Swinging For 50 Years

It was the day after Thanksgiving in 1975, and Chuck Olson was shooting baskets at his best friend’s house in Elmwood Township when a brief conversation about golf changed his life.

Gary Turnquist, the brother of Olson’s best friend John, was a student in Ferris State University’s new Professional Golf Management (PGM) program and suggested Olson check it out.

“Gary came out when we were on the driveway and said ‘I got into this program, and it would be great for you, and you should look into it’,” Olson recalls. “That’s the only reason I’m a golf professional today… it was such a fluke that that happened.”

Olson abandoned plans to study communications at Central Michigan University and enrolled at Ferris. His first internship took him to Harbour Town Golf Links at Hilton Head Island, South Carolina, an iconic PGA Tour course designed by legendary architect Pete Dye.

After another internship at a private club in Atlanta, Olson returned home to the Traverse City Golf & Country Club in 1979. He completed the Ferris program and was hired as assistant pro.

“That started my career as a golf professional in Traverse City,” Olson says.

He became a Professional Golf Association (PGA) member in 1982 and landed his first head professional job at Leelanau County’s Sugar Loaf golf course three years later. In 1990, he returned to TC Golf & Country Club as head professional, spending nine years there.

Olson became a minority owner and head professional at the new Leelanau Club south of Suttons Bay in 1999. Three years later, he returned to Sugar Loaf, overseeing the Old Course and Arnold Palmer-designed King’s Challenge (now Manitou Passage) through 2010.

In the fall of 2011, Olson made the difficult decision to leave Leelanau County for his next position. It became the longest stint of his career: 15 years heading Wawashkamo Golf Club, a unique course in the center of Mackinac Island.

A registered state historic site, “Wawa,” as islanders call it, was founded in 1898 by Chicago businessmen who summered on the island. Designed by Scottish architect and two-time U.S. Open champion Alex Smith, it’s Michigan’s oldest unchanged nine-hole golf links. The course features two sets of tees on each hole, creating two layouts.

Wawashkamo, a Native American term for “crooked trail,” occupies the site of an 1814 battle where British forces routed U.S. troops during the War of 1812. Olson helped organize a 200th-anniversary reenactment in 2014.

Leaving his family and Leelanau County for nearly half the year wasn’t easy.

“I think from a family perspective and that kind of thing it was hard,” Olson says. “But both my kids had graduated from high school at that time, so I was kind of an empty-nester. It gave me a little more ability to take a job where I was out of the county for five-and-a-half months a summer.”

The position also offered a welcome change of pace.

“I was 55 when I took the job, and I’d been a golf pro for 35 years,” he says. “I didn’t know exactly what I wanted to do, but the 12-month, full-out club job was kind of something I didn’t really want to return to.”

Olson settled into the role, becoming the second-longest-serving pro in the club’s 128-year history.

“The job at Wawashkamo was small enough, but it utilized all the aspects of why I loved golf - and my personal abilities - to the fullest,” Olson says. “I like small town Northern Michigan. Both my parents were from the U.P. … I didn’t quite understand what Mackinac Island was all about – which took a couple years – but I think it was a good fit.”

Wawashkamo flourished under Olson’s leadership.

“It was important to show the golf community that there was something at Wawa that was very unique,” Olson says. “It was built in the late 1800s and has had very little change. You could have played it in 1900 and it looks pretty similar (today).”

Rounds played nearly doubled during his tenure, reaching about 7,000 annually. Membership climbed 30 percent, and the operating budget tripled.

Those accomplishments prompted club members to pursue a state Legislature proclamation (pictured above), signed by Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, recognizing Olson’s 50 years in golf. Members presented it at his retirement party last month.

“That was pretty special,” he says.

Olson also witnessed dramatic changes across the golf industry. Business boomed early in his career, but Northern Michigan became saturated with courses.

“As we got into the ‘90s, Northern Michigan was really overbuilt, especially with stand-alone public golf courses,” Olson says.

Then Sept. 11, 2001 happened.

“Everything changed after 9-11,” Olson says. “After 2001, I think there was probably close to 20 years where because there was too much product, you basically could not change the price you were charging… a lot of stand-alone courses were hanging by a thread.”

The Great Recession deepened the slump, but golf rebounded during the COVID pandemic.

“The golf business was struggling until COVID, and then everything since COVID has been unbelievably positive,” Olson says. “There was a giant surge in young people playing golf again… there’s a lot of junior programs that have been created now - all of that those people are still playing golf.”

Olson also spent his off-seasons playing some of the world’s most famous courses with friends and his son Charlie, an accomplished golfer. His list includes Pebble Beach and Cypress Point in California, Seminole in Florida, Merion in Pennsylvania and Scotland’s Old Course at St. Andrews, which he’s played three times.

Now retired from full-time golf, Olson is back at his family home near Cedar. He won’t miss the 12- to 14-hour summer workdays, but hopes to teach golf locally part-time and is exploring an initiative to introduce underprivileged kids to the game.

“After 50 years of being a golf professional, I think it started really high, it went really low, and now it’s back to a good place,” Olson says. “I got to do something I love, I got to live where I wanted to live and I got to do it surrounded by my friends and family.

“I don’t know how you can get any better than that.”