When Nikki Gatch thinks back to attending Desert Junior Golf Association events in the desert in the 1980s, she remembers two things: the great opportunities available to juniors and the man who made those opportunities possible, Dave Shackelford.
“What made Desert Junior Golf special was that the entire community supported the program,” said Gatch, who pursued a career in golf and is now executive director of the PGA of Southern California. “We were able to play on some of the most prestigious courses in the valley when we were kids. I remember playing Vintage, PGA West, La Quinta Country Club, I could go on and on. And the doors were always open and families were welcome and I just remember the community and obviously the golf professional who adopted him.
For Shackelford, who died in late November, his efforts on behalf of junior golfers in the Coachella Valley will be his inheritance in the desert. But this legacy began far from the desert, years earlier, recalls a desert professional.
“Starting in the summer of 1975, when I was 9 years old, I was in Dave’s junior golf program at Cedar Rapids Country Club (in Iowa),” said Nick DeKock, now head professional at the Thunderbird Country Club in Rancho Mirage. “My first meeting with Dave was at Ceder Rapids Country Club, where he served as head professional from 1974 to 1982. During that time, I competed in junior professional tournaments with Dave throughout eastern Iowa . I just spent a lot of time on the driving range with him.
Shackelford eventually moved to Arizona before coming to the desert in the 1980s and taking up the cause of junior golf. What Shackelford created at Desert Junior Golf was an opportunity for juniors to play on top courses for a small fee, but often in the heat of summer.
“I talk to so many people who were at that time with me and it’s like, my God, how did we do it?” Gatch said. “But you know, we didn’t know anything different and we were just playing golf and playing in all these amazing places and creating all these lasting friendships. I mean, I know it sounds cliché, but it’s true.
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“First and foremost, you had so many friends playing, it was like a gathering every time you got together,” said OD Vincent, Palm Springs high school star golfer and later touring professional and Division I men’s golf coach. “And golf in the Valley, I thought in the mid to late 1980s when I was in high school here, I thought this was the epicenter of golf in the United States, the Palm area Springs We had so much pride in representing the Coachella Valley and having Desert Junior Golf Association events here, you just wanted to A, support it and B, it was like where all the best players were. .
DJGA was pretty much the only junior golf program in the desert at the time and its reach extended to most courses in the desert.
“It was the biggest. It was flourishing. I remember the big trash cans with lids,” said Dave Menke, who grew up in Palm Springs and is now head professional at Sunrise Country Club in Rancho Mirage. “They were locked, but they had a hole as big as a golf ball, and they were in every club. After a round, a golfer would hand in his old golf balls and they would be collected and distributed to the children. I thought it was really cool.
Eventually, Desert Junior Golf, a year-round program that saw more than 100 kids play in many of its events, branched out with new junior programs. such as the First Tee and SCPGA junior tournaments take over. When Menke, his friends and Vincent decided to try to recreate DJGA with their Coachella Youth Golf program, they naturally contacted Shackelford.
“We had lunch at Thunderbird a few years ago,” Menke said. “It was a good way for OD to see Dave again and for me to get to know him, learn a little more about what he did and ask him what he thought about the way we could manage it and ensure its success.”
Coachella Youth Golf has been a success, completing its third season this past summer. Part of that might have come from the model Shackelford developed in the 1980s. But Shackelford might also have gotten kids to love golf, and in some cases that led to careers in golf, as with DeKock, Gatch, Menke and Vincent.
“Dave laid the foundation for so many of the other successes that you mentioned, and it was just part of a thriving golf community, I use the term vibe, here,” Vincent said. “A lot of that has to be attributed to the man that Dave Shackleford was. The values that he lived and embodied in his life and what he passed on.”
For those who were part of Desert Junior Golf in the 1980s and 1990s, Desert Junior Golf, with its packed lunches and access to premium courses, was a great era for juniors in the desert, when juniors were trying to find something to do in the desert. the dead time of summer. And for those like DeKock, Gatch and Vincent who have continued their careers in golf, Desert Junior Golf and Dave Shackelford get a lot of the credit.
Shackelford is survived by his partner, Patti Piper, his son Dave Jr. and his daughter Laura.
This article was originally published on Palm Springs Desert Sun: Dave Shackelford is remembered as the force behind Palm Springs area junior golf
