Connecticut Golf • 2006

Running a golf course is a family affair
at Orange Hills and Twin Hills

By Dave Barrett

Jud and Judy Smith can't imagine a better life than managing, along with father Bud, their family-owned golf course, Orange Hills Country Club. The funny thing is that neither of the siblings envisioned their lives going that way.

In fact, Jud and Judy both worked at other jobs until the age of about 30. "I think it's safe to say that none of us, dad included, had any idea things would work out the way they did," says Jud, now 45 and the superintendent at the course located in the town of Orange. "Our father really let us pursue our own paths."

Those paths led away from Connecticut and away from golf until they felt the pull of the family business. When their father asked them for a hand, both said yes, and found (though in one case not right away) that it was just what they wanted to do after all.

Family ties are also strong for the McDermotts of Twin Hills Country Club in Coventry. There three brothers and a sister manage the course where their father, George, built the first nine holes with his own bare hands and relatively primitive equipment in the 1960s and '70s. The siblings even helped out as youngsters in those days, and they did the bulk of the work themselves on the back nine that opened in 1984. Each nine holes took nearly 10 years to build, with all the financing and most of the work provided by the family, a labor of love.

It was a similar story with the second nine at Orange Hills. Walter H. Smith became part owner of an existing nine-hole course in 1949, just when his son, Walter E. (Bud), was getting out of college after time in the Army during World War II. When Walter H. became sole owner in 1955, Bud initiated and carried out the project of building nine more holes, which were completed in 1961.

Left to right, Jud, Bud, Judy and Lee Smith.

Bud admits he didn't know anything about golf when he embarked on what would become his life's work. He became the superintendent in 1949, although he "didn't know a blade of grass from a weed" and did much of the work on the new nine himself with a chainsaw and a second-hand bulldozer, though "I didn't have any background in construction, either." (The Smiths did call on architect Geoffrey Cornish to design the second nine.)

You learn by doing, though, and Orange Hills turned out just fine, adding a new clubhouse in 1966. The course prospered under the management of Bud and his wife Lee, but a quarter of a century later as he neared his mid-60s, he began to look towards the future—and a way to reduce his workload while keeping the business in the family. His first two children were already in their 40s, but Jud hadn't settled into anything yet, having spent his 20s working for a consulting firm and then in computer and automobile sales. He was then living in California, but decided to take his father up on the offer to come back and manage the course.

Here's where the story takes a detour, because the fact is it didn't work out.

"Jud probably would have been more successful than I, but his ideas were radically different," says Bud, now 81. "And I said, Jud, I don't mind giving you 20 percent authority over a five-year period, but I can't give you 90 percent the first year. But he's a guy that takes charge and says this is the way it's got to be."

Jud's stint as an inside manager began and ended in 1990. "After that season, I think we valued our relationship as father and son more than the business," says Jud. "So, rather than let business get in the way of the relationship, I left, and had no plans to come back."

At that point, Bud recalls, he went to Judy and said, "I'm down to my last kid."

As luck would have it, Judy's background was a good match. She had been educated in the hospitality field and worked in the hotel business in the Washington, D.C. area before turning to teaching and coming back to Connecticut. Though happy in her teaching role, and looking forward to summers off to work on her golf game, Judy couldn't resist the family call. Her personality and people-oriented approach not only helped Judy to fit right in as a manager, it helped smooth the generational transition.

"I didn't even realize that Judy had taken more and more away from me," says Bud. "At the end of four or five years, I said, you know what, I only do about 10 percent of what I used to do and I never realized it." Meanwhile, Jud was coaching football part-time and selling real estate. Finding his mornings free, he volunteered to help out the grounds staff for a few hours a day. Little did he know he had found his calling.

Superintendent Jud Smith patrols the grounds of Orange Hills with a little help from a friend.

The course's long-time superintendent, for whom Jud had worked as a teenager, saw that Jud had an aptitude for the care of grass, and even offered to step down. Jud didn't want that, both out of respect for a man who was like a second father to him and because he didn't know the profession. But then, at the start of the next season, the old super developed a back ailment and retired, leaving Jud in charge.

"At that point, I was solely motivated by fear," says Jud. He learned as much as he could by asking questions of fellow superintendents, then spent the next winter studying in a program at the University of Massachusetts. He proved to be a quick study. Jud has greatly upgraded the course's conditioning after spending several years in the mid-1990s gradually installing an automatic irrigation system.

The best thing, he says, is that "more days than not, it doesn't seem like work. That's an amazing gift. It's like a big yard, really, and the guys I work with take the place personally, too, and you can't buy that."

Indeed, the Smiths view their employees as an extension of the family. "Jud has had kids work for him through high school, through college, through law school. If we have a big member-guest, and we're short of cutters, he calls them, and the attorneys are here at 5 in the morning cutting grass," says Judy.

Even past 80, Bud still likes to work outside, too.

"To this day, if there's any project that requires getting down and dirty, he's the guy," says Jud. "He got his knees replaced a few years ago, and now he's unstoppable."

When the background is building the course yourselves, the family owners don't consider any job beneath them. "You wash carts when you have to, you tidy up the rest rooms when you have to," says Judy. "It's very hands on. You roll up your sleeves and do what you have to do." As for the big business decisions, those are done by consensus of the three Smiths. They sit down at the end of each season and discuss what needs to be done. It helps that they have found a division of labor that works.

"I have total faith in Judy for things like insurance. That's not my long suit," says Jud.

"It's the same thing with Jud," Judy adds. "I trust him completely. If he says he needs a new mower, I know we need it, and that he'll get the best possible deal. I don't know if any of us could work for anyone else. In the old days, dad called all the shots himself, but now he has to incorporate our opinion. So it might be hard for him!"