 |
|
A man for many seasons
Jim Ramey, CGCS, has found life to his liking, both on and off the golf course, at Oregon’s Sunriver Resort.
 |
Jim Ramey, CGCS, is director of maintenance for Sunriver Resort’s four courses, including Crosswater (below). Photos by Patrick T. Windsor/courtesy of Bayer Environmental Science |
As head teaching pro at Crosswater Golf Course at central Oregon’s Sunriver Resort the past two years, Josh Willis has grown to appreciate the excellence of the man responsible for the condition of one of the region’s true jewels.
“It’s your passion for what you do that makes you different than anybody else,” Willis says. “If you don’t have that passion for it, you’ll never be the best. That’s what makes Jim Ramey the best.”
Ramey, 62, serves as director of maintenance for the four golf facilities at Sunriver.
He is also a near-scratch golfer, a course designer, a powder skier, an expert fisherman and photographer, a father, a husband and a central Oregonian of somewhat mythical proportions.
 |
“Jim and his wife hitchhiked here in the ’70s,” Willis says. “He built this log cabin on the Fall River with his bare hands.”
Well, sort of.
Ramey drove his Volkswagen bus from Seattle to central Oregon, actually. And he met his wife of 31 years, June, when both were employees at Sunriver.
But Ramey did build the log cabin he and June live in today.
“I cut all the trees, peeled the logs, designed it,” Ramey says of his 1,300-square-foot, three-bedroom home. “It took me a couple of years to complete it.”
Willis, like many others who have come across Ramey in the last 35 years, treats his cohort with reverence.
“He has to be one of the greatest stories you’d ever imagine,” Willis says. “Jim is the most amazing man I’ve met since I’ve been to Sunriver.”
Finding a home in the mountains
Ramey — an Army brat who lived throughout the world as a youth before graduating from high school in Barstow, Calif. — evolved into the No. 1 player on his high school team and a two-year varsity performer at Cal State-Los Angeles. From there, he got a job as an assistant golf pro at venerable Wilshire Country Club in Los Angeles.
“It was fantastic,” says Ramey, who spent four years working there. “Wilshire is one of the great old courses in the L.A. area. Being able to work at that club and see all the other great old courses in the area was really cool — a great experience.”
In 1974, wanderlust bit Ramey and sent him north. While living in Germany as a child, he had been introduced to skiing.
“That kind of lit the light bulb for me,” he says. “After four years at Wilshire, I decided I needed to get away from the city and the smog. I wanted to move to the mountains to ski. I left L.A. in search of a mountain life. I was heading to the Canadian Rockies, but they didn’t want Americans up there taking their jobs.”
Ramey’s first stop was in Seattle, but says he quickly “tired of the dreariness and rain. I was at Crystal Mountain (near Washington’s Mount Rainier) on a beautiful sunny day, sitting out on the deck, drinking a beer. And I had a conversation with somebody who told me, ‘If you really like sunshine and skiing, you ought to visit Mount Bachelor.’”
Bachelor is the premier ski destination in the Cascade Range of Oregon, not far from Sunriver.
“I drove my Volkswagen van and parked it at the ski area,” Ramey says. “The next morning, I hiked to the top of the mountain and decided (Sunriver) is where I wanted to live. It was the coolest little town and place I’d ever seen and still is.”
 |
Crosswater, designated one of “America’s 100 Greatest Courses” by Golf Digest and one of “America’s Top 100 Modern Courses” by Golf Week Magazine, is hosting the Jeld-Wen Tradition through 2010. |
Climbing Sunriver’s ladder
Ramey, still a bachelor, needed a job to pay for his season ski pass. He temporarily found a desk job in the purchasing department at Sunriver Lodge, but soon landed a spot mowing greens at what was then Sunriver’s only course (now called “Meadows”).
“That’s how my life as a golf superintendent started,” says Ramey, who soon thereafter married his wife and started a family that includes two boys.
Ramey began a move up the ladder in golf course maintenance, to irrigation technician to foreman to assistant superintendent to superintendent. A 25-year member of GCSAA, Ramey has been a certified superintendent since 1988.
Soon there were additional courses on which to work. After the north course (Woodlands) was built in the mid-1980s, Ramey served as superintendent for both courses. When Crosswater opened in 1995, Ramey moved over to spearhead operations at that course. Crosswater — annually ranked among Golfweek’s top 100 modern golf courses — has become the venue for some major tournaments, including the NCAA Women’s Championships, the Jeld-Wen Tradition on the Champions Tour and the PGA Professional National Championships.
Now there is also Caldera Springs, a nine-hole short course with a three-hole practice facility. Ramey oversees maintenance at all four Sunriver layouts.
Spread thin?
“Sometimes I feel that way,” he says, “but I can handle it. We have superintendents at each course (under him), and I have an excellent staff. It works out really well.”
 |
The Deschutes and Little Deschutes rivers flow through Sunriver Resort’s Crosswater Course, designed by Bob Cupp. |
A passion for the job
The harsh winters of central Oregon — the course is closed from November to April — present a unique challenge that 30 years of experience allows Ramey to meet head-on.
“Jim has a far tougher job than the average superintendent,” Willis says. “If he had the passion to leave central Oregon, he could go anywhere in the U.S. to get a job as a superintendent or director of agronomy. Nobody is better than Jim.”
High standards at Sunriver add to the challenge.
“We joke about it all the time,” Willis says. “That makes Jim’s job that much harder, but he handles it, and so does his crew. Now that he’s in charge of all the other courses, they have blossomed.”
Ramey’s personality and ability to deal with people are his greatest assets.
