MARYSVILLE – As a teen-ager growing up in Marysville, Dave Castleberry loved spending summer days at Cedarcrest Golf Course with his friends.
Taking advantage of reduced junior rates, they would play until they ran out of energy or daylight, whichever came first. Some days they squeezed in 54 holes, or three laps around the 18-hole layout.
“I spent a big chunk of my formative years here,” Castleberry said. “My mom called this the best babysitter ever.”
Even when Castleberry and his pals were not actually playing, they still found ways to have fun.
“We’d be out on the putting green, betting for candy bars or a plate of fries or a milkshake,” he recalled with a smile. “It was great.”
They were idyllic years, but of course they had to end. Castleberry graduated from Marysville-Pilchuck High School in 1990 and went off to Washington State University. Then, after earning a degree, he started on his career path.
Little did he imagine that path would one day bring him back to Cedarcrest.
In March, the 34-year-old Castleberry took over as the head pro at the Marysville-owned golf course. He replaced Rob Lindsey, who served for about four years following the retirement of longtime Cedarcrest head pro Don Shaw.
For Castleberry, the chance to work at the golf course where he learned the game “is pretty special,” he said.
“When I go out on the course now, I get all these memories of what Cedarcrest was like when I was a kid. And now I’m what Don Shaw was to me back when I was a kid.”
And that, he admitted with a smile, is “kind of frightening, but kind of cool at the same time. But not in my wildest dreams did I ever think I’d come back and be the head pro here. It was just kind of fate how it happened.”
Castleberry’s story is proof that people can make money at golf, even if they are not blessed with Tiger Woods-like talent. As a high school golfer, Castleberry was “a contributing member to both the JV and varsity,” he said, “but I wasn’t the star of the team or anything like that.”
At Washington State, he played the game recreationally, but never on the school team. His handicap climbed into double digits, which is where it was when, after graduation, he went to work on the greens crew at The Plateau Club in Sammamish.
Two years of cutting, fertilizing and watering helped him decide that he wanted to be a clubhouse pro. But to do that he needed PGA of America certification, which meant he had to pass the 36-hole Player’s Ability Test. And to do that, he had to lose his handicap.
In other words, he had to get a whole lot better.
For one year, Castleberry committed himself to practicing, generally an hour a day, sometimes more. Mostly he worked on putting along with other short shots around the green, and in a year’s time he passed the PGA’s PAT.
He spent the next three years working as an assistant pro at The Plateau Club, followed by three years in the same job at Seattle’s Sand Point Country Club. He was at Sand Point when the Cedarcrest job came open.
Marysville mayor Dennis Kendall participated in the interview process, and said Castleberry stood out for his confidence, personality and ability to communicate.
Lindsey, who has since moved on to a golf job in Oregon, “left under terms that we both agreed that he would go,” Kendall said. “I just felt that it was time we needed to have a new face out there. “
In particular, he went on, city officials were looking for someone with “spark” and “fire in the belly.”
The city interviewed six or seven candidates, Kendall said, “and they all were good … but Dave still floated up to the top.”
And the fact that Castleberry was a local boy “was just a little more icing on the cake,” he said.
Cedarcrest did 40,000 rounds in 2005 and 43,000 in 2006, which are healthy totals, but Castleberry still sees room for improvement. His goal is 50,000 rounds a year, and to do that “we need to get new golfers to come to Cedarcrest and become regular golfers.”
Cedarcrest draws much of its play from the Marysville-Arlington area, and several of its frequent players are also loyal, longtime players.
It is, Castleberry said, “that community course that has a soft spot in a lot of people’s hearts. And that’s where we’d like to keep it. To be that family-friendly, camaraderie type of course where people feel it’s their own.
“We’re not a private club,” he said, “but we still want people to have that ownership feeling, that community feeling. We want it to be a place where you walk in the pro shop and you’re greeted with a ‘hi’ and a smile. A place where everybody knows your name, if I can steal a line from ‘Cheers.’”
What Castleberry doesn’t want is for Cedarcrest to become “a turnstile course where we’re just trying to shove (golfers) out. Because that’s not fun for anybody. We want you to enjoy coming out here not only because you get to play golf, which is fun, but because you like the atmosphere around here, too.”
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