Briar Leaf Golf Club GM and Golf Pro, Jay Williams, was fortunate to grow up around the game of golf.
And he knows it, too.
Unlike other sports like baseball, where a park is as available as your imagination, and a ball can be some rubber dog toy lying around the house, golf requires clubs, carefully crafted balls, and a course that requires driving to, money to play on, and time.
Yet being fortunate enough to have golf in his life at such a young age has inspired Williams to pay it forward, which is why he came to Briar Leaf twenty-one years ago. He came committed to making the beautiful sport more accessible to Region youth.
“Our youth and family programs here are probably what I am most proud of,” Williams told IIMM. “We’re one of the only courses where kids get the chance to play for free and I am proud of that.”
Williams is proud to offer kids 17-and-under the chance to experience the game of golf, at no cost to them, on weekdays and weekends after noon; to call Briar Leaf the “Junior Golf Capital of Indiana,” and to offer these kids the chance to learn golf early, on a course that he has worked so hard to make the residents of La Porte proud to call their own.
A course, which just like learning the game of golf, took time, patience, and love to improve.
“When I first came to Briar Leaf, the course needed a lot of TLC,” added Williams. “At this point in the game, it’s a laundry list of changes we have made to make this course nicer, but in the last five years we have really hit on a program that is working.”
But unlike the country clubs where Williams worked and grew up in, he says the challenge he may enjoy the most at Briar Leaf is not how to turn the course into one of the more exclusive clubs in the Region, but how he can make it more accessible to anyone with a passion for the game.
“In the past people used to want the longest, toughest course. Now, people just want to come out the course and have fun, and we are always trying our best to accommodate that.”
In the end, Williams says, the golf course is where he found the people who helped shaped his life, and he wants to pay that back to as many people of La Porte as he can.
“When I was young I always looked up to golf pro. And now that I am the golf pro, I want to make sure I am doing all I can for kids to look up to me.”
