Interview with Jason A. Straka
Below are excerpts from an article that originally appeared in Golf Today UK.
Background:
Jason Straka began his career at an early age working as a greenkeeper at a local public golf course in Northeast Ohio. He has a bachelor's in landscape architecture and a master’s in agronomy and environmental golf course design studies, both from Cornell University.
He also worked for a certified golf course builder, and now has over 25 years of design experience. Jason currently serves as President of the American Society of Golf Course Architects (ASGCA).
The Straka Story:
I love the outdoors. I grew up fishing, camping, canoeing, hiking, hunting, skiing… and playing golf. I also enjoyed design, art and science, and was good at them. During my senior year in high school, I was contacted by Cornell University, which I never thought I had a chance at being accepted coming from a small school in rural Northeast Ohio. I fell in love with the beautiful campus and the rural area surrounding Ithaca, NY and all the outdoors opportunities it provided. I also learned that it was the college home of Robert Trent Jones, as well as the top landscape architecture program in the country at that time. It was at that time that I decided to study landscape architecture with a focus on golf course design, following in the footsteps of Robert Trent Jones.
Everything I did at Cornell had some connection to golf course design. And while in college I learned of Tom Doak and Gil Hanse, both Cornell alumni. I ended up crafting a six-credit senior design studio project under the teaching of Tom Doak, Gil Hanse and Jim Urbina. Talk about a powerhouse trio of private instructors! I was also taking classes under Dr. Norm Hummel, who was the leading soil scientist in the sports and golf field industry at that time. I ended up staying at Cornell to earn my Master’s with Dr. Hummel as my advisor. My master’s education covered a diverse range of topics and study to include agronomy research on putting greens, wetland science, community planning and more. It was also Dr. Hummel who introduced me to Dr. Mike Hurdzan.
The focus of my master’s degree was indeed environmental golf course design. I needed to develop a thesis project however on the subject. So I turned to Mike Hurdzan, who was regarded as world’s foremost authority on the subject. He and his firm were just undertaking a project called Widow’s Walk Golf Course, in Scituate, MA. Widow’s Walk was to become North America’s first environmental demonstration and research golf course. My Master’s thesis ended up being on the development of Widow’s Walk.
A few months after completing my thesis, Mike and Dana offered me a position with their company back in Columbus, Ohio, where I have lived for the past 26 years. I continued both my mentorship and my professional career under Mike and Dana until Dana and I became business partners in 2012. We are currently working around the world on all sorts of interesting projects.
Click here to read the full article on golftoday.co.uk.