Christmas 12—For new Schifferdecker Golf Pro Austin Shipman, exposure to the game of golf began as a young child but the Joplin native never envisioned that golf would become a career.
“I started playing golf when I was really young,” said Shipman, who was tabbed for the city job last month. “I actually did the junior program at Range Line when I was 6 or 7 years old.”
Shipman said he put golf in the rearview mirror for a time growing up to focus on baseball, playing his high school ball at McAuley Catholic Regional.
“After my baseball career wrapped up, I was in need of a summer job while going to college at Pitt State,” Shipman said.
That summer job — an outside attendant at Eagle Creek — led to more opportunities for him in the world of golf.
“Within a short period of time, I got moved inside to become a pro shop attendant,” Shipman said. “So I moved inside to do retail and help set up tournaments and things like that.”
He said about a year into the new position, the Eagle Creek pro left, opening yet another opportunity.
“They needed someone to fill the management position and I just happened to be going to school for management so I stepped into the role and kind of fell in love with it,” he said. “I was playing a lot of golf, setting up a lot of tournaments and meeting a lot of new and interesting people. It just kind of blossomed from there.”
Shipman stayed at Eagle Creek for about five years, before working in construction for a couple of years.
“I was on top of a roof replacing some siding one day and the superintendent from Peoria Ridge (Miami, OKlahoma) called me and wanted me to come interview down there,” Shipman said. “I took him up on it, interviewed him there and ended up staying there for two years.”
Shipman said that because Eagle Creek and Peoria Ridge are both part of tribal casinos, they are both set up for more of a resort experience, where the Schifferdecker Municipal Golf Course is based solely on the game of golf.
“They want people to come and stay at the hotels and play in the casinos,” Shipman said. “Golf is an amenity of that. At Schiff, we’re just a golf course, there is no resort, so we are focused more on just the golf.”
Shipman’s duties vary at the course, but the heart of his focus is simply the business of running a golf course.
“I handle the day to day operations of the golf course,” he said. “That would include anything from customer and guest service to understanding our finances and things along that line. It also includes coming up with new, innovative ideas to market the golf course.”
Shipman added that he doesn’t tackle all those tasks alone.
“I don’t do all those things by myself,” Shipman said. “We’re owned by the city, so we have teams of people that work together to get those things done.”
He said he hopes to draw on his experiences at Eagle Creek and Peoria Ridge to find ways of doing things that will make the day to day operations at Schifferdecker easier for the staff.
“What I have learned so far in my short tenure is that I have a really reliable staff,” Shipman said. “They’ve all been here multiple years and have shared with me some of the things they would like to see at the course and I hope to build off that.”
And although Shipman may be new at the position at Schifferdecker, he is a familiar face to many area golfers.
“A lot of these guys play at tournaments all over and the amount of people I’ve met just being at the few locations I’ve been to make it easier to jump into the position because you just automatically know a handful of guys,” Shipman said.
He said at this past weekend’s Ozark Amateur, he already knew about half of the 188 golfers in the tourney.
“They were just as surprised to see me as I was to see them,” Shipman said. “Everyone has told me ‘we’re happy to have you, you’re going to love it here.’ it’s been a very warm welcoming here. I hope I can live up to their expectations and do a good job for them.”
Shipman said his favorite thing about working at Schifferdecker is the community.
“It’s 101-years-old now, so it’s kind of a staple of our community,” he said. “It’s been part of our community for a long time. I grew up playing here and a couple of other local courses. I have those memories of coming out here in the evening with my dad (Chris Shipman), so it’s kind of neat.”
Shipman said he believes the main selling point of Schifferdecker is the course conditions.
“I can’t brag on Maron (Greenskeeper Maron Towse) enough,” Shipman said. “He does a phenomenal job out here and the people I’ve talked to that play out here say we are one of the best in the area. That should encourage everyone to come see us.”