Source: Roanoke Times & World News (Roanoke, Va.)
John Norton is a golf professional, not a professional golfer.
The distinction is crucial but subtle, and it escapes the notice of most people who learn Norton is the new head PGA professional and general manager at The River Course of Virginia Tech.
"People see the 'PGA' there and they go, 'Oh, you play golf for a living,' " said Norton, who took over Dec. 1. "No, no, no, no. I'm a businessman first and a lot of other things, and then playing golf is down the list pretty far."
More often Norton is confined to an office, busy running the club's day-to-day operations. He has a slew of management, marketing and customer service duties, many of them tied to the massive course renovation scheduled for completion this spring. It has been three months, he estimates, since he last played golf.
Not so long ago, that kind of layoff would have been unthinkable. In the early and mid-1980s, Norton competed on several minor-league tours as he began to build a parallel career on the business and teaching side of the game. He tried for a PGA Tour card three times, missing by only a few strokes in 1982.
"I still enjoy going out to play golf," he said. "It's still a big part of my life. It's the reason I got into the business."
Norton, 45, spent the past 15 years in south Florida, running the Country Club of Miami and then the Grand Palms Golf Resort in Pembroke Pines. Golf in the New River Valley is, not surprisingly, an entirely different world.
In Florida, Norton managed staffs of 100-plus workers at clubs that handled more than 100,000 rounds of golf per year and competed fiercely for business with 95 other courses in Miami-Dade and Broward counties. Here, he has three or four staffers and a yearly volume of about 25,000 rounds. His primary marketing objective is increasing local interest in golf.
Why, then, did Norton make such a leap?
The chance to preside over a course designed by renowned architect Pete Dye was one factor, he said. But most important was geography. Norton was born in Huntington, W.Va., graduated from Marshall University and began his professional career at Fincastle Country Club in Bluefield. His wife, Bianca, is from Lynchburg.
"It was an opportunity for us to go home and raise the kids in Southwest Virginia," said Norton, who has three children: Nicholas, 21; Sarah, 12; and Joshua, 10.
Jay Hardwick, Virginia Tech's director of golf operations, said Norton stood out from a pool of "outstanding" applicants when the club began interviewing candidates last fall.
"John brought to the table all the qualities we were looking for," Hardwick said. Norton said he looks forward to being able to play golf more often now that he's not running such a mammoth operation. He still has some skills; less than three years ago he was good enough to earn player of the year honors for the southern chapter of the PGA's South Florida section despite playing only a handful of tournaments.
Still, a week of golf more than 22 years ago sticks in his mind. In November 1982, he was among 180 golfers - from an initial pool of about 20 times that many - in the finals of the PGA's Qualifying School tournament.
About 50 Tour cards were awarded that week, and Norton missed the cut by four or five shots, undone by a 10 on an 18th hole.
That week in Jacksonville, Fla., served as a honeymoon for Norton and his bride, who departed South Carolina by plane soon after their 5 p.m. wedding on Nov. 13.
The groom teed off at 8:07 the next morning.
Norton tried again in 1985 and '86, with less success, and decided that was enough. Life as a minor-league golfer wasn't going to pay the bills for his young family.
"I wanted to either pursue . . . the business side of it or I wanted to have my Tour card," he said. "There wasn't a middle of the road for me."
But he might not be retired from competition for good. In five years he will be eligible for the PGA Senior Tour. He thinks he might give Q-School another try.
