"I grew up on the sand green golf course, which many of us did in the country areas in Australia, and you have to rake your own sand greens…Most of the members had to cut the grass…just to get the golf course playable. Then when I got onto grass greens, you saw all that went on with the big golf courses, with the grass and how they kept it, and what it took. It became part of my life, I guess. I never worked in that side of it until I got into the golf design business…I’ve employed a lot of superintendents over the years and sent them out working for us at various projects around the world.

When I’m looking for a guy, I’m looking for a guy who wants to further himself in the industry and says, ‘I’d like to be involved in learning how the construction of the golf course works and how to grow-in a golf course.’ And there is a difference between learning to grow a golf course in and actually managing a golf course. There’s a distinct difference. We see some people that are very good at managing golf courses and not so good at growing a golf course in from scratch and bringing it along from scratch. But I think we look at a guy that really is capable of managing his time very well, is an organized man, and most important, on a construction site, that has a very good rapport with all the people who are working on that construction site. Because golf is only one part of it…Most of the time, too, he’s working in countries where they may not speak the language very well, so someone who’s really thoughtful and knows how to deal with people and knows how to mix in other cultures.

It’s a lot of qualities, and some of them fail. The ones that come through are usually extraordinary people. "