“He is the greatest guy ever,” Willis says. “A very soft-spoken guy, but a genuinely sincere, nice person — one of the top 10 guys I’ve met in my life. Staff members come back to work for him every year just because of who he is. They’re not working for Sunriver. They work for him.”
Bill St. Joer, who serves as superintendent on the Crosswater Course, seconds that notion, adding, “We have a really solid core of (employees). There’s no question they like the way it’s being run. They come back and work for Jim because they like what they’re doing. That’s why they come back (every spring). It certainly isn’t because we’re overpaying them.”
Asked to comment on the matter, Ramey pauses for the longest time.
“You’re looking for (employees) who want to be on the golf course, who really enjoy being out here and working on their own,” Ramey says. “You give them a good working situation and good equipment, and it takes care of itself, I guess.”
 |
Ramey says having great people in key positions is what makes it “all happen at Sunriver.” |
Team building
Ramey handpicks the key people around him, including St. Joer, nicknamed “Soup,” who has been the superintendent at Crosswater the past three years. Ramey admired the job St. Joer had done for years as assistant superintendent and chief mechanic at nearby Bend Country Club, hired him to work at Crosswater and has never regretted it.
“Bill had great skills as far as fixing things, dealing with irrigation problems and so on,” Ramey says. “Guys like him are the key to anybody’s success anywhere — guys who can get things done. If you don’t have a great mechanic, you’re not going to take care of things properly. That’s why I brought Bill on board here.
“All the people under you are the ones who really make it happen. We’ve had great people here in the key positions who make it all happen at Sunriver.”
St. Joer believes he and Ramey enjoy an unusual synergy. “We work together better than we do separately. He’s easygoing. I’m not quite so much that way. We’re the right amount of different that we can get along pretty well.”
Ramey’s magical touch has impressed St. Joer.
“His attention to detail for golf course maintenance, and how a course should be set up is past good — it’s incredible,” St. Joer says. “I’ve never met anybody that good. He knows all the greens everywhere. If he’s been on them a few times, he picks them right up.
“Knowing our greens and being able to set them up appropriately for regular, tournament and championship play, being able to set up a course properly ... that’s a big thing. I’ve never seen anybody that good.”
Flexing his design muscles
Along the way, Ramey has developed an interest in course design.
“I’ve always been kind of artistic,” he says. “When I was about 12 and first started playing golf and seeing drawings of courses, I started drawing them.”
One day in the late 1980s, Ramey got a call from a friend who had purchased a 100-acre property south of Sunriver and wanted to build a nine-hole “mom-and-pop” course.
“We walked the property, and I told him I thought I could build a course for him,” Ramey says. “I had an excellent equipment operator working for me at the time, and he’d be the shaper, so that’s how we built it.”
The result was Quail Run, another of central Oregon’s fine courses.
Caldera Springs is another of Ramey’s babies. “I was involved with Bob Cupp in the design of the golf element,” Ramey says.
In the ’90s, Ramey entered a GCSAA contest in conjunction with the American Society of Golf Course Architects asking members to design a course. One of the three celebrity judges — Jack Nicklaus — picked Ramey’s design.
Ramey also designed the new nine at Crooked River Ranch. Don’t be surprised if it happens again somewhere else.
“Everybody in the golf course business wants to be a designer,” Ramey says. “Having an opportunity like that was pretty cool. I would continue to pursue opportunities as they present themselves.”
At home in the outdoors
The outdoorsman in Ramey works overtime when he’s not, well, working overtime at Sunriver.
Though he doesn’t play golf nearly every day as he once did, he remains a four-handicap with plenty of game.
“Jim’s a good stick and a great putter,” Willis says. “I can take him back to the tips and take him down — he’s lost a little distance over the years — but he’ll break 80 every time he tees it up.”
“I still love to play golf,” says Ramey, who, on the day of this interview, is preparing for an afternoon round at Woodlands. “I hit balls a couple of times a week and play nine holes here and there and an occasional 18. Once the golf season starts, it’s busy, and it’s hard to play a lot.
“But I have my moments. I’m older. I’ve had back problems. I had a knee and hip replacements. I play carefully. I can’t practice and play like I used to, but I try to do it enough so I can hit some quality shots.”
When he’s not teeing it up, Mount Bachelor remains a frequent destination.
“I try to get up there every day,” Ramey says. “As soon as the snow starts flying, that’s what I’m looking for. If there’s good snow up there, I’m going to get up there and get some of it.
“I like to think I’m pretty good. I’m mainly a powder skier. I like to get up there for first tracks on powder days. My passion in life is first tracks on the mountain. I get a few runs in, then I leave.”
Ramey also takes advantage of fishing opportunities almost outside his backdoor.
“I had a great day yesterday,” he says. “Got some nice rainbows on the Fall River. It was a magical afternoon. It’s a great place to fly fish without many people being around.”
If Ramey isn’t catching fish, he is often shooting photos of them.
“He’s a phenomenal photographer,” Willis says. “He’s out there early every day, seeing the elk and the bald eagle. Last year he captured an osprey pulling a 15-inch brown trout out of the Deschutes River (which runs through Crosswater). We display that (photo) in the golf shop.”
Ramey says he is most proud of “being part of the whole thing here, helping produce one of the nicest golf facilities/resorts in the country. It’s been neat.”
How much longer does Ramey want to continue in his position at Sunriver?
“Oh, maybe one more day,” he says, laughing. Then, after a pause: “I have no timetable. As long as I’m enjoying what I’m doing, I’m going to keep doing it. I love my life. I’m still able to ski in the winter. I’m 15 minutes away from a great river to go fishing. I’m blessed, there’s no doubt about it.”