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From the March 2017 issue of GCM magazine:

A man with a plan

Don’t let the high-energy, fun-loving persona fool you: Bill Maynard, CGCS, is bringing a serious dedication to career development and industry service to his year as GCSAA president. 

Bill Maynard, CGCS, the director of golf course maintenance operations at the Country Club of St. Albans (Mo.), became GCSAA’s 81st president during the 2017 Golf Industry Show in Orlando.

Story by Scott Hollister
Photos by Larry Steinbrueck

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When Bill Maynard, CGCS, was a high school student working on the crew at Hillwood Country Club in Nashville, Tenn., he didn’t spend much time thinking about a career in the game or about the professional association that represented his fellow greenkeepers.

He certainly didn’t think about those things on the weekends when he would draw the short straw and have to spend his afternoons syringing Hillwood’s tender bentgrass greens in the heat of a Tennessee summer. 

At that point, his concerns were much more immediate, much more personal — he wanted to cool off. And the one spot in the maintenance facility where he knew he could do that was the one spot that was “technically” off-limits to a junior staffer like himself: the head superintendent’s office.

But as industrious and as motivated then as he remains today, Maynard found his way into that office and into the air conditioning. And he also found something totally unexpected sitting on his boss’s desk: a pathway to a career.

“When I was in there, I started picking up Golf Course Management, which was always on his desk,” Maynard says, laughing at the memory. “I started reading and thought, ‘Wow, this is pretty cool. A pretty interesting magazine.’ But who knew then where it would all lead?”

Where it would lead was a lifelong career in golf course management, one that would take him to six different golf courses in five different states — at least, so far. It led to a career dedicated to education, both for himself and for his colleagues in the business. It led to years of giving back to the industry through service to his chapter and to the national association.

The Country Club of St. Albans is a 36-hole facility tucked into the rolling, wooded hills west of downtown St. Louis. The Lewis and Clark Course was designed by the team of Tom Weiskopf and Jay Morrish, while the Tavern Creek Course was a product of former Old Tom Morris Award winner Michael Hurdzan, Ph.D., and Dana Fry.

And, finally, at last month’s Golf Industry Show in Orlando, it led to what the director of golf course maintenance operations at the Country Club of St. Albans (Mo.) describes as “the honor of my lifetime” — his election as the 81st national president of GCSAA.

“Bill brings great energy and enthusiasm to everything he does,” says Pete Grass, CGCS, GCSAA’s president in 2016. “I’ve seen it in the boardroom, I’ve seen it as we’ve traveled together to industry events around the country, and I’ve seen it in his one-on-one interactions with his fellow GCSAA members. I have no doubt he will lead and represent this association extremely well in his role as president.”

Taking care of business

If you ever needed proof of the trouble with first impressions, the case of Bill Maynard would offer plenty of lessons. Because, at first blush, the 30-year GCSAA member might seem like the last person you’d ever expect to invest himself so deeply into industry service and championing the cause of his fellow golf course superintendent.

By his own admission, Maynard is usually the outgoing, fun-loving life of the party. He cracks jokes. He can be irreverent. He can be loud. He absolutely loves the tight-knit camaraderie of the golf course maintenance facility and the good-natured give-and-take that comes with it. He busts chops with the best of them, and can take it when those barbs are turned in his direction.

But as those who know Maynard best will tell you, his character goes much deeper than that. He’s intensely serious about his career, about doing his best for his employer and his employees. He’s dedicated to lifelong learning, to education and to sharing that passion with his colleagues in the business. And he’s committed to giving back, to serving GCSAA and the golf course management industry, both at the local and the national levels.

“One of the things I think first attracted Bill to getting involved was the social aspect of it, the collegial part of being involved with GCSAA,” says his wife of 31 years, Darla. “And I think that’s OK — he’s funny, he can be loud, he’s high-energy. That’s who he is. But as he’s moved along on the board, I think he’s really learned that in everything he does, he represents GCSAA’s members — that when people see him, they see all superintendents, and that what he does matters. It’s made him a better superintendent and a better person.”

Maynard himself says, “I have learned to think before I speak, which hasn’t always been my strong suit. Serving on the board and being involved as I have been over the years has, I think, helped round out who I am. I look at things from a much broader perspective and a much more thoughtful perspective. No doubt I still like to have fun, but thanks to all I’ve been lucky enough to do and experience, I’m much better at identifying the time and the place for all of that.”

One of Maynard’s right-hand men at St. Albans, Greg Burdiek, the superintendent of the club’s Lewis and Clark Course, adds, “Bill really has honed that skill to be ‘the president.’ But other than that, he’s still the same guy. High-energy, enthusiastic — the guy that cares about people, about seeing them do well for themselves. None of that’s changed.”

