SUPER IN THE SPOTLIGHT
ALL IN THE FAMILY
Brotherly love between the Superintendent and his General Manager helps to ensure special care for the golf course at San Juan Oaks GC. By Jeff Bollig, Contributing Editor
It’s not unusual for golf course superintendents to become emotionally attached to the facilities they manage. After all, the hours are long, the scrutiny is intense, and Mother Nature is frequently throwing curveballs in the form of unpredictable weather. Taking one’s eye off the ball is not an option. But Mark Freitas’ ties with San Juan Oaks Golf Club in Hollister, Calif., run even deeper. To begin with, his brother, Manny, is the club’s General Manager. And numerous members of the Freitas brothers’ extended family serve on the San Juan GC course maintenance staff and in its golf operations and food-and-beverage departments. “We joke that if you’re a member of the Freitas family, you’re never without a job,” Mark Freitas says. “It’s great, though. We have a family environment here with staff and the golfers. Everyone knows each other. It can be hard to focus on work sometimes with so many people wanting to just to talk or say hello. It’s a unique situation.” The relationship between the Freitas family and San 40
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Juan Oaks actually began before the golf course opened. Mark and Manny grew up on their family-owned and -operated apple farm, just a stone’s throw from the pastureland that would later become the golf course. Golf would fill whatever little free time they had as they grew up. Thanks to their uncle, they became hooked on the game when he took them to watch the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am just down the road in Monterey. So when word leaked out in 1994 that a golf course was going to be built on the open grazing land, 16-yearold Mark and 14-year-old Manny begged their parents to drive them to the property to stake their claim for a position at the facility. At that time, workers used an old ranch house as an office, and the only activity at the time was heavy equipment moving dirt— certainly not a job for young teenagers. But the Freitas brothers were not deterred, telling then-General Manager Scott Fuller to hold a spot for the two of them once the course was closer to completion. www.clubandresortbusiness.com
4/24/19 10:52 PM