Golf courses are a common bond for the Fleming family of Northern California
This article originally appeared in the August issue of NCGA Golf Magazine
By Gary McCormick
If you stop in at Sierra Pacific Turf Supply in Campbell, you’ll see a pin flag on the wall from the Fleming 9, the nine-hole golf course at TPC Harding Park in San Francisco that is laid out inside the 18-hole championship course.
Not unusual, you might think, for a turf supply company whose business necessarily extends to golf courses – but there is a personal connection involved: The guy behind the counter who sits beneath that flag is Pete Fleming, the grandson of Jack Fleming, the NCGA Hall of Famer who designed the Fleming 9, and designed, restored or remodeled some five dozen other courses, mostly in Northern California.
Golf – and more specifically, the work of designing, operating, and maintaining golf courses – runs in the Fleming family. It began with Jack Fleming, continued with his son John, who was the superintendent at the Olympic Club for nearly 30 years, and the tradition continues with Pete, and his sons Jack and Cole.
The elder Jack Fleming was an Irishman from County Galway who emigrated to England and studied landscaping and civil engineering, envisioning a career managing the grounds of some grand English estate – until fate stepped in over a game of darts.
Fleming was working as a timekeeper and paymaster on a city project in Manchester, England, in 1918. The project included a golf course which was designed by Alister MacKenzie – yes, that Alister MacKenzie, the designer of Cypress Point, Augusta National, Pasatiempo, and many other golf courses of renown all over the world. The two met in a pub over a game of darts, and soon after Fleming began working directly with Mackenzie.
When MacKenzie came to California, Fleming came with him – and stayed. His first project with MacKenzie was The Meadow Club in Marin County; later, along with MacKenzie associate Robert Hunter, Fleming managed the construction of Cypress Point.
At MacKenzie’s urging Fleming accepted a permanent position with the City and County of San Francisco that put him in charge of the city’s golf courses at Sharp Park, Lincoln Park and Harding Park. He held the position for almost three decades, until his retirement in 1963.
Along the way, Jack moonlighted on the weekends designing and remodeling golf courses, most within an easy drive of San Francisco – Santa Rosa, Fresno, Stockton, Sacramento, and around the greater Bay Area – leaving his mark on courses such as Sharon Heights Golf and Country Club in Menlo Park; Swenson Park, a municipal course in Stockton; Dry Creek, in Galt; Gleneagles in San Francisco; and many more.
Jack’s son, John, worked with him for eight years. A native San Franciscan who graduated from USF with a degree in philosophy and later took a master’s degree in public policy and urban planning from Golden Gate University, John started at the Olympic Club in 1971 and took over superintendent duties in 1978. He oversaw the preparation for (and recovery from) two