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NOV/DEC 08
By Dennis McCann When Mike Oliphant graduated from the University of Montana with a degree in business he was ready to face the real world, except for one little problem.
“I really didn’t know what I wanted to do,” he recalled. The one thing he was interested in was golf, and by extension the golf business, so he headed for Arizona and picked up all kinds of golf-related jobs, eventually including working in golf course construction.
Suddenly he did know what he wanted to do. For 10 years he worked for Landscapes Unlimited, a golf course construction company based in Lincoln, Neb., and in 1996 Oliphant went out on his own. It proved to be a good decision. Oliphant Golf Construction landed its first project in early 1997 in San Jose, Calif., and soon was hired to do some renovation at the Los Angeles CC. Even better for such a young company, Oliphant was hired to build a new fifth hole at Pebble Beach Golf Links, a high profile job that brought with it almost instant credibility.
Getting that job involved a bit of serendipity. Oliphant had worked with Pebble Beach while at Landscapes Unlimited, so while working on the Los Angeles CC project he decided one day to drive down to Pebble Beach and see what was going on. He ran into a course official he knew from his previous work there, and who surprised him by offering him the renovation job.
“We scratched out an agreement right there in the dirt,” he said. Soon he was meeting with Jack Nicklaus, who was designing the new hole, and the resulting work, Oliphant said, “really helped validate my company.”
Last year Oliphant Golf Construction did $52 million in business and at its peak employed more than 400 people. He has worked with some of the top designers in the game, from Fazio Golf Course Designers to Arthur Hills, Steve Forrest and Assoc. and Fuzzy Zoeller, though diplomatically he declined to name his favorites. And while the sickly state of golf course construction is putting a damper on that end of the business – “It really is about as bad as it can get right now,” Oliphant said – golf course renovation work remains strong.
While most of his staff is based in Scottsdale, Ariz., Oliphant is based in Waunakee, near Madison, something that surprises a lot of people but which makes sense when he explains why. His wife is from Madison, and when it became clear he would be on the road often for his work she wanted to be in Madison to raise their three children. He calls that a good decision, “good for stability for a family.”
Oliphant’s company has done some work in Wisconsin, including construction of Hawks Landing GC in Verona and renovation work at Madison’s Nakoma GC and Maple Bluff CC. Most of his company’s work, though, has been in the Southwest or western states, including almost annual work at the courses at Pebble Beach, the recently completed Washington State University GC in Pullman, Wash., renovation at Oakland Hills CC in Bloomfield, Mich., and three new course projects – Olde Stone GC in Bowling Green, Ky., The Madison Club in La Quinta, Calif., and Pronghorn GC in Bend, Ore. – that made it on Golf Digest’s “Best New-Private” list for 2007.
“Every time you get something that gets recognized,” Oliphant said, more work follows. And in a difficult economic era – “Everybody’s projecting that 2009 isn’t going to be much better,” he said – that’s important.
Oliphant didn’t take up golf until college but, he said, “I got fairly good at it quickly.” When he is home Oliphant, 49, plays out of Nakoma GC and carries a most respectable handicap index of 5.5 but he says running the business and all the travel it entails keeps him from playing as much golf as he might like. In fact, like most who play the game, he has a fantasy road trip that would take him to a number of courses he helped build but which he has never had time to play.
“I’d love to take time off,” he said, “and go back and play them all.”
At the very least, he wouldn’t need yardage books.
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