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, I always say, it’s nothing like that, whatever just popped into your head. It’s all about pulling carts up in the morning, putting them away at night, picking the driving range, all those things.”
All those things amount to exactly the kind of granular golf life that suits Harbin. Course ownership tops a résumé that notably includes time spent as the general manager of the two World Golf Village courses in St. Augustine, Florida, the executive director of the World Golf Foundation’s Golf 20/20 initiative and the vice president of ClubCorp. In some ways, Harbin is back where she started. Her first job after graduating from Indiana State with a business degree in 1984 was at a golf course.
“I had this awesome career, but I went back to my roots of showing up every day and just being at the golf course,” said Harbin, who grew up in Nashville, Indiana. “It’s very fulfilling, just being here every day to interact with people and help them enjoy the game.”
After managing a world-renowned golf resort and overseeing 100-plus clubs under the ClubCorp (now Invited) umbrella, Harbin knew she could run her own facility. When she reached the point in her career where she had the experience and the means to seriously look for the right one, she hired a broker and began scouring the Southeast. Harbin found Pine Ridge online. At the time, she was based in Dallas with ClubCorp, and Paris is about 100 miles to the northeast.
Pine Ridge checked all of the right boxes.
“My criteria was public golf course, big driving range and a very player-friendly golf course, and a small clubhouse so expenses were manageable,” she said. “It had all that, and it was a golf course I could buy by myself without any investors. It made it all very attractive.”
Harbin made her living in course operations, but her legacy has been in growing the game, particularly after leading the successful launch of Get Golf Ready, a national instruction program. When she got involved in the Paris community, she made it a goal to elevate golf there, too, and the data are in plain sight.
For three months after she took over Pine Ridge, Harbin noticed a complete lack of women and children on the golf course. So, she did what she knows best and made the facility more inviting through the instruction and programs offered.
At Pine Ridge, clubhouse manager Mark Andersen gives lessons along with Harbin, and the two often talk about how they’re going to continue expanding the junior program. As an instructor, Andersen’s biggest learning curve under Harbin has been in communication. Harbin just has a way of reaching people.
“Every once in a while, I will actually go out, if she doesn’t mind, and I will watch her give a lesson,” Andersen said. “That way I just learn how she does it, how she talks to them and how she speaks to them and how she gets them to learn from her.”
Andersen has worked for Harbin since the end of 2019. She’s the kind of course owner who won’t ask anyone to do something she wouldn’t do herself. He can’t forget the time Pine Ridge hosted a tournament and Harbin arrived early to set up, then picked the range so participants would have plenty of golf balls to hit.
“We get the tournament going, everybody is teeing off, can’t find Cathy,” he said. “Where’s Cathy? She’s on the grill cooking the burgers for the golfers when they come around at the turn.”
Harbin has never been afraid to jump in and do. Bob Barrett, a member of Troon’s board of directors, knew Harbin through her work at World Golf Village. As the former CEO of Honours Golf, the management company (now owned by Troon) that bought in 2000 the two flagship courses at World Golf Village (the Slammer and Squire and the King and Bear), Barrett knew Harbin initially by reputation. He hadn’t worked with her much when the general manager position opened, but Harbin seemed to be the right fit.
“She was just fantastic,” Barrett said. “Cathy is a unique person in that she’s so knowledgeable, but more importantly, she has a very caring attitude about her team. She knows how to build a team and create enthusiasm with the team.”
“I just believe with all my heart that the game enhances people’s lives, whether it’s through time with your friends, time with your family.” — Cathy Harbin
Barrett remembers the little things Harbin would do, like sometimes showing up to the golf course before dawn with several dozen donuts for the maintenance team. She was thorough and organized. Her staff meetings were consistent, she managed people well and she could spot and develop talent. As a result, Barrett said, several people who worked and learned under Harbin were subsequently promoted to other manager or director of golf positions within the company.
Being a female general manager of a world-renowned resort in the early 2000s made Harbin a trailblazer at a time when women, Harbin noted, weren’t even being hired as head golf professionals. Despite the fact that she was a woman in a man’s world, she never thought of herself as a minority.
“This is what I say to young women all the time: You belong in that room, you belong in that position, and as long as you know it, then you behave accordingly,” Harbin said. “I was never in a room that I didn’t feel like I belonged in.”
Just as Harbin always imagined she’d own a golf course one day, she also thought someday she’d have the title of vice president. When she was recruited to that role at ClubCorp, she had more than 100 golf professionals and 10 regional directors reporting to her. But she was on the sixth floor of an office building in Dallas, and about as far away from the golf course as one could get.
That’s when Barrett, whom she came to consider as a mentor, asked her a question: Where are you the happiest? Harbin immediately thought of the golf course, and it set her on the path to course ownership once again.
Pine Ridge may occupy a big chunk of her time at this stage in her life, but she hasn’t withdrawn from the industry completely. Harbin, a PGA master professional, recently finished a three-year term as a member at large of the PGA of America’s national board and remains active co-chairing three committees. She’s the incoming president for the National Golf Course Owners Association and she recently got more involved with the LPGA Legends Tour.
Not many career boxes are left for Harbin to check, but she still wakes up every day thinking about how she can bring more people to the game.
“I just believe with all my heart that the game enhances people’s lives, whether it’s through time with your friends, time with your family,” she said.
“I always tell these kids, when your boss comes in and says, ‘I need a fourth for Saturday. Who can play golf?’ You want to be the one that can raise your hand because you were introduced to the game.”