Not a real major? Tell them that

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The students coming from UNL’s golf management program, which has grown each of its three years, are ready to lead the industry.

By BRIAN CHRISTOPHERSON | Lincoln Journal Star

Forget those queries about the Treaty of Versailles, or whether it was Burr who shot Hamilton or Hamilton who shot Burr.

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Professional Golf Management students wait to tee off during a tournament at the Country Club of Lincoln on Tuesday afternoon. The students usually have two tournaments a week. (Jill Peitzmeier)

Professional Golf Management students wait to tee off during a tournament at the Country Club of Lincoln on Tuesday afternoon. The students usually have two tournaments a week. (Jill Peitzmeier)

None of those typical questions oft associated with college are on Carly Froehlich’s exam today.

Instead, the question for the 20-year-old from Norfolk is only this: Can she shoot a 154 over 36 holes of golf at Crooked Creek Golf Club?

Do that and she’ll not only own a scorecard that would make most lawn hackers jump out of their Footjoys. She’ll have crossed a hurdle to getting a degree from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

If you’re the simplifying type, maybe you’d say Froehlich is one of 95 UNL students majoring in “golf,” a too-short-and-sweet label that makes it seem like one of those underwater basketweaving kind of majors — where the professor writes a passing grade with a wink and a cough.

To be more exact, she is majoring in professional golf management, and anyone involved in the program will tell you getting such a degree is no joke at all.

“Everybody says, ‘You’re majoring in golf?’” says William Greene, a 19-year-old who ventured from Chicago to Lincoln for this major. “‘Are you on the golf team?’ is their first question no matter what. And then, ‘What do you do?’”

Greene’s answer: “Well, we pretty much run the golf industry.”

There are worse industries to get into. In 2005, Golf Digest magazine came to the conclusion there were 31,857 courses in the world, with more than half of them in America.

Greene’s ultimate goal is to wind up the club pro at just one of those many golf courses.

What’s required of a club pro? Well, a golf handicap of about 5 for starters — but more than that.

You have to know how to manage the course’s soil, a golf tournament, a beverage stand, a clubhouse restaurant and any course patron with a bad iron game and worse temper. You have to be able to fix a club grip and, tougher yet, how to fix a golfer with a wicked slice.

The students don’t dodge many classes. They take chemistry, biology, 21 hours of business and hear plenty of lectures on horticulture.

On top of that, they must come to the program with a golf handicap of no more than 12, a score in the low 80s on a regular-sized 18-hole course.

“This is not an easy program,” says Terry Riordan, the program director and students’ adviser. “You look out here and the kids are playing golf and it looks like it’s great.”

It is getting to be a popular program, though. In only its third year, the number of students has risen steadily each year. They expected 25 that first fall. Now, the program is looking to bring in 40 to 50 new faces a year. It’s expected for each student to take at least 4½ years to graduate.

The idea for such a major really took off when Riordan, who was working in the agriculture research division, looked at his Wall Street Journal one day and saw a picture of a Penn State student walking across campus toting a golf bag.

He took the paper to John Owens, the Institute of Agriculture and Natural Resources vice chancellor and NU vice president. Owens liked what he saw. “You really should do this.”

The problem was it was around Sept. 11, 2001. The economy was bad. Enrollment was slipping. How do you sell a major built around golf?

Answer: Sell it on the idea that you’d be one of the few Midwestern schools in the country to offer it.

This major, Riordan says, can bring in students from Iowa, Illinois, Wisconsin, Minnesota, South Dakota, North Dakota and Kansas — all states that don’t offer it.

UNL is one of only 18 schools accredited by the Professional Golfers Association of America — which means all the graduates will have done what was needed to become a PGA professional. Just for reference, Ohio State — the school that produced Jack Nicklaus — has failed to get accredited.

Beside the regular college classwork, the PGA requires that students pass various checkpoints in which they must prove they know the rules of golf, how to teach the game, the constitution of the PGA, how to operate a tournament.

Students must also fulfill three internships totaling 16 months of work. Riordan says the program has already had student interns at nationally respected courses like Medinah Country Club (Illinois), Oakmont Country Club (Pennsylvania), and another in Colorado that costs $35,000 a year for membership — one of those members being Kevin Costner.

Another requirement is the Playing Ability Test, which is the very matter that concerns Froehlich today.

If she scores low enough during her 36 holes — yes, she’s playing from the men’s tees — she’ll never have to take the PAT again.

When Greene, who notched a 3.8 GPA his first semester while playing 47 rounds of golf, took his first PAT, he missed the needed mark by just one stroke.

“That sat on my head until I took it the next time,” he says, now PAT-approved. “It haunted me.”

Don’t bet against Froehlich. Though in her first year in the program, she spent the previous two playing golf for UNO. She is one of just three women at UNL with the major.

“I came into the program because I want to teach women how to play,” she says. “There are so many business women now going out to play in scrambles (tournaments). They can get very intimidated by playing with men. Most women would probably rather have a woman instructor. There aren’t very many in Nebraska. That field is wide open.”

There have been some concerns in the golf industry in recent years as the number of golfers in America has perhaps leveled off, after a boom in the ’90s. In many cities, too many courses were built with the anticipation the number of golfers would just keep rising.

“Whether that will affect these students? I don’t think so,” Riordan says. “Because they’re going to be the best-educated students that are going into the golf industry.”

As he says this, 21-year-old Kevin Moberg, a native of Sloan, Iowa, is readying to tee off. His classroom today is Lincoln Country Club.

Moberg once figured he’d major in business, eventually becoming one of those unhappy employees like in the movie “Office Space.”

Now, he couldn’t be more excited about a future spent around golf.

“I love it,” he says. “I mean, are you serious?”

Reach Brian Christopherson at 473-7438 or bchristopherson@journalstar.com.