Tenia Workman, winner of the 2024 GCSAA Outstanding Contribution Award, has spent more than two decades as executive director of the Georgia GCSA. Photos by Justin Wojtczak
If there’s one place Tenia Workman feels more at ease than she does when making a visit to one of Georgia’s myriad golf courses, it’s worshipping at her local community church.
So it’s not without a hint of irony that a thought during a moment of respite at the latter led to a sobering reflection on the former.
During a recent service, Workman — winner of the 2024 GCSAA Outstanding Contribution Award — was quietly considering her 22-plus-year career as executive director of the Georgia GCSA, and a realization struck. Hard.
“All of a sudden, it hit me: I’m going to retire,” Workman says. “I’m going to be away from all my family and friends at the Georgia GCSA. I started boo-hooing. I think people thought the Lord came down and struck me. This
is a tiny church. People asked, ‘Are you OK?’ And I said, ‘I don’t think I am.’ It’s a hard, hard time for me.”
That’s not to say Workman isn’t looking forward to retirement, nor that she plans to turn her back on the golf industry entirely. Workman says she plans to help train her replacement, and she wants to stick around as executive director of
the Georgia GCSA’s Foundation, the Georgia Golf Environmental Foundation — “That’s my baby,” she says.
But if that’s her baby, the 750 or so members of the Georgia GCSA spread out across its 300ish courses are her brothers and sisters and aunts and uncles and cousins and …
“I’m going to miss it,” she says. “And I’m worried about that. That’s what hit me that Sunday in church: What will I do up here, seven days a week, in the solitude of the north Georgia mountains. What am I going to
do? I’ll be able to fill my days. But I’m so close to everybody at the Georgia GCSA. It’s like a big family. Our annual meeting in December will be my last hurrah as executive director. That’ll be one of the hardest things
I’ll have to do in my life.”
Workman poses with the President’s Award given to her by then-chapter president Scott Griffith, CGCS, now a member of the GCSAA Board of Directors, after Workman’s 2017 bout with cancer.
‘It’s been a great ride’
For the record, Workman is not a native Georgian. (Also, for the record, her first name, Tenia, is pronounced like the more conventionally spelled Tina.)
Workman grew up in Anderson, S.C., which, in the interest of full disclosure, is only about 15 miles from the Georgia state line. She went to school at Lander College in Greenwood, S.C., and there she met Buck Workman, who at the time was pursuing a business
degree. But as Buck, who had worked on a golf course since he was 15, was nearing graduation, he was offered an assistant superintendent job by 41-year GCSAA member Sonny Holcombe, CGCS Retired. Buck — a 34-year association member and Certified
Golf Course Superintendent who just recently retired — accepted, setting the Workman family up for a lifetime of service to the golf course management profession.
Tenia Workman’s entry into the industry, however, was a bit delayed. She was just under six years into her job working as the executive director of the Hart County Chamber of Commerce in Hartwell, Ga., when Buck — who served 13 years on the
Georgia GCSA’s board of directors, including a stint as its president — came home after a 2002 board meeting and mentioned that the chapter’s ED, Karen White, was moving to Texas.
“Being the wife of a superintendent member, I was always connected to our association,” Tenia says. “I knew Karen White. We were close friends. One day, Buck came home from a board meeting and said, ‘You wouldn’t be interested
in Karen’s job, would you?’ I said, ‘I didn’t know she was leaving. I think I might be interested.’ He said, ‘Tomorrow’s the deadline (to apply).’ He didn’t think I’d leave the chamber. Here
I am, 22½ years later. It’s been a great ride.”
Well, not so fast.
See, what she said immediately after that abrupt decision to switch careers is what started her down the path to the Outstanding Contribution Award, which “recognizes an individual who has made a significant contribution to the membership, through
outstanding contributions for the golf course industry.”
When Buck, then at Valdosta Country Club in Valdosta in the deep, deep south of the state, first joined the Georgia GCSA’s board, he was among the first board members outside of the Atlanta area.
“It (the chapter) was known as an Atlanta clique,” Workman says. “When I applied for the job, one of the questions was, ‘What would you do to make this association better?’ My answer was, ‘We’ve got to make it
a true state association. Not everything is in and involved with Atlanta. This is a huge state, from the mountains to the coast. Until you get everybody involved, it’s not truly a state association.’”
Workman says a few words about inductees into the Georgia GCSA Hall of Fame.
A true state-wide association
So, backed by a sympathetic board of directors, Workman set off on a whirlwind tour of the state — from the mountainous north to the coastal south — that still continues.
“When I sat down with the board when I first started, they asked what we needed to do,” she says. “I said, ‘We just need to take a trip around the state and meet our members.’ So we’d ask a club if we could host 20
to 30 members who are not involved with the chapter. During the meeting, we’d ask, ‘What do you think of your association?’ And we got an earful. We did. We met all these members who were paying their dues but not involved, and we’d
ask how we could help them.”
