Paul Jonas, GCSAA Class A superintendent at Flint Hills National Golf Club in Andover, Kan., has been coming to Kansas Turf & Ornamentals Field Day in Manhattan, Kan., for several years. Photo by Howard Richman
As he perused everything on offer during the Kansas Turf & Ornamentals Field Day at Rocky Ford Turf Research Center in Manhattan, Paul Jonas was in his element.
This year’s event offered multiple stations with industry presentations on topics ranging from golf courses, athletic fields and insects (bagworm activity decreased in the Sunflower state this year, according to Kansas State University’s Raymond
Cloyd, Ph.D.). Jonas stopped to look and listen and perhaps pick up a nugget or two he could take home to the facility he helped transform into a gem.
A 38-year GCSAA Class A superintendent, Jonas was instrumental in making Flint Hills National Golf Club in Andover, Kan., into an important spot statewide and nationally. He can even tell you the exact day that it started for him.
“Jan. 2, 1996. Being part of building a new golf course is something I wanted to be a part of,” he says.
It took a while for Jones, a native of Wichita, Kan., to get to that point. He had other aspirations as a younger man. First, he attended Wichita State University to study criminal justice. “I wanted to be a cop or a detective,” he says.
Once he investigated the golf industry, Jonas unlocked an alternative for his future. He spent a couple of summers working at the college’s golf course and met others there who piqued his golf curiosity, including Chris Cochran, who went on to become
a senior designer for golf great Jack Nicklaus at Nicklaus Design. After moving to Breckenridge, Colo., for work in construction, Jonas decided to pursue a path in golf and attended K-State, earning a degree in agriculture with an emphasis in turf
management in 1985. From there, he moved on to become an assistant superintendent at Bear Creek in Euless, Texas.
When his mother fell ill, Jonas returned to Kansas and joined the staff at Crestview Country Club in Wichita for seven years, with most of it as superintendent before transitioning 28 years ago to Flint Hills National Golf Club after he was hired by owner/founder
Tom Devlin.
“He was so into amateur golf. The writing was on the wall,” says Jonas.
Jonas overcame what was anything but a grand opening in 1997 when torrential rain postponed Flint Hills National’s big debut. “My rain gauge has six inches. It was overflowing. I was a mess,” says Jonas, whose wife Julie told him everything
would be okay, despite what ended up being eight inches of rain.
Julie turned out to be right. Four years later in 2001, Flint Hills National, designed by Tom Fazio, hosted the U.S. Women’s Amateur. In 2007, the club held the U.S. Men’s Senior Amateur and in 2017 staged the U.S. Junior Amateur. Flint Hills
National has hosted multiple Trans-Mississippi Amateurs, including last month and the one in 2015 when future major champion Collin Morikawa triumphed on the bentgrass greens, Zoysia fairways and tees, and bluegrass rough.
A past Kansas GCSA president, Jonas is a familiar face at events such as Kansas Turf & Ornamentals Field Day that was sponsored by K-State Research and Extension and Kansas Turfgrass Foundation and worth .25 GCSAA education points for those who participated.
It was those who joined him there a week ago today are why the industry is special in his mind. “Our chapter is down to earth. You can call up anyone, pick their brain. No competition whatsoever,” Jonas says. “It’s a
what can I do to help attitude. Just good people you can’t do without.”
Howard Richman is GCM’s associate editor.