19th Hole: Bob Coffey
Bob Coffey
Superintendent // Longboat Key (Fla.) Club
Bob, thanks for setting me up for golf today. What can I get you? I’ll have a Yuengling.
How did you get into the business? I was originally in education — I was a teacher and a basketball and football coach. My wife Robin wanted to move to Florida, and back in ’98 she found a job here. I applied for some teaching jobs and didn’t get anything. I was looking for work and applied at Windermere GC right outside Orlando. I liked it because it came with free golf. After a couple months, the assistant was leaving, so they wanted to make me the irrigation tech. A couple weeks after that, the school called me and said, “Hey, we got a pregnant P.E. teacher. Would you like to fill out her contract as a way to get into the corporation?” I kind of looked at where things were, and I thought, ‘I think I can do this for a living.’
Do you ever miss teaching? No, oh no, no, no.
What’s your biggest challenge on the course? Right now, it’s the cold; paspalum doesn’t like the cold weather. We’re all paspalum here. The same cultivar that’s rough is on the greens. The other thing is keeping everything as tight, clean and detailed as possible.
What’s your favorite tool to get the job done? The USGA’s GS3. Once we get used to figuring out what the numbers mean for us — because they’re different for everybody — it’s really going to help lead us to the next level of conditioning. Like today, we mowed, we’ll look at our numbers and probably just roll tomorrow morning. We might mow tomorrow afternoon — it depends on what numbers we get.
If someone was visiting you, aside from seeing the golf course, what would you recommend they do while here? There are some great restaurants here — The Chart House or DryDock. The Salty Dog is great but hasn’t been rebuilt from the storm yet.
Do you have a family, and what do you all do for fun? I have a wife, three daughters and a son — all grown. And I have a couple grandkids. For fun, we go out to eat.
What is your most memorable day on the golf course? When I was at Cimarrone up in Jacksonville, I got to play in the pro-am. Our pro was Jim Furyk. We finished second by one shot at 18 under. Playing golf with a U.S. Open winner, who is also such a fantastic person, that’s one of my all-time favorite memories.
What teams do you root for? The Jaguars and the Reds. I don’t watch basketball as much as I used to. I got kind of spoiled; I went to Indiana State and was in school with Larry Bird. I followed him when he went to Boston. Man, he could play — he made everyone better.
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