74
he promised her they’d always stay nearby, even if that
limited his pool of potential employers as he worked toward
becoming a head PGA pro. He got that chance at another
local club, but it proved to be an 80-hours-a-week slog that
pulled him away from his sons and put an unfair burden
on Ashley, who had her own career. Gene left that job after
the club changed owners, and he found himself mostly
tending to the yard and dropping the boys off at school.
Then, one day in the summer of 2019, he fielded a call:
Pinetree Country Club was hunting for a new head golf pro.T
HE MAN ON the line was Pinetree’s general man-
ager, Brad Nycum, a former Florida State golf
teammate of Paul Azinger’s. His course wasn’t exactly
heralded, but golf was central to the experience: Opened
in 1962, it was known for immaculate greens that ran
true. Arnold Palmer and Bobby Jones had played a round
there, and it was once the home course of Larry Nelson,
a three-time major winner.
Satisfying as Gene found his new role of full-time
dad, there was a new void—he missed arriving every
morning to an office that smelled of freshly cut grass;
he missed using his engineer’s mind to help a place
such as Pinetree operate at peak efficiency. Ashley
wasn’t surprised when her husband found Nycum’s
offer appealing. “Gene was always so unwavering in
his decisions,” she says. “He knew who he was: This is
what I’m passionate about. I can live my life being really
happy doing what I love.”
And so Gene let love guide him to Pinetree. He inher-
ited a staff of three and he led by example. He cleaned
the carts and filled their sand bottles to precise levels.
He patrolled the course, picking up broken tees and
cigarette butts. He brought a snazzy, new aesthetic to a
staid, old pro shop, stocking it with the type of vibrant
Puma gear he favored. And he catered to Pinetree’s
female members, who’d long felt ignored at an old-boys
club. He started organizing women’s tournaments and
ramping up their offerings at the pro shop.
With less demanding hours, the new job afforded Gene
enviable f lexibility: time to see the boys off to school
in the mornings, to play golf with them on Sundays, to
tend to household projects on Mondays. The Pinetree
job, Ashley says, “made our marriage beautiful.”“G
OD, LIFE IS SO GOOD,” Ashley told Gene on
July2 from the passenger seat of their black
Silverado as they drove home from the beach house in
South Carolina that they’d shared for a week with a
dozen family members. Gene had landed his dream job;
Ashley was thriving in corporate sales at AT&T. The boys,
strapped in the back, were healthy and their personalitieswere beginning to show—Beau gregarious, like Ashley;
Banks methodical, like Gene.
Technically, Gene was still on vacation, but Pinetree
was scheduled to hold its annual Fourth of July cele-
bration the next day—the club’s biggest event of the
year—and as they drove home he felt the tug to go lend
a hand in the morning. “I really want to check on my
team,” he told Ashley, who asked only that he be back
in time to watch fireworks with the kids. “Just to make
sure they don’t need me.”A
SHLEY WAS PERCHED again in a passenger seat
the following afternoon. This time, though, her father,
Ron Bouknight, drove as they barreled west, tracing Gene’sPINETREECO
UR
TE
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ILL
ER
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FATHER TIME
At Pinetree, Gene had the flexibility to
play a little golf with the boys on Sundays
(above with Banks), the way his father
did with him to the end.