There were times when he was at work and just felt that he had to get off the premises. There were times when he would be sitting in the cramped confines of the “office” and feel that the walls were closing in.
Going to work was a struggle. Staying there was torture.
Those who know Stuart Taylor know that this is not his normal profile. Taylor is a bear of man with a booming voice who has never met a person who didn’t leave thinking he was this guy’s new best friend.
Stuart Taylor loves people. He loves the game of golf. And now he’s loving his job again.
Taylor’s travails began just more than a year ago when the clubhouse at Whispering Woods Golf Club was destroyed by fire. The staff was forced to operate the club from a temporary trailer that became more confining every day.
There were times when Taylor and his protégés, Gary Crabb and Andy Page, thought their imprisonment would never end.
“Nobody will ever understand what it’s like to spend 13 months in a trailer with 10 feet of working space,” Taylor said. “It was like being in jail. This thing was 44 feet long, and we had an office, a bathroom and 10x10 work area.
Not only was it cramped, but the staff was unable to meet the demands of a golf shop. They partially solved the problem by entering into agreements with Knollwood Fairways and Robert’s Golf Shop, but the inconvenience was still huge.
“When we got the trailer, we didn’t think it would take long to be back in our old building,” Taylor said. “Then we started finding things that were destroyed or too damaged to repair. It took a long time.
“But now, looking back, it was kind of like a mild heart attack. It seemed terrible at the time, but if you hadn’t had it and been forced to change your lifestyle, you might have died from a massive heart attack later.”
Still, operating in a trailer day in and day out took its toll. Nothing was easy.
“Golfers would drive up, inquire about the situation and tell the staff, ‘Thanks, but we’ll come back and play after you get in the new clubhouse.’ We lost a lot of credibility.
“We couldn’t even prepare a sandwich there,” Taylor said. “We’d go to Midland’s Table on the Green and have lunch. We’d go to Subway in the mornings and bring in a bunch of subs so we could serve something to golfers who wanted a snack at the turn. We had to haul in ice for drinks.
“We had to deal with noise and fumes from gas carts because we had no place to charge electric ones. It’s really difficult to describe all the things we had to go through.
“We went for 11 or 12 months anticipating moving into something new, but it seemed something came up every week to keep that from happening.
“Our members were great, but they’re very much a family membership, and it’s tough to have a family social in a trailer.
“But now we’ve gone through it and we’ve got something better than ever. It’s kind of like the Phoenix rising from the ashes.
“I’m a rah-rah person, but about six months into it, telling the members ‘it won’t be long now’ started sounding kind of old to them.
“We’re excited now, though. Everything is new from top to bottom, and it fits our course — our vision for what the golf club should be. Now we’re the best value in town at our level and that’s what we always wanted.
“We want golfers to see Whispering Woods as a nice surprise; something they never dreamed they’d get for this price.
“It was a happy day to walk out of that trailer for the last time, and seeing it roll out of the lot was a kind of resurrection. It’s hard to describe all the emotions.
“Now we have a great place for members to get together. They’ve got a lot of stories to tell.”
