People think being an assistant golf pro is a terrific job.
Assistant pros agree, which is why they do it. They get to be around a golf course, get to talk about golf and even get to play a fair amount for free.
It's all terrific, as long as you don't mind the other parts: Low pay, long and crazy hours, being out of work for about five months every year (or leaving home for a temporary job) and knowing that career advancement could take a dozen years, if it does come at all.
"It's a great way of life, spending time doing what you love," said Jamie Kilmer, an assistant at the Meadow Brook Club, who has one of the better jobs because it entails mostly teaching members and working on his own game.
"My father told me when I was a senior in high school and he was working in a glass factory, 'You need to do something that you love. Don't worry about the financials in life,'" Kilmer said.
That was a common theme at the Met PGA Assistants Championship at Bethpage Red this week, at which Rob Gick (Sands Point Golf Club) and Kirk Satterfield (Deepdale) finished in the top 10 and qualified for the national assistant pros championship in Port St. Lucie, Fla. next month.
Everyone in the 145-golfer field had a chance to compare notes about a job that sometimes involves stuff like tracking down scorecards at charity outings, taking care of the carts or closing up the pro shop after dusk.
The group included Kilmer, who is in his third year at Meadow Brook after having worked for six in Connecticut and Westchester, and Brittany Lambertson, the former star at Northport High who graduated from St. John's in May and is in her first year as an assistant at Hamlet Golf & Country Club in Commack. Both made the cut (Lambertson was one of only five women in the field).
"You're getting me in a real good mood, after my last student," Lambertson said after work the other day. "There's nothing like explaining something to somebody and having them get it."
There also is nothing like becoming a head pro - a goal that keeps the assistants going along with their jobs, which are seasonal, which peak in the $50,000 to $60,000 range and which don't always offer promise of getting one of the rare head pro openings.
"I think it is important to be patient," said Kilmer, 31. "It will happen when it's supposed to happen."
He considers himself fortunate to have a good mentor in head pro Rick Meskell, a membership that encourages him to play in tournaments ("They want to hold on to the traditions of the game," he said) and especially a patient wife, Jennifer, a non-golfer whom he met in church. "She is very supportive of me and the time it takes to be a golf professional. She understands it, and that is everything," he said.
Unlike many assistants, Kilmer will not head to Florida once the club closes in November. Jennifer has a job at Crate & Barrel and the two run a college ministry through Wantagh Baptist Church. So he will give lessons at the Drive 495 indoor range in Manhattan.
Lambertson, backed by an endorsement from her head pro, Chris Carter, landed a winter job at Old Marsh Golf Club in Palm Beach Gardens, Fla. "I'll stay with my grandfather," she said.
She and Kilmer are like the rest of the people in their ranks in that they know this: Golf is a living, but it's more of a life.
The Hamlet assistant earned a degree in elementary education, but it's the swing she really loves to teach. "I've been playing golf since I was seven years old," she said. "I've always loved being around it. I felt if I was going to pick a career, I'm going to do something I have a passion for."