The senior management team at the Country Club of St. Albans
(from left to right): Joe Schwent, director of golf; Laura Hodges,
director of special events and board liaison; Maynard;
and David Derfel, former general manager.

Climbing the ladder

A review of the stops along Maynard’s career path further reveals the seriousness with which he takes such matters, a professional, no-nonsense approach that lies just underneath that easygoing, lighthearted surface. His résumé illustrates a clear plan, a definite method to the madness.

That wasn’t always the case, of course. The son of a general foreman at a Ford Motor Co. glass plant and a stay-at-home mother, Maynard’s first job in golf at Hillwood was just that — a job. But soon, those stories he read in GCM and the work he was doing on the golf course sparked something. He kept returning to Hillwood during his summers, then pursued a degree from the University of Tennessee.

After he graduated, it was back to Hillwood, this time as the club’s assistant superintendent, where he worked under Mark Littlejohn, CGCS, the first of many who would shape Maynard’s professional identity. “Mark was a great career and personal-growth role model for me while I was at Hillwood,” Maynard says. “He taught me the valuable lesson of always doing the right thing. He took a chance on me, and you never forget who those kind of mentors are in your life.”

 After three years in that role, Maynard took on a new challenge as an assistant at the newly constructed Golf Club of Tennessee in Kingston Springs, just west of Nashville. The benefits there were many. First, he got a front-row seat to the grow-in of the facility. It  also gave Maynard his first experience working with golf course architect Tom Fazio, a connection that would persist throughout his career. Finally, it gave him the opportunity to work for someone who would develop into another of his true mentors in the business, David Green. 

“Such a great mentor,” Maynard says of Green, a 45-year GCSAA member who is now retired. “He was never a ‘boots’ superintendent. He wore nice golf shirts, looked the part. I learned so much from him.”

Those experiences set the stage for Maynard’s first shot at a head superintendent position, which took him east to Bristol, Va., and The Virginian Golf Club, another Fazio course. In fact, Maynard’s second head superintendent post was at Fazio’s home course in North Carolina, Champion Hills in Hendersonville.

“I dabbled in just about everything there,” Maynard says of his four years at Champion Hills. “We renovated fairways, going from bluegrass to bentgrass, did a bunch of work around greens. It was a great learning experience.”

Fueling a part of that learning experience at Champion Hills was a blossoming friendship with the club’s general manager, Tony D’Errico, CCE, a past president of the Club Managers Association of America who is now the general manager at Quail West Golf and Country Club in Naples, Fla.

“Tony taught me about the value of having excellent writing and member communications skills,” Maynard says. “I’m fortunate to still be able to consult with Tony. His leadership at work and in his church is something I have always learned from.”

When opportunity called again, it was the Midwest on the other end of the line and Milburn Country Club in the Kansas City area. Maynard spent 14 years at Milburn, the longest stint of his career to date, and among other accomplishments, oversaw the construction of a multimillion-dollar clubhouse following a devastating fire that destroyed the original clubhouse.

He also expanded his knowledge of operations within those clubhouses thanks to the mentorship of PGA professional Randy Hunt, who now sits on the PGA of America’s national board of directors. “Randy really taught me the value of understanding golf as a business,” Maynard says. “The business principles he taught me really furthered my development.”

Then, in 2013, Maynard made his most recent move to the 36-hole Country Club of St. Albans, tucked alongside the Missouri River about 30 miles west of downtown St. Louis. 

“If you look at my résumé to date, it’s pretty defined,” Maynard says. “Assistant, then superintendent, then certified superintendent, then 18 holes and now 36 holes. It never goes totally according to plan, but it’s worked out the way that I would’ve hoped it would.”

Sharing the learning

There is no doubt that Maynard’s journeys through golf course management expanded his agronomic horizons. But it also expanded his professional circles beyond anything he could’ve dreamed of as a high schooler stealing a few minutes of cold air in his superintendent’s office.

Darla Maynard likes to tell a story from their days at Champion Hills when her husband found himself in a conversation with Fazio and the late Joe Duich, the legendary Penn State turfgrass educator and the winner of GCSAA’s Old Tom Morris Award in 2006. The discussion was high-level stuff, focusing on the state of the game and the turfgrass industry, as well as the advances superintendents had experienced in both. It was a conversation in which Bill Maynard was not just a spectator, but an active participant, and it definitely left an impression.

