When Tim Bishop coached the WPI golf team, the first student-athlete he recruited was Derick Fors from North Middlesex Regional in Townsend.
Now, nearly 25 years later, Fors has returned the favor by hiring Bishop as head pro at Northern Spy Golf Club, a private club in Townsend.
Fors, 41, the general manager and director of golf, cleaned carts at Northern Spy when it opened as Townsend Ridge CC in 1996. He has been there since, except for three years that he spent as an assistant pro at Charter Oak CC, a private club in Hudson with the same owner. Townsend Ridge turned private and changed its name to Northern Spy for the 2020 season.
Bishop, 57, spent the last eight years as head pro at Tatnuck CC, a nine-hole private club in Worcester that was founded in 1898, and he had no plans to leave until Fors offered him the chance to work with him.
Bishop already knew a fair amount of the Northern Spy members before he was hired. The club played challenge matches many years ago against Petersham CC when Bishop was the general manager and head pro there.
“So it made the transition a lot easier, but really I wanted to work with Derick,” he said.
“Derick is extremely bright, open to suggestions,” Bishop said. “He was a really, really good player, probably the best player ever to come out of WPI, him and Andy Reed. He loved the game, he put the time in.”
Fors said the decision to go private has paid off. Northern Spy boosted its number of members from about 250 in 2020 to 350 last year. This year, Fors expects to approach the target goal of 400 members.
“We made a pretty aggressive gamble and decision to rebrand ourselves and do something different,” he said, “and it’s worked out really phenomenally. I couldn’t have asked for anything better.”
It certainly didn’t hurt Northern Spy that golf’s popularity soared everywhere during the pandemic by providing an activity for all ages that could be performed safely outdoors.
Northern Spy’s success enabled Fors to add to his staff and hire Bishop.
“I think life is kind of all timing,” Fors said. “There’s probably always been a desire for both of us to work together. There’s that mutual respect, and he’s always been a father figure, someone I tried to emulate myself after, and he’s really a big reason I do what I do today.”
So Fors can devote more time to duties as general manager now that Bishop is running the pro shop.
“You just can’t do it all,” Bishop said.
Fors agreed to allow Bishop to take Saturdays off early in the season so he and his wife, Karen, could travel to watch their son, Tyler, play lacrosse for Washington College in Chestertown, Maryland.
The Bishops drive five hours to Maryland on Friday night and return home after the game on Saturday. Such time off wasn’t possible last year. At Tatnuck, Bishop had some part-time help, but he was the only full-time employee in the pro shop.
At Northern Spy, Bishop has a full-time pro shop assistant, Daegan Robichaud, and Fors will fill in for Bishop on Saturdays.
The Bishops couldn’t watch their son play lacrosse during his senior year at Wachusett Regional because the season was canceled due to the pandemic. Last year, Tyler played eight games as a freshman in college.
“But we had to watch them on a computer monitor,” Bishop said.
The Bishops also have a son, Thomas, who lives in Alexandria, Virginia; and a daughter, Sarah, who is a senior at Mount Holyoke College in South Hadley.
The Bishops met at Framingham CC when Tim worked in the bag room and Karen helped mow greens for her father, Bill Whitley, the superintendent.
Coincidentally, Bishop’s replacement as head pro at Tatnuck, P.J. Breton, was an assistant pro at Framingham CC for the past eight years. Breton will be featured in an upcoming golf column.
One of Bishop’s favorite stories about coaching Fors, a 2002 graduate of WPI, involved his ability to hit the ball a long way. In each of the first three years that Fors competed in the New England Long Drive Contest, he hit the longest drives, but lost because they rolled through the dogleg and into the rough. Expectations were high for him in the competition when he was a senior.
“He’s got knickers on, black-and-white patent leather shoes,” Bishop recalled. “Everybody’s asking, ‘When is Fors going to hit the ball?’ ”
Fors purposely went last, and again he drove the ball well past everyone else, but this time his drive stayed in the fairway at The Captains Golf Course in Brewster, and he won.
“He just walked off the tee like Larry Bird winning the 3-point contest,” Bishop said.
Bishop said he’ll miss “the whole atmosphere at Tatnuck,” but he’s excited about his opportunity at Northern Spy.
Starting a new job isn’t new to Bishop. Over the years, he worked as an assistant at the CC of Greenfield and as head pro at Holden Hills CC, Wachusett CC, Petersham CC and Ellinwood CC in Athol before going to Tatnuck.
“It doesn’t matter the club you’re at, golfers are just good people,” he said. “It taught me patience, it taught me to be myself. You can’t fake it.”
“I’ve been here 27 years,” Fors said, “and I think I have more energy today than I did year one because it’s what he brings to the table every day. I’m so excited for our group and our membership to be able to spend time with him. He’s a big part of my life, and I love him.”
Mass Golf’s CMass stops
The Mass Golf tournament schedule includes a few, but not a lot, of events in Central Mass. Of the 12 main events open to men or boys, one will be held in the region, the Mass. Mid-Amateur Sept. 19-21 at Marlborough CC. Of the 10 main events open to women or girls, one will be held in the region, the Women’s Senior Amateur Aug. 22-23 at Shaker Hills CC in Harvard.
Central Mass. clubs are better represented in Mass Golf’s other events.
Two of MassGolf’s five women’s team events will be contested in Central Mass., the Dolly Sullivan Team Best Ball Aug. 29-30 at Cyprian Keyes GC in Boylston and the Labonte Four-Ball Oct. 17 at Shining Rock GC in Northbridge.
Three of Mass Golf’s six mixed-team and parent-child tournaments also will be held in the region, the Mother-Daughter and Member-Junior Modified Scotch July 11 at Whitinsville Golf Club and the Father-Daughter Modified Scotch Aug 4 at Charter Oak in Hudson.
The Mass. Open, which was held at Oak Hill CC in Fitchburg last year, is scheduled for June 8-10 at Longmeadow CC, and the Mass. Amateur is set for July 11-15 at Concord CC. The Women’s Amateur will be held Aug. 15-19 at The Orchards in South Hadley.
The Walter Cosgrove Worcester County Four-Ball is scheduled for June 11 and 12 at Green Hill Municipal Golf Course. Assumption University teammates Ryan Fillebrown and Sean Magarian won last year.
The Worcester County Amateur is scheduled to be played July 2 at Kettle Brook Golf Club and July 3 at Wachusett CC, and for the first time since 2018, Owen Quinn won’t win it.
Quinn prevailed in the last three Worcester County Amateurs, but he turned pro and won’t play in the event.
Welcoming all ideas
I’m glad to be back for yet another year as the T&G golf columnist to keep the golf fans of Central Massachusetts informed and entertained. Some courses were able to open quite often during March, and soon all of them will be hosting golfers searching for competition, laughs or simply the fresh air.
If you have any ideas for a column, please contact me at the email address listed below.
—Contact Bill Doyle at bcdoyle15@charter.net. Follow him on Twitter@BillDoyle15.
Credit: Source link
