A golfer is happy if a round of golf takes fewer than four hours. On Oct. 10, Keith Stewart will be shooting to get in 18 holes in about 75 minutes.
And when he’s done, he’ll play another round. If all goes well, that will also take about an hour and a quarter. Then he will play another round. And another, and another — and he still won’t be done.
For 10 years, the Hopewell resident has been the head golf professional at Springdale Golf Club. But on one day a year for the past 8 years, he and a few of others on his staff become what you might call marathon golfers. This year, Stewart and assistant pros Darren Bolton, Vince Ramagli and Robby Fenton will play 100 holes over about 6 and a half hours to raise money for two nonprofit organizations: Christine’s Hope For Kids (christineshope.org) and the New Jersey Golf Foundation’s Golf in Schools Program (njgolffoundation.org).
In the first seven years, the pros raised more than $85,000 for the two groups. Sponsors often pledge $1 per hole and the pros set a goal of 100 sponsors apiece. For the first five years he actually played 150 holes in a day — which took him more than 10 hours, and necessitated a week of recovery time.
A mere hundred holes is more reasonable. “Needless to say, we are using riding carts when we play,” Stewart says. “At the completion of the entire marathon, your arms are pretty loose.”
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Above the door of Keith Stewart’s office is a sign that reads: Director of Fun. That might give you some idea of the kind of vibe he brings to his job as head professional at Springdale.
As a PGA professional, Stewart’s mandate is to administer the many golf programs available to members of the private club, which was founded in 1896 by students, alumni and faculty of Princeton University. He and his staff give some 600 lessons a year in addition to running the pro shop, numerous clinics, tournaments and other golf events. “As pros of the club, we put the pro in proactivity,” he says. “We’re constantly looking for new and exciting ways to present golf to our members.”
And yet somehow, he also manages to find time to be the Director of Fun as well. So what does a Director of Fun do?
“Being the Director of Fun is about creating an atmoshere where people just want to come back,” he says. “The world, quite frankly these days, is anxious and stressed and fast moving. Everyone’s got so much going on that when they come to the club, they should be able to focus on having fun and playing golf.”
Stewart says he and his staff work hard to create a “destination mentality” at the club. “What I mean by that is, we didn’t want to be a rest stop on the turnpike. We want to be Long Beach Island, where someone will hang out for the week,” he says. “People have so much going on all the time that distract them from their entertainment time, which is what we are. We have to make sure everything we do as a staff, we make it fun, cool and exciting.”
Stewart says the Springdale story is compelling as well. The course, originally designed in the early 20th century by Willie Dunn, Jr., got a major makeover in the late 20’s by golf architect William Flynn, who did design work on famous golf courses such as Shinnecock Hills, Merion and Pine Valley.
“It’s a fascinating place that unfortunately not enough people know about,” Stewart says. “When people dig into the Springdale story, it’s pretty cool. How many people who are golf pros go to work at a course that has given Albert Einstein his only golf lesson? That has had multiple presidents play there, and that has had George Washington sleep there during the Battle of Princeton?”
Originally from Edison, Stewart started pursuing a career as a golf professional back in 1997, when he got a job at Brae Burn Country Club, outside Boston. Though he had played lacrosse in high school and at College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts, he had played golf competitively in his youth, and golf was where he decided he wanted to forge a career.
Stewart left Brae Burn to become an assistant pro at Isleworth, in Windemere, Florida, from 1998 to 2003. Isleworth was a bit famous at the time because it was the home course of one Tiger Woods, just then ascending to his position as possibly the greatest golfer of all time.
“It was pretty cool,” Stewart says. “People used to ask me all the time, ‘How good is Tiger Woods at golf?’ I would say, ‘Tiger Woods is better at golf than I am at breathing.’”
Woods won three of the four majors on the PGA Tour in 2000, one of the years that Stewart was there. “It was great to get to know him,” he says. “He was a great person. He was great to the staff. I couldn’t say enough about him.”
Woods has struggled with injury in recent years, but a recent comeback culminated last month in a victory at the PGA Tour Championship, Woods’ first win in 5 years. Stewart has a collection of Woods memorabilia in his office. He says the comeback has been great for the game. He hopes another generation gets to see Woods’ greatness and get excited like previous generations did when Woods burst on the scene in 1997.
“He’s great for the game. He’s great for people in my position. In any given Sunday when he’s in the hunt, my phone just blows up. The club is electric,” he says.
Stewart left Windemere for a club in Rhode Island. Then in 2009 he came to Springdale. He and wife Laurie settled in Hopewell Borough in 2010 and still live there today. Son Owen is 10, and daughter Abigail, 8, attend Hopewell Elementary School. Laurie also works in the golf business, doing sales rep support.
Stewart takes understandable pride in the junior program he and his staff of assistant pros have created and nurtured at Springdale. This including the club’s PGA Jr. League team. PGA Jr. League is open to kids age 13 and under, and notably, is open even to kids whose families are not members. Participants play in nine-hole, best-ball team matches against players from other area clubs. The teams are coaches by assistant pros.
“I don’t mind telling my members my staff hasn’t lost in four seasons,” Stewart says. “Our kids are really really good.”
Stewart and his staff have embraced a player-development program called Operation 36, which is designed to help golfers improve while also providing a framework for family-friendly golf. The program is designed to get players shooting scores of 36 for 9 holes, starting from shorter distances. Players might start each hole 50 yards from the green, trying to hole out in four strokes or fewer each time. Once they are able to do that, they move back a certain distance and try to do the same.
He says youth programs and a family-friendly attitude at Springdale has injected new life into the club. “We continue to get younger, newer members and that’s become the lifeblood of the club,” he says. “Before I got here, there was no organized junior golf program. Now there are 60 or 70 families involved.”
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Since April, Stewart has added radio show host to his weekly duties — hosting a show called Springdale Golf Live every Friday at 3 p.m. on 920 The Jersey Fox Sports Radio (WNJE-AM). Each week he interviews a guest from the greater golf world.
Stewart has been able to attract varied and interesting guests to the show, like United States golf historian Mike Trostel and Carnoustie Golf Links head professional Colin Sinclair. He has even gone on location a number of times for shows, interviewing PGA of America secretary Jim Richerson at the PGA Championship in St. Louis, and PGA director of instruction Jason Carbone at Baltusrol Golf Club in North Jersey.
“I was looking into ways I could better promote the game of golf as a PGA professsional,” Stewart says of the show. “I had done a number of guests spots on Fox Sports Radio or the Sirius XM PGA Tour Network. I have a passion for communicating the game and thought it would be something I would be skilled at, but it took about a year to convince the people over at Fox Sports what I’m capable of doing.”
He says he gets positive feedback every week. “The design of the show is to show that we are the coolest club in town. It’s just another example of how we’re looking at the big picture in Springdale and making it cool and fun, 2018 and beyond,” he says.
Past shows are available to listen to in podcast form on iTunes and other places where podcasts can be found.
In addition to hosting the 100-hole marathon, Springdale will also host the Christine’s Hope For Kids annual golf outing on Oct. 1. Christine’s Hope was founded by Springdale members and Hopewell Valley residents Jean and John Gianacaci in 2010, after their daughter Christine, on a humanitarian mission to Haiti, was killed in an earthquake. On the web: christineshope.org, njgolffoundation.org and springdalegc.org.