“Bill got to be a part of that conversation, and really, the whole transformation they were talking about,” Darla says. “Not only was he talking with these two great men about the changes that were taking place in the business, but he was also living those changes. It was really neat to see.”

Experiences such as that one, paired with the positive effect that formal training had on his own career, made Maynard into a bit of an evangelist for advanced education and, ultimately, certification for superintendents. He’s been a regular instructor for GCSAA, first focusing on business leadership and communication in a session he developed called “Communication Skills for the Interactive Superintendent.”

The combined golf course maintenance team at the Country Club of St. Albans. Maynard took over in 2013 after spending 14 years
in the Kansas City area at Milburn CC.
Photos by Larry Steinbrueck

Later, after he had earned his own certification from GCSAA and served several stints on the association’s Certification Committee, he took on a second seminar, this one focused on the process of certification called “Preparing Your Way to Certification.” Although he no longer teaches the communication skills seminar, he continues to lead the certification seminar, teaching it most recently at last month’s Golf Industry Show.

“I have a passion for education and teaching,” Maynard says. “I know what it’s done for my career, and I know what it can do for others. I just really enjoy teaching other people, seeing them improve. It’s been a really fun, rewarding part of my career.”

And those closest to him in the business clearly see how much those educational experiences have meant. “Bill’s professional demeanor, his communications skills, his teamwork mentality and his connections within the golf community really set him apart from any other superintendent I’ve worked with,” says David Derfel, the general manager at St. Albans during Maynard’s tenure there, who recently moved to the Chicago area to take a new position as the general manager at Northmoor Country Club.

Giving back

If there’s anything that rivals education and teaching in revving Maynard’s professional engine, it may be the charge he gets out of giving back to an industry that has given him so much. And he credits two superintendents in whose footsteps he is now following with giving him that first shove in the direction of volunteer service: former GCSAA presidents Dave Downing, CGCS, and Mark Kuhns, CGCS.

“Those guys were both very instrumental in encouraging me to get involved while I was in the Carolinas at Champion Hills,” Maynard says. “It was Dave at a Carolinas GCSA Conference and Show urging me to get involved, and then Mark doing the same thing a little while later at the national conference. I decided to take their advice, ran for the Carolinas in the late ’90s, made it, and the rest is history.”

Maynard (second from right) leans on a veteran team at the Country Club of St. Albans, including (from left to right): Aaron Lorenz, the assistant superintendent on the Tavern Creek Course; Ryan Hanlen, the assistant superintendent on the Lewis and Clark Course; and Greg Burdiek, the superintendent on the Lewis and Clark Course.

That history continued to unfold after Maynard made his move to the Kansas City area. He quickly engaged with the GCSAA chapter there, the Heart of America GCSA, and made his way onto its board of directors. During his decade-plus at Milburn, he served as a chapter delegate for the Heart of America GCSA for five consecutive years, and rose to the rank of chapter president in 2005.

His experiences as a chapter delegate and a longtime instructor for GCSAA piqued his interest in transitioning his service from the chapter to the national level, and in 2010, Maynard made the leap when he was elected to the national board of
directors.

When asked about his long involvement with GCSAA — both at the local and national levels — and what it’s meant to him, Maynard takes a big-picture approach.

“There’s a maturing process that takes place when you serve,” he says. “You take away a broader perspective of the golf industry and the role the superintendent plays in it. For me, I think I became a better superintendent because you interact with other superintendents and with others in the business who are doing great, innovative things.”

The year ahead

As Maynard enters his year in GCSAA’s presidential seat, his to-do list contains many items you’d expect to see from someone so driven by education and service.

He’s focused on the continuing evolution of the association’s certification program, most notably in exploring ways for equipment managers and assistant superintendents to pursue certificate programs specific to their careers. He also wants to keep the ball rolling on GCSAA’s burgeoning advocacy and government affairs efforts, and will be paying special attention to GCSAA’s BMP initiative that got its official unveiling last month at GIS in Orlando.

But as important as those particular GCSAA programs and services are to Maynard, his true goal for his year in office is much broader, and it’s one he hopes will touch association members at all levels of the game — levels he’s seen firsthand as he’s made his own way through a career in golf course management.

“All my friends have told me, ‘Man, don’t forget where you came from,’” Maynard says. “So it’s going to be important to me that I represent the entire membership — the guy from the nine-hole course to the guy at a 72-hole facility.

“I think our professional image continues to grow and more of the golfing public realizes the role we play. But I want that recognition to continue, and I want everyone in GCSAA to feel that. I represent them, and GCSAA represents them.”

Scott Hollister is GCM’s editor-in-chief.