One frequent suggestion was to ensure chapter events were not held solely in the greater Atlanta area. Workman solved that in short order.
“We started having events in each area of the state — north, east, south, west — to try to pull people in,” she says. “It didn’t happen overnight. But it’s been in place for nearly 15 years now, and I think every
member around the state feels involved, that they’re a part of the Georgia GCSA. That was my No. 1 goal when I started, and I can honestly say it has happened. It’s truly a blessing.”
Though Workman is quick to share the credit, Tim Busek, GCSAA Class A director of agronomy at St. Ives Country Club in Johns Creek, Ga., insists she was the driving force.
“As executive director, she works for the board,” says Busek, Georgia GCSA’s current president. “She does what the board asks her to do, but she was the driving force. If you go back 15, 20 years, there was this perception if you
went south, if you went up north, there’s no way those events were going to sell out. So if you look at it from a financial standpoint, it didn’t make sense. It took somebody to have the courage to say, ‘We’re going to venture
out,’ and that’s what she did, and in short order, they realized it was going to be a successful endeavor, and that’s a big part of our guiding vision.”
“We have events everywhere now, from the tip of north Georgia to the tip of south Georgia and everywhere in between,” adds Trent Manning, CTEM, a 10-year GCSAA member at Ansley Golf Club in Atlanta and Ansley Golf Club at Settindown Creek
in Roswell, Ga., and 2022 winner of the GCSAA Edwin Budding Award. “She definitely set the chapter up for success.”
Workman (right) was interviewed by Lauren Thompson at the 2024 GCSAA Conference and Trade Show in Phoenix. Photo by Montana Pritchard
A family affair
Perhaps because so much of her actual family is involved in this profession, Workman treats everybody in the profession like actual family.
“She’s as genuine as they come,” says Busek, a 25-year GCSAA member. “She cares about every one of our members. As great as she’s been as an executive director, she’s an even better person. We’ve been blessed
beyond measure to have her.”
Workman counts the blessings as her own.
“I have to be honest, I’d work for free,” she says. “I love my job.”
At times, though, it pains her to do it.
“I’ve been through a lot as the wife of a golf course superintendent,” Workman says, recalling her emotions when Buck lost a job nearly 15 years into his career. “I know how hard he worked to get his first break, and when he lost
his job, I remember it hurt badly when it happened to him. That’s the hardest part of my job, when I talk to members who are losing their job or struggling. I dearly love each and every one of our members. When I listen to stories of hardships
at their clubs … I just hurt. I have a real, real big heart when it comes to golf course superintendents.”
For a while, it looked like the Workman family ties to golf course management might take a break. J.B. Workman, Buck and Tenia’s son, worked on the course with Buck from an early age and was (and still is) an avid golfer, but when he left for college,
he opted to pursue a degree in biology and was working on a doctorate in plant pathology. One day, as he neared completion of his degree, J.B. gave his dad a call and hinted he was wavering in his commitment.
“Buck said, ‘I think J.B. is going to make a break and try to be a superintendent,’” Tenia recalls. “I wasn’t so sure about his decision.”
Not because she doesn’t have a fondness for superintendents or their profession but because of the struggles he might encounter and the work he’d already performed to a different end.
Shortly after that discussion, Tenia received a call from Chuck Moore, superintendent at the King & Prince Golf Club in St. Simons, way down near the southern coastal tip of the state, a part of the state that, before Tenia Workman came along, had
had little to do with the Georgia GCSA.
Workman makes the rounds at dinner at the chapter’s 2023 annual meeting. Photo by Justin Wojtczak
Moore, a 20-year association member, told Tenia his assistant had left, and Moore wanted to post the position’s availability with the chapter.
“Three hours later, (Moore) called back and said, ‘Your son just applied for the job. I’m flying him down Monday. I wanted you to know. If it works out, I’m going to hire him,’” Tenia recalls. “J.B. worked for
him for five years.”
Now superintendent at the Ocean Course at The Ponte Vedra Inn and Club in Ponte Vedra Beach, Fla., and father of two, J.B. Workman is a 10-year member of GCSAA.
Tenia says it’s a 7 1/2-hour drive from what will be their retirement home in Suches, Ga., to Florida to visit the grandkids, but it’s a drive they plan to make regularly.
When she finds the time.
Though she’ll retire at year’s end, she has no plans to stop working, even if there’s no paycheck involved.
“I had a little bout with cancer in 2017,” Tenia says, “and I never thought I’d make it to 65. But I did. I realized I was never promised a tomorrow. But today I feel I have a true calling to do mission work. I really want to do
that. Even if I only do work around the north Georgia mountains, there’s a lot of need up there. I just think I need to redirect my energy into helping others.
“I feel I’m a caretaker. That’s what I need to be doing.”
Andrew Hartsock (ahartsock@gcsaa.org) is GCM’s editor-in-chief.