Mark named new superintendent at Muirfield Village

Only ten days ago Chad Mark was enjoying the mild Ohio weather and his still young position at Inverness Club in Toledo.

How quickly things can change. Mark confirmed for Golfdom that he has accepted the superintendent position at Muirfield Village Golf Club, Dublin, Ohio.

“I will tell you I had no idea (Paul B. Latshaw) was going to Merion, so everything about this job that has happened… has happened within the last 10 days,” Mark told me this afternoon. “It’s a dream come true. When you grow up in Ohio and go to Ohio State, it’s most students’ dream job and I was no different than most students at Ohio State, that’s the job you aspire to, to be at a place like that.”

Photo courtesy: Nicklaus.com

Indeed Muirfield Village is a dream job, as well as a dream course for golfers around the world. Regularly ranked in the top 20 of American golf courses, Muirfield is a favorite course of PGA Tour pros and has hosted the Memorial Tournament annually since 1976. It’s also the home course of perhaps the game’s greatest living golfer.

“I’m excited about it — who wouldn’t want to work for Jack Nicklaus, the greatest golfer in the history of the game?” Mark says. “I can’t wait. (Nicklaus and I) both want to have the best possible product that we can.”

If it were possible for someone’s blushing to be heard, Mark pulled it off when I asked him over the phone how long he had worked at Inverness.

“Only a year, Seth,” he said with a heavy sigh. “It feels like a lot longer. We’ve done a lot of good. The timing is awful… but it’s hard to do, to ignore an opportunity like this.”

Mark started his career at a public golf course in Wilmington, Ohio. He worked at Double Eagle Golf Club in Galena, Ohio, while he was in school at Ohio State. He then started working with John Zimmers and Jim Roney at Sand Ridge Club, Chardon, Ohio, towards the end of it’s grow-in. He stayed on as assistant superintendent under Roney once the course was complete, and with Zimmers going to Oakmont. His first superintendent position was at Kirtland Country Club in Willoughby, Ohio. Then, last year, he took the Inverness job.

Zimmers says he first met Mark through his father, who worked for Lofts Seed, the seed supplier for Sand Ridge.

“I got him fresh out of high school, right into college,” Zimmers says. “I’m proud to claim him as one of my own. Most important, he’s a great person, but certainly his skill set, his agronomics — he’s really good at what he does. It’s nice when good things happen to good people.”

Mark expects to be at Muirfield full-time by April 1^st. In the meantime, he hopes to visit the course at least once a week during the transition period and learn all he can from his friend and the former Muirfield Village superintendent, now new superintendent at Merion, Paul B. Latshaw.

“Paul and I are good friends. We talk fairly often as it is. I’ll certainly pick his brain and make sure that I’m up to speed with everything that is going on,” Mark says. “They have a great team in place. I know those guys are doing great things right now.”

Mark says he and Latshaw share a lot of the same turf practices and concepts, so he sees an easy transition from one superintendent to the next. He also says Latshaw told him it was a fantastic place to work.

“(Latshaw) loves working there, I know this was a tough decision for him,” Mark says. “I’m happy for him, he’s going back towards his family… we’re both very happy for each other and these opportunities.”