JOE CAIN, the new head professional at The Cedars at Salmon Creek, gives lessons to a golfer. Cain said teaching is an aspect of the job he really enjoys.
Joe Cain didn’t take up golf until his freshman year of high school. Since then, he’s rarely been without a club in his hand.
The Battle Ground High School graduate became head professional at The Cedars on Salmon Creek in September, a job that combines his skills as a teacher and golf course manager.
Cain went to Phoenix College in Arizona on a golf scholarship after high school. Then he enrolled in the Golf Academy of America, also in Arizona, and pursued a business degree in golf complex operations – which included education about the golf industry and business of the sport. He also played on the academy’s golf team.
“It was a good tenure,” he said. “We got to travel around the state and play in some big tournaments. It was a great experience.”
Cain made some ripples in his first college tournament by shooting a sub-par round of 69, which is still his personal best.
After graduating from the academy, he became an assistant pro at McDowell Mountain Golf Course in Scottsdale, which opened when PGA standout Phil Mickelson purchased the course formerly known as The Sanctuary.
“Phil came by after winning the Waste Management Phoenix Open in 2013,” Cain said. “He’s a nice guy. It was pretty cool for him to be part of the community because he went to Arizona State University.”
Cain spent two years of teaching at McDowell Mountain, as well as running the course’s men’s and women’s leagues and working with the junior golf program. When he became engaged to a woman from Bellingham, whom he met in Arizona, Cain and his fiance decided it was time to come home to Washington to be near family.
“It was too good to be true to come back here as head pro,” he said. “One of the big reasons for my fiancé and I moving back to Battle Ground was for me to be able to coach my younger brother, Jacob Eddings, who is a freshman on the Battle Ground Boys Golf Team. It’s pretty neat that I get to coach the team I used to play on with my old coach.”
Cain already is making plans to expand the club’s offerings. He hopes to organize a women’s league next spring, saying, “I know there’s a strong women’s golf presence here in the area.”
Cain also wants to allow young players to test the Brush Prairie course for a reduced fee. He’s partnering with the Oregon Golf Association to allow the youth program to operate in 2015.
Another way to recruit young players, he said, is an after-school program in which children can use recycled clubs left at the golf course. Cain wants to get that program started in the spring, too.
Although teaching up to seven lessons a week, he plans to have time during 2015 to enter some pro-am tournaments and others open to professionals and apprentices through the Pacific Northwest section of the PGA. He’s a formidable opponent who drives the ball 280 to 290 yards off the tee.
“I’m pretty comfortable off the tee box,” Cain said. “It was nice in Arizona because the air was so thin and the ground was so firm.”
One his biggest assets is the ability to move the ball, bending it around trees when necessary.
The Cedars was built in the 1970s when people weren’t hitting the ball as far as they do today, Cain said, but the yardage is deceiving. He called it “a very target-oriented golf course.”
The course will be open throughout the winter, weather permitting.
“We’re open year-round unless it’s dangerous for people to be out there,” Cain said. “We’re open for the hard-core golfer.”
