Three-Week Golf Turf Management Short Course
Mark Jones: Greenskeeper, Piney Branch Golf Club
Jones became hooked on golf while playing with his family at a young age.
“I started to get serious about [turf], and my boss said, ‘Well, if you’re going to get into it, you should go to Rutgers.’” Mark Jones, Piney Branch Golf Club.
Destined for Golf In Mark Jones’ family, golf is not just a hobby: it’s a way of life. With an entire family of enthusiasts and two relatives who are professionals, Jones says it was “inevitable” that he would play, too. Jones’ father taught him to play at Piney Branch Golf Club in Hampstead, Maryland, when he was 12 years old, but when his dad could no longer get to the club to play, he decided to end their membership. Jones knew that if he wanted to continue to play, he needed to find a way to go to the Club without being a member. Since he was already interested in landscaping, he got a summer maintenance job at Piney Branch at age The 18th hole at Piney Branch Golf Club in Hampstead, Maryland. Jones has worked 16. at the Club since he was 16 years old. Turning a Hobby into a Career Jones enjoyed his summer job at Piney Branch even more than he had anticipated. When the summer ended and school came again, Jones knew he would be back the following year. “I thought, ‘I want to do that again. That was a lot of fun,’” Jones recalls. The next summer, having told his boss he wanted to get into landscaping, Jones worked alongside an ornamental landscaper, planting flowers and pulling weeds—and he hated it. “That drove me nuts,” he says. “I told my boss, I need to mow and do everything else,” so he changed to turf maintenance and it suited him right away. Jones went back to Piney Branch the summer after graduating from high school, and he decided to stay at the course full-time for the rest of the year. “It was really cool,” he remembers. “I got to see every stage of everything that went on.” Jones was having a wonderful time turning his passion into a job, but what he really wanted was a career.