Always, in the back of Cathy Harbin’s mind, there was a golf course. For 30 years, from the time she took a seminar on how to buy her own facility in 1988, the idea never left Harbin, who has done a little bit of everything in the arena of golf operations.
And that’s why, on an early January day in Paris, Texas, Harbin, 61, was cleaning out a cart barn at Pine Ridge Golf Course, the 18-hole public layout that she bought in April 2017. Because, as she often tells people who might romanticize course ownership, actually owning one is nothing like what you think.
“Every time somebody says I’d like to get into the golf business, I say, ‘OK, I want you to take one minute and think about all the reasons that you want to get in, all the things that will be cool about it,’” she said. “And then after they think about it for a minute, ...