Golf & Education - The Glen Mills Way
By Bob Fagan
I grew up in the golf-rich surrounds of Philadelphia, home to more than a hundred
outstanding private club courses and now some very good public course layouts
as well. Most well traveled golfers would agree that the region around
Philadelphia known as the Delaware Valley is the second best in America for the
quality, volume, and variety of its golf courses – surpassed only by the greater
metropolitan area of New York City. Well, there is an upscale daily fee golf
course designed by Bobby Weed just west of Philly in suburban Glen Mills,
Pennsylvania that ranks with the very best private and public courses in America.
The name of the golf course is The Golf Course at Glens Mills. Okay, you say,
that’s nice, but what is so special about another great golf course a couple of
thousand miles away?
This outstanding golf course just happens to be located on the premises of and
operated by the oldest boy’s reform school in the United States. Founded in
1826, and located some 20 miles southwest of Philadelphia, the Glen Mills
School occupies 1,000 hilly, wooded acres for its 1,000 boys who have been
given this as an alternative to jail. Yes, the nice looking boys that grab your bad
(don’t worry, they won’t steal anything), set you up on your cart, and are hand
mowing the greens are for lack of a better term, juvenile delinquents.
This Glens Mills golf course has only been in existence since 2000. Portions of
the school property were too hilly and rocky for other uses until it occurred that a
golf course might work. Indeed, the golf course was constructed with the idea
that it would provide a source of revenue for the School and a venue for
vocational training for the students. Well, the quality of the golf course is not
exactly any secret. Most golf publications have recognized its quality from day
one. Weed’s design may be his very best; there is not a weak hole and several
vie for spectacular “Best in America” honors. The look of the course is more lay
of the land with some bold, but natural looking bunkering, consistent with the
classic “Golden Age of Architecture” known as the “Philadelphia Style”
(Tillinghast, Thomas, Flynn, and others with roots in the area). There are open
meadows, streams, and thickly wooded terrain complete with some dramatic
elevation changes. The golf course, in short, is magnificent right down to the
conditioning – easily one of the Top 25 Modern Courses in America.
John Vogts is the golf course superintendent and supervises a full-time staff of
12 employees and 20-25 students each day. He says that the school doesn’t
take children with emotional or psychological problems, but rather challenged
boys who have run into serious problems. “Most who come here grow up in bad
environments and get involved in drug dealing or gang situations. By combining
education, vocation, athletics, and social development, this school gives them
(the kids) a real opportunity to change their lives for the better,” says Vogts.
The golf course vocational program is not the chain gang of orange-suited
inmates that you might imagine. And no, the kids don’t do weekwacking – that is
contracted out. Instead, they do all the important jobs, hand-mowing greens,
tees, and approaches, triplex mowing of the fairways, hand-raking all the
bunkers, as well as attending to the sod-faced bunkers, the Scotch broom,
abundant rock and water features, and special construction projects. The closest
thing to menial labor is the sand filling of fairway divots.
The boys start their daily golf course chores at 5:30 a.m. each morning, working
in tandem on adjacent holes, standing ready to cover each other in case of an
equipment breakdown. Their workday ends by 11:30 a.m. with the afternoon
devoted to classes and athletics. Sounds like a pretty full schedule to me. All in
all, some 200 students will be involved with the golf course each year. That’s
pretty special when you consider that none of them had ever set foot on a golf
course before.
On the golf shop side, Bob Pfister, a long-time highly respected PGA
professional supervises a very attractive and upscale golf shop as well as the
outside service staff composed of students.
As you enter the clubhouse surrounds, you are greeted by one of the boys as
you at the finest clubs. They attend to your needs furnishing polite upbeat
directions and help at every turn, taking care of your equipment and setting you
up on a golf cart. The service is simply first-class – comparable to any five-star
golf operation. So too are the playing conditions you will encounter. Consider
that such stalwart private courses such as Merion, Rolling Green, Aronimink,
Philadelphia Country Club, Llanerch, and Waynesborough are nearby, and this
course’s conditioning compares favorably to any of them! Even last summer
when climate conditions wreaked havoc and devastated area courses, Glen Mills
featured terrific playing conditions.
As good as the layout is, Superintendent Vogts continues to tweak the design –
all while fully involving his students. Everything is done in-house which is in
keeping with the self-reliant nature of The Glen Mills School. Vogts, a modest
fellow, brings a background of working with legendary Merion superintendent
Richie Valentine and supervises an annual maintenance budget of more than $1
million.
What makes this story really special is that Vogts and The Glen Mills School’s
golf program has since 2000, placed more than forty of its graduates in full-time,
paid positions with other golf courses around the country. The lives of boys who
came there in trouble and with little hope, are now gainfully employed in a field in
which they enjoy and have a bright future. To me, great golf or not, that is an
awesome story of how golf and education can really compliment each other!
At its highest peak 2010 rate of $65, which includes a golf cart, Glen Mills
represents a bona fide bargain in my book.
By Bob Fagan
I grew up in the golf-rich surrounds of Philadelphia, home to more than a hundred
outstanding private club courses and now some very good public course layouts
as well. Most well traveled golfers would agree that the region around
Philadelphia known as the Delaware Valley is the second best in America for the
quality, volume, and variety of its golf courses – surpassed only by the greater
metropolitan area of New York City. Well, there is an upscale daily fee golf
course designed by Bobby Weed just west of Philly in suburban Glen Mills,
Pennsylvania that ranks with the very best private and public courses in America.
The name of the golf course is The Golf Course at Glens Mills. Okay, you say,
that’s nice, but what is so special about another great golf course a couple of
thousand miles away?
This outstanding golf course just happens to be located on the premises of and
operated by the oldest boy’s reform school in the United States. Founded in
1826, and located some 20 miles southwest of Philadelphia, the Glen Mills
School occupies 1,000 hilly, wooded acres for its 1,000 boys who have been
given this as an alternative to jail. Yes, the nice looking boys that grab your bad
(don’t worry, they won’t steal anything), set you up on your cart, and are hand
mowing the greens are for lack of a better term, juvenile delinquents.
This Glens Mills golf course has only been in existence since 2000. Portions of
the school property were too hilly and rocky for other uses until it occurred that a
golf course might work. Indeed, the golf course was constructed with the idea
that it would provide a source of revenue for the School and a venue for
vocational training for the students. Well, the quality of the golf course is not
exactly any secret. Most golf publications have recognized its quality from day
one. Weed’s design may be his very best; there is not a weak hole and several
vie for spectacular “Best in America” honors. The look of the course is more lay
of the land with some bold, but natural looking bunkering, consistent with the
classic “Golden Age of Architecture” known as the “Philadelphia Style”
(Tillinghast, Thomas, Flynn, and others with roots in the area). There are open
meadows, streams, and thickly wooded terrain complete with some dramatic
elevation changes. The golf course, in short, is magnificent right down to the
conditioning – easily one of the Top 25 Modern Courses in America.
John Vogts is the golf course superintendent and supervises a full-time staff of
12 employees and 20-25 students each day. He says that the school doesn’t
take children with emotional or psychological problems, but rather challenged
boys who have run into serious problems. “Most who come here grow up in bad
environments and get involved in drug dealing or gang situations. By combining
education, vocation, athletics, and social development, this school gives them
(the kids) a real opportunity to change their lives for the better,” says Vogts.
The golf course vocational program is not the chain gang of orange-suited
inmates that you might imagine. And no, the kids don’t do weekwacking – that is
contracted out. Instead, they do all the important jobs, hand-mowing greens,
tees, and approaches, triplex mowing of the fairways, hand-raking all the
bunkers, as well as attending to the sod-faced bunkers, the Scotch broom,
abundant rock and water features, and special construction projects. The closest
thing to menial labor is the sand filling of fairway divots.
The boys start their daily golf course chores at 5:30 a.m. each morning, working
in tandem on adjacent holes, standing ready to cover each other in case of an
equipment breakdown. Their workday ends by 11:30 a.m. with the afternoon
devoted to classes and athletics. Sounds like a pretty full schedule to me. All in
all, some 200 students will be involved with the golf course each year. That’s
pretty special when you consider that none of them had ever set foot on a golf
course before.
On the golf shop side, Bob Pfister, a long-time highly respected PGA
professional supervises a very attractive and upscale golf shop as well as the
outside service staff composed of students.
As you enter the clubhouse surrounds, you are greeted by one of the boys as
you at the finest clubs. They attend to your needs furnishing polite upbeat
directions and help at every turn, taking care of your equipment and setting you
up on a golf cart. The service is simply first-class – comparable to any five-star
golf operation. So too are the playing conditions you will encounter. Consider
that such stalwart private courses such as Merion, Rolling Green, Aronimink,
Philadelphia Country Club, Llanerch, and Waynesborough are nearby, and this
course’s conditioning compares favorably to any of them! Even last summer
when climate conditions wreaked havoc and devastated area courses, Glen Mills
featured terrific playing conditions.
As good as the layout is, Superintendent Vogts continues to tweak the design –
all while fully involving his students. Everything is done in-house which is in
keeping with the self-reliant nature of The Glen Mills School. Vogts, a modest
fellow, brings a background of working with legendary Merion superintendent
Richie Valentine and supervises an annual maintenance budget of more than $1
million.
What makes this story really special is that Vogts and The Glen Mills School’s
golf program has since 2000, placed more than forty of its graduates in full-time,
paid positions with other golf courses around the country. The lives of boys who
came there in trouble and with little hope, are now gainfully employed in a field in
which they enjoy and have a bright future. To me, great golf or not, that is an
awesome story of how golf and education can really compliment each other!
At its highest peak 2010 rate of $65, which includes a golf cart, Glen Mills
represents a bona fide bargain in my book.
Bob Fagan grew up in the greater Philadelphia area and lived there until 1991 when he moved West to become the Executive Director for the Northern California PGA.
He considers the Philly area to have one of the finest concentrations of quality golf courses in America, if not the world. Perhaps only the Greater New York region composed of Long Island, Westchester County, Western Connecticut, and North Jersey exceeds the area of South Jersey, Delaware, and Eastern Pennsylvania for the number and diversity of great golf courses in the U.S.
For many years, an abundance of private clubs dominated the scene, but since the 1990s, many exciting new public-access courses came onto the scene to provide area golfers many exciting choices.