Do you know of any other pro around here who has shot an elk lately?
Meet Troy Albers, certainly not a Son of the South though he says he’s getting used to it. “It has been an adjustment,” says Albers, the general manager and director of golf at Fleming Island.
Albers is from South Dakota, went to college in Minnesota, hunts in Colorado and works for a Nebraska company. None of those places has a reputation for warmth, and now he finds himself in Clay County, Florida.
“I grew up in the north and I got used to doing what people do up there,” he says. One of those things is hunting and he and his dad do it the tough way - they go after elk, which can weigh a half-ton, with a scrawny bow and arrow. He got one in each of the last two trips.
He’s now learning about Florida’s big game, which is found in offshore waters, and he’s reeled in a 45-pound dolphin.
So, how does a person from cold climes get involved in golf?
After graduating from Mankato State College, where he played golf when the weather permitted and earned a business degree, he hooked up with a Lincoln, Neb. company that managed golf courses.
“I was looking for a job in the business world and it just happened that their business was golf,” said the 36-year-old Albers. That company later merged with a Lincoln company named Landscapes Unlimited, a major player in the course operation business.
“A guy named Bill Kubly started with his pickup truck and a shovel,” said Albers, “and started acquiring courses. That was 30 years ago. Today, he might be the biggest in the business.”
Albers was running a golf course/ski resort when he got the call - Landscapes was going into business in Florida. The giant Centex homebuilding company, the Fleming Island developer, had decided that it wanted someone else to worry about the Bobby Weed-designed course it was building in Fleming Island.
Albers, who arrived in September 2000, was on the job when his office was a trailer. Now, the course is up and running with substantial play and he oversees 30 employees from a clubhouse in the center of the giant development, where 800 of the planned 2,000 homes are built and the small city - schools, library, YMCA, etc. - is either in place or under construction.
“It’s an amazing place,” said Albers, who lives “about a one and one-half minute drive from the clubhouse. You have almost everything here. What we don’t have is just a few minutes away (in the Eagle Harbor area, a mile or so north on U.S. 17.)”
A mix of members and daily fee players plays the course; Albers says it will stay that way, even if the membership grows.
“Our company knows what it’s doing,” he said. “We know that you have to operate in a certain way if you’re going to withstand the bad times as well as thrive in good times.
“You’ll see the same thing here, not matter what the economy. Our course will be in good condition. We’ll do the right thing.”