The Villages - January 2012 - (Page 38)
GOLF
BY STEVE TRIVETT
David Williams is the head golf professional at Cane Garden Country Club. He knows every square inch of his golf course right down to where you need to hit your tee shot or which way that putt is going to break. And he comes by all that knowledge more than honestly. After all, he knew that stretch of ground before it was a golf course. Williams spent all of his young life in Wildwood — back in the day when The Villages was that little cluster of manufactured homes east of U.S. Highway 27/441, and the only championship golf in the place was Orange Blossom Hills. “When I was about 13 or 14, my grandfather and I would paddle a canoe across Lake Miona to pick blackberries,” Williams said from the comfort of his office in Cane Garden pro shop. “That blackberry patch is now the fourth hole on the Hibiscus nine at Cane Garden.” To say that Williams and The Villages grew up together is like saying the sky is blue.
“Even before I started playing golf or knew that golf was going to become my profession, I got a job working at Lake Miona Golf Course.
“My mother told me I should tell people that I was the custodial engineer, because that was a nicer way of saying I was the janitor,” he said with a laugh. “I did everything that nobody else wanted to do.” One of those jobs was spending hours on his hands and knees pulling weeds out of the 14th green at Lake Miona Golf Course — a tough little par-3 that is bordered on the right by an old, rusty, barbed-wire fence. Back when Williams was in hand-to-hand combat with the crabgrass on 14, there was nothing on the other side of that fence. “Now, that ground, and it was nothing but a cow pasture full of old oak trees back then, is the sixth hole on Hibiscus,” he said.
JANUARY 2012
Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of The Villages - January 2012
The Villages - January 2012
Contents
Lights, Camera, Action!
New Villagers have fun in their new hometown.
Dreammaker
Thats Hollywood
Sports and Recreation
2011 Holiday Photo Diary
Around The Villages
Health
Golf Memories
Food
Running the Table - Billiards in The Villages
Business Briefs
Snapshots
Major Events
The Villages - January 2012
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