Peter White is the superintendent at Ekwanok Country Club in Manchester, Vt. That's his sidekick, Ziggy, by his side. Photo by Carrie Snyder
Peter White was nowhere near the golf course when the call came Jan. 21.
Instead, he was with his son, Peter IV, for his pediatrician appointment. The call came from Ekwanok Country Club General Manager Lisa Wright. Once White was able to hear the message, it informed him that Wright wanted him to come to the club to meet with her, the green chairman and the club president.
The result of that meeting proved to be life-changing for him. After a heartbreaking disappointment three years ago, this was the exact opposite: White was offered, and accepted, his first job as a superintendent at Ekwanok, a facility in Manchester, Vt., in the southern part of the state that opened for play in 1899. From hole No. 7, it features spectacular views of the city’s signature white church steeple. Everything was beautiful in White’s world.
That morning after taking over at Ekwanok, White stepped onto the course. What a sight in many ways. “I saw the sunrise my first day as superintendent at Ekwanok. A pretty cool experience,” White says. “I was obviously extremely excited, ready to get going.”
His former boss there knew White was ready. “It would have been a mistake if they hadn’t hired him,” says Alden Maddocks, who retired late last year from Ekwanok.
White is a 16-year GCSAA member who is from Worcester, Mass., and inherited a passion for the outdoors from his mother Sandra, who graduated from the UMass Stockbridge School of Agriculture and worked in the Extension office at UMass. Basically, she was a part of the on-call support system for homeowners who had questions about plants, insects, diseases for all home crops, from fruits and vegetables to landscape plants, trees and even lawn turf.
As a teen he worked at Worcester Country Club. What grabbed his attention there? “I was fascinated about an outbreak of Pythium. It blew my mind,” says White, “and I wanted to learn everything about it and diseases. From that day forward, my eyes were fixated on the ground. I watched and looked for everything.”
He studied turf at UMass-Amherst and excelled. Example: White participated in the Turf Bowl, and his team won the first-place trophy in 2013 at the GCSAA Conference and Trade Show during his senior year. “I was president of the Turf Club in 2013, and we raised enough money to send eight students to the conference to compete,” he says. “We organized lawn renovations and fall leaf cleanups around the Amherst area to raise money to fund the trip. As part of winning the competition, John Deere sent us to volunteer at a PGA Tour event, and we got to help prepare TPC Sawgrass for the 2013 The Players Championship. Such an amazing reward for four years of hard work.”
Ekwanok CC was designed by Walter J. Travis and John Duncan Dunn and is set in a rolling valley beneath the Equinox Mountain in southern Vermont. Photo courtesy of Peter White
A former intern at Brae Burn Country Club in Newton, Mass., White was hired after graduation by superintendent Tim Strano, who obviously knew what he was acquiring. “He’s highly intelligent. He excelled in that aspect,” says Strano, a 37-year GCSAA member who is a regional technical manager for TruGreen. “I knew he’d be on that (superintendent) path. You have to be to get to the club he’s at now. Brae Burn and Ekwanok is quite a pedigree. He had the training.”
The global pandemic had much to do with White’s journey. He left Brae Burn in 2016 to be an assistant at Ekwanok. In that run, White turned down a superintendent job in 2020 that he deemed not financially beneficial. A year later, White thought he finally was close to becoming a superintendent, so much so that he informed his wife. “My wife (Leah) came along with me for the trip and explored the area. After the interview, I told her to get ready to move. I thought I nailed it,” he says. “I didn’t (land the job). After that, I wasn’t sure I’d ever get one (superintendent post).”
He didn’t surrender. “I buried myself in my work, refined my leadership style. I wanted to make the best version of Ekwanok every day,” White says. “I grew to be more confident as a speaker, more assured in myself.”
By the time he applied as superintendent at Ekwanok in late 2024, White felt he was better prepared about his chances. He assembled a nearly 40-page proposal that he submitted to the search committee. Using photos, he outlined his assessment of the golf course and the health and condition of all turf surfaces; proposed aesthetic and agronomic improvements across the property; composed an outline of his management and leadership philosophy as it pertains to managing a staff; devised an evaluation of their equipment fleet, detailing needs as well as pieces that were no longer needed; and created an overview of proposed payroll savings by scheduling work more efficiently.
White dazzled the committee and won the job. He adores the place. “It’s a turn-of-the-century test of golf, a member’s oasis. It was always for the members,” says White, who completed school at UMass with a 4.0 GPA in each of his four years. “It was a lot of hard work, but I quickly found that it didn't feel all that much like work because I loved what I was learning. I find it especially enjoyable now to explain different concepts relating to turf to my fellow employees and our members, as it reaffirms my fascination with the science.”
Ekwanok was scheduled to open for play the first weekend of May until the final weekend of October. Rounds total approximately 13,000 annually on push-up greens, a combination of bentgrass and Poa. The fairways are every kind of turf, he says, a New England mix.
White, 34, enjoys free time in his home garden. His family produces as much food as it can for its consumption. He planted a peach tree four years ago. A late spring Vermont freeze killed all the flower buds in 2023, but the tree proved to be prosperous for the first time in 2024, yielding approximately 300 peaches.
The good times appear to be back — kind of like a crossroads in his career four years ago when he transformed a disappointment into what now is something special.
“I was out looking at the tree the other day, and the buds look to be healthy and viable coming into this season,” White said March 26. “I’m looking forward to another strong harvest. We should see the tree begin to leaf out later next month, then flower in May/June and see fruits through the summer for an August/September harvest.
“It’s a pretty unique parallel to my career, like when something happens for a reason. That hard work will bring you to the place you were always meant to be.”
Howard Richman is GCM's associate editor