鍐呭崕杈鹃珮灏斿か

Home-Grown Pro
Genoa Lakes' Lou Eiguren has a "Divine" sense of Northern Nevada golf.
By Vic Williams

Lou Eiguren, director of golf at Genoa Lakes, was born and raised in Winnemucca, which makes him one of Nevada 's few home-grown golf pros. He also might be the only Basque-American member of the PGA.

At 62, the soft-spoken Eiguren is Basque through and through. His no-nonsense yet gentle attitude toward golf and life has won him many friends, and a slight streak of wanderlust took him to San Francisco years ago for one of the game's plum jobs - head pro at the famed Olympic Club. How he got there, he admits, was "an absolute fluke."

"My wife was working for United Airlines in Reno, and I was working in insurance," says Eiguren, who earned a business degree from the University of Nevada. "United decided to consolidate their operations in San Francisco . To keep her job, my wife would have to move there. I said, 'Hey, we're a couple of kids from the sticks. Let's go to the city.' After a very short time stuck in an insurance cubicle, I decided I'd like to get in the golf business."

Eiguren had played on the Nevada golf team but hadn't thought previously about becoming a pro. "My wife had a friend in Walnut Creek whose husband was in the golf business. He helped me put together my resume and said he'd send it out when some jobs opened up." That led Eiguren to the Olympic Club. "I was hired on St. Patrick's Day 1969."

Eiguren stayed for 14 years, becoming only the fourth head pro in the club's history. Then his roots came tugging.

"My father had opened a casino in Winnemucca, but two weeks after the grand opening he died of a heart attack at age 59. I went home to help my brother run the business." In time Eiguren found himself back in golf, working at Ruby View in Elko ("they used to call me Ruby View Lou"). After a stint at Castlewood Country Club in the Bay Area, he returned to Nevada in 1986, landing the head pro's position at Edgewood Tahoe on Lake Tahoe's south shore.

"The only reason the owner, Brook Park, hired me was because I was from Nevada ," Eiguren says with a laugh. "He didn't know anything else about me." At Genoa Lakes Eiguren oversees two tracks, the original Golf Club at Genoa Lakes , now called the Lakes Course, and the new Genoa Lakes Resort Course, formerly Sierra 鍐呭崕杈鹃珮灏斿か Ranch. He even co-designed a Reno course (Wolf Run, with John Fleming, a former Olympic Club superintendent). Eiguren is the go-to guy if you want to know anything about Northern Nevada's golf history or the Divine 9, a marketing consortium of nine courses in Carson City and Carson Valley . He recently discussed those and other topics in an interview.


	Empire Ranch Golf Course in Carson City is one of the area's Divine 9.

Q: The region has simply exploded in the past decade as a golf destination, hasn't it?
I grew up here and watched it happen. I can still remember when we had Washoe Golf Course and Hidden Valley in Reno , which opened in 1958. That was it, before Sierra Sage or any of them. LakeRidge opened in the early '70s, while I was in San Francisco .

Q: Any favorite stories from that time?
When I was head pro at Olympic Club, the Laxalts [including brothers Paul, a former Nevada governor and U.S. senator; novelist Robert; and attorney Mickey] were building the Ormsby House in Carson City . Mickey would come down and play in our invitational. He found out I was Basque and from Winnemucca, so they flew me up here to see their plan - a golf course right up on King Street [on the west side of Carson City]. We walked the property to come up with some ideas, and I probably would have moved back up here, but they sold the hotel, and the golf course went away.

Q: What makes golf in Carson City, Carson Valley, and Dayton special?
It's become a sleeper. When I was in the Bay Area, a lot of associate clubs and small groups would come up here for the value. Eagle Valley opened in the '70s, and Dayton opened in the early '90s, then all the other courses. People enjoy the ruralness of it.

Q: And the fact there's more than golf?
We've met with the folks from Marriott, who are considering building a boutique hotel at Genoa 's resort course. They have criteria for rating properties. We're a "B," and the only reason is because we're not lakefront or beachfront. But for all the things you can do - skiing, boating, hiking, riding - we're right there. We're close to Lake Tahoe and only 12.8 miles to the closest ski resort, Heavenly.

Q: Besides the Divine 9 offering different playing atmospheres, how do the courses work together?
Silver Oak, Carson Valley Golf Course, Sunridge, Empire Ranch, and Eagle Valley go for a different market, a different crowd, and there's a niche for them. Genoa and Dayton attract a little of both high-end and lower-end. We've seen a tremendous increase in online bookings across the board. We're working with several tee time services. Ninety-five percent of our business is drive-up from California .

Q: Aren't the area's well-known afternoon winds a challenge?
Between noon and 3 o'clock, I fill up only 25 percent of my tee sheet. I had Mike Alger, the Reno TV weatherman, out here, and he gave me a great analogy. At nighttime the valleys and mountains cool down to about the same temperature, but in the daytime the temperature rises so fast, it creates its own low pressure system, a vacuum. That's why the winds pick up. Same as in San Francisco ; in the summertime the valley heats up and sucks the marine layer in. Mike said, "Get used to it." So we're making the most of it.

Vic Williams is publisher and executive editor of Reno-based Fairways + Greens magazine.