THE FRONT ROW with MARK NELKE: BACK HOME AGAIN — 23 years later, former Coeur d’Alene High golfer Mike Elmore returns as GM at Coeur d’Alene Golf Club

As a teenager, picking range balls and washing golf carts at what was then called the Coeur d’Alene Public Golf Course, Mike Elmore would soon dream of a possible career in golf.

For many, that means playing golf.

But for most, reality sets in eventually.

Still, armed with a business degree, Elmore was able to turn his love for the game into a rewarding career in the sport — in two different parts of the country.

After 23 years away in Arizona, learning the business of golf, Elmore returned to Coeur d’Alene this year, as general manager of what is now called the Coeur d’Alene Golf Club.

“It was a tough decision for me to come back here,” said Elmore, 54. “I liked my job down there, I was doing very well, treated very well.”

But he looked at the big picture — he had 12 years until he retired, and the options were to work another 12 years in the Scottsdale market, or return to a more “casual, friendly, down-home atmosphere,” he said.

“I kinda chose the friendly down-home atmosphere vs. the grinding away in the Scottsdale market for the next 12 years,” Elmore decided.

GROWING UP near what they call “The Public,” Elmore worked at the course during his teen years.

Elmore played at Coeur d’Alene High under legendary coach Jim Kraus, graduating in 1987.

He then played at Boise State, graduating in 1993, and thinking of playing professionally.

He returned to Coeur d’Alene Public in 1994 as an assistant pro, giving lessons, but still trying to “follow that dream.”

Elmore took lessons from Chris Mitchell, once one of the top high school and college players in the area, and head pro at “The Public” at the time.

In the late 1990s, he played in a couple Nike (now Korn Ferry) Tour events — one at Meadow Springs Country Club in Richland, Wash., and one in Omaha, Neb. — before giving up on that part of his dream.

“I played good,” he said of those Nike Tour events, “and I didn’t make the cut. Simple as that,” Elmore said.

The problem with being an assistant pro at a course in the northern part of the country — there’s often no income to be earned at the course in the offseason, which can last several months, depending on snowfall.

Even worse if you’re a young pro, married and starting a family.

So …

With a connection through John Woodhall, former pro at Coeur d’Alene Public, Elmore landed a job in Arizona, where golf is played year-round — often, even more so in the winter than the summer.

Hired by a company called In Celebration of Golf, which manages golf courses, Elmore’s first job was as head pro at the Links at Queen Creek in San Tan Valley, Ariz.

Six months later, he was promoted to oversee the operations at both Scottsdale Silverado Golf Club and Starfire Golf Club.

During that time he was also involved in consulting projects, visiting courses and giving feedback.

One of his duties was basically being a “secret shopper” — play the course, rate the service, presentation of the course and the pro shop, etc. — then put together a report.

Even better when he could bring his wife, Jennifer, along. One trip in the late 2000s took them to Las Vegas, where they were able to watch Gonzaga and Saint Mary’s play in the West Coast Conference tournament.

WHILE MANAGING courses at Silverado and Starfire in the early 2000s, he was approached by a company called GolfNow about an idea new at the time — online tee times.

His courses were among the first in Arizona to use the technology, where golfers could go online and book tee times, rather than the old-fashioned way of, say, getting up at 7 a.m. on a Tuesday and trying to call a course to book a weekend tee time.

“In 2003-ish at Silverado and Starfire, we kind of went all-in, trying to get tee times booked online,” Elmore said. “And if we had 20 tee times booked online a day that was great. Now they’re doing almost 75 percent of the rounds booked online.”

When the idea of online tee times was first broached to Elmore, he was understandably skeptical.

“In my head I’m like, ‘That’s not going to work,’” he said. “At that time you (just) had flip phones … I don’t see people sitting at their desks booking a tee time.”

But he gave it a try.

“At Silverado-Starfire we were the first to do it, and it slowly grew … to now where it’s actually a big part of the business,” Elmore said. “By the time everyone else was catching on we were already ahead.”

And one side benefit …

“When you got a tee time, you got an email address, now you start an email database,” Elmore said. “I was real excited when we had 100 people in our email database, I could send them an email and I was real excited if three people would book. Now, we’ve got tens of thousands in our email database.”

They don’t use GolfNow at the Coeur d’Alene Golf Club to book online tee times, but golfers can still go to the website and book tee times there.

Elmore estimates 30 percent of tee times at “The Public” are booked online, compared to around 70 percent in Arizona.

DURING HIS time at In Celebration of Golf, when the company would take over management of a course, Elmore would often help the course with this “newfound avenue” of booking tee times online.

Often, he said, home builders and developers would build a golf course with hundreds of homes around it. The developer owns the course, but he doesn’t want to manage the course, so he might contract it out to a management company, such as In Celebration of Golf. If the developer sells the course, it’s up to the new owners to decide whether to manage the course themselves, or use a management company.

Often, Elmore would come in and help assess what needed to be fixed at the course.

“The first and second holes are the most important to have looking good, and the 17th and 18th hole are the most important to have looking good,” he said. “Because if you think about it, you always remember the first hole, and you always remember the 18th hole.

“If the course is neglected, there’s a lot of things you can do without spending a lot of money, whether it’s picking up garbage, mowing something that’s usually not mowed,” he added. “Maybe it’s putting flowers in front of the clubhouse — it looks nice. Put some tables and chairs on the patio, it looks like there’s activity.”

THE GOLF market in Arizona, Elmore said, was “all business,” as compared to the golf market here.

“You’re marketing to take someone else’s golfer away from them,” he said. “And up here, it wasn’t like that, still isn’t like that. It’s very competitive down there because there’s so much on the line.”

“And then, as time progressed, it got busier and busier, to the point where the golf market down there is crazy,” Elmore said. “It’s busy 365 days a year. Early on, summers weren’t that busy. We’d still be open, but we might do just 50, 60 golfers in a day. But in the last 3-4-5 years we were just as busy in the summertime as we were in the wintertime.”

And yes, people do play when it’s hot down there — but sometimes out of necessity.

“Going back 2001 to now, there’s less golf courses open in the Phoenix area, and there haven’t been many built,” Elmore said. “More have closed than opened. So there’s less golf courses now, but the population of Phoenix has exploded — there’s a million more people living there than 23 years ago. Now it’s just flat-out hard to get tee times. That’s why the summers got so busy, because the prime times in the winter were getting taken up, so if you want to play golf … ” … you play in the summer.

Also, thanks to something called “dynamic pricing,” 18 holes at Course X could be $120 today, and $175 tomorrow. Courses up here often have higher weekend rates, but usually not that dramatic a bump.

“It got to the point where, a few years ago, an $80 or $90 golf course is now a $220 golf course, but the golf course hasn’t changed in three years,” Elmore said. “To me, that just wasn’t golf. This (in North Idaho) is more golf. The range, men’s club events, tournaments, being more of a social atmosphere, rather than, bottom line — how much can we get from this person? Or how many rounds can we get today. In fact, the last five years my job was to get as many people on the golf course, for as much money as I can.”

Elmore said it’s not like that up here because courses in Arizona cater more toward tourists, especially around special events — Thanksgiving weekend, Christmas holidays, bowl games, a car auction that brings in 150,000 people, a PGA Tour event …

“So it brings all these people into town, so it creates that supply and demand,” Elmore said.

FAST FORWARD to this year.

With their two sons, Michael and Abraham, both grown, and uncertain how the next 12 years might go in Arizona, Mike and Jennifer chose to return to North Idaho.

Mike had always kept in contact with the folks at the Coeur d’Alene Golf Club, which opened 70 years ago on land donated by lumber mills, and run by a nine-member board of directors.

They reached out to him when there was an opening for a general manager — would he be interested.

Prior to this golf season, the course changed its organizational structure.

In the past, the head pro would own the merchandise in the pro shop, own the carts, lease out the restaurant, etc.

Coeur d’Alene Golf Club board members changed it so the course earned the money from tee times, pro shop and restaurant, etc., with that money all being funneled back into the course.

The pro (and the GM) receive a flat salary.

“I don’t think it (the old way the course was run) would have stopped me from coming back, but I did like the idea of being able to oversee everything,” Elmore said.

“That’s another thing that brought me back, was this course’s potential,” he said. “Golf has exploded, the city of Coeur d’Alene has exploded, like it or not, and you’ve got this course with this beautiful clubhouse, infrastructure, driving range, 70-year-old golf course that’s always in great shape, within minutes of downtown Coeur d’Alene. And the potential here is just endless. The restaurant, year-round banquets … you could make it into a conference room on one end. Just realizing the potential … ”

TWENTY-THREE years later, Elmore said the clubhouse at the Coeur d’Alene Golf Club is the same, and the course itself is the same.

“The trees have gotten BIG,” he said. “Not the height, but the girth, the size of these trees is mammoth.

“Another thing — I can’t believe how many people use the range here. Going back to the 1990s, there were always stalls open. Now, it is full from sunup to sundown.

“If 100 people came through the door today, I would remember 30 of them from back then,” Elmore said. ”Just the activity around here — the rounds, the range use, the restaurant, is just a hub of activity now. Whereas, during what I call Part 1, it wasn’t as busy as it is now.”

On the range, golfers can hit driver from all the stalls now — up until recently, golfers couldn’t use drivers from some stalls for fear of clearing the fence and hitting balls into the streets. Now, limited-flight balls are used on the range.

Oh, and there’s one other change — now some of the younger folk refer to the course as “The Pubs,” rather than “The Public.”

“So we have hats with that on it,” said Elmore, not one to miss a merchandising opportunity.

Elmore said Brandon Bubar, in his sixth year as course superintendent, and also known as one of the top basketball officials in the area, has been “outstanding.”

After all these years away,Elmore said he’s excited to be back home, putting his personal touch on his home course.

“I grew up here,” he said. “I grew up in Coeur d’Alene, this is where I learned to play golf, bought a junior pass out here and eventually worked here, then went away. I just want to come back and kind of put my thumb print on it, just give it the care that it deserves. Hopefully people come out and see it … whether you’re a golfer, or it’s just for lunch, or here for a banquet or to hit range balls, or coming to the pro shop to shop, I just want it to be an experience.”

Mark Nelke is sports editor of The Press. He can be reached at 208-664-8176, Ext. 2019, or via email at mnelke@cdapress.com. Follow him on Twitter @CdAPressSports.