The head golf pro and general manager at Cleburne Golf Links, Johnny Pilcher, has more than 40 years of experience in the game and business of golf.
Pilcher’s career in golf started right out of high school, when he went to work for the Diamond Oaks Country Club in Fort Worth as a golf shop assistant.
“It was just something I decided I wanted to do,” he said. “I didn’t start playing until I was 15 years old, but by the time I was a senior in high school, I had gotten pretty decent. The first time I played it, I thought it’d be an easy game and it turned out to be a lot harder than I thought, so I wanted to see how good I could do with it. I knew right off the bat this is what I wanted to do. So right out of high school, I started working in golf.”
Pilcher, a Fort Worth native and former member of the PGA Tour, became a head golf pro at the age of 23 and has been a golf professional at such places as Colonial Country Club and Woodhaven Country Club in Fort Worth, Onion Creek Gold Club in Austin (the site where the Senior Tour started), Squaw Valley Golf Course in Glen Rose and Southern Oaks Golf Club in Burleson.
He has been the head golf pro and general manager at Cleburne Golf Links since May 2009 and is helping the course to grow with each year.
“We’ve been busy,” he said. “We’ve had a lot more players than we’ve had in the past. It’s been a good year. The golf course is in excellent shape. We’ve had a lot more tournaments and a lot more activity. We’ve put on some good junior clinics. We probably had 60 kids at two junior clinics we’ve done.
“A lot of people think it’s a country club, but it’s a daily-fee golf course. It’s open seven days a week to the public, at what is an affordable price.”
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