Taking a swing at a golf career

For more than 30 years, Tom Evart has worked as a hotel design consultant, food and beverage manager and fishing guide. He could retire, but prefers his latest role: new general manager for Eagle Valley Golf Courses.

"I retired once when I was 40," he said. "I went nuts. You can fish and play golf only so much. I'm too active, and I don't want my mind to stagnate. Besides, a job like this is fun."

Evart earned a degree in golf complex management in 1997. He has worked as a teaching pro the South Mountain Hilton resort in Phoenix and as director of golf in Page, Ariz. He calls his new position a "natural fit."

"When I came back from Guatemala in 1995, I knew I wanted to get into the golf business," he said. "So I enrolled in the San Diego Golf Academy in Chandler, Ariz.

"I'd gone as far as I could go in Page," he said. "And I have the food and beverage experience and financial background they wanted for this job."

A golfer since he was 14, Evart said the golf industry is not progressing at the same pace as golf course development. In order to increase revenues and profits, the market must encourage women and juniors.

"Those are the players of the future," he said.

He expects to develop more clinics and classes for youth, and said he won't charge golfers under 16.

"We need to give something back to the game, for the good of the sport and for ourselves," he said. "Golf is the game of a lifetime. You can play it forever."

Evart had a lot of praise for Eagle Valley's West Course, where the fees have been capped at $35. He said the course offers quality, affordable golf.

"If you want to play a couple of rounds a week, come to Eagle Valley," he said.

Born in Sonoma County, Calif., Evart graduated in 1968 from San Francisco College with a degree in hotel and restaurant management. He took a job with Western International Hotels as a food and beverage director in Guatemala in 1970, and five years later, started his own company.

Piloting private planes, he supplied food to wildcat oil companies operating in the Peten jungle near Tikal.

"It was 22 minutes by air, or 12 hours of hacking through the jungle," he said. "The companies worked for operations like Shell and Getty. They were Southern, and they worked hard and drank hard. They were good people, and I enjoyed them."

When the oil fields started dwindling in the mid-1980s, Evart worked in Central America as a hotel consultant and designer. Eventually, he started his own fishing guide business on the side with two friends.

"It started out as a hobby, but everyone wanted come along so we started charging," he said. "We used every kind of boat, from a 25-foot shark boat to a 48-foot Hatteras. We conducted tours for five years, and I could have fished every day, but it interfered with golf."

Evart, 60, has been married for less than a month to his new wife, Virginia, an administrative assistant at the Page Airport.

"We're taking separate honeymoons," he joked. "She's selling the houses in Arizona. She's the best thing that ever happened to me. I gotta be the luckiest son-of-a-gun on the planet."

Evart has four grown daughters from a previous marriage.

Contact Susie Vasquez at svasquez@nevadaappeal.com or 881-1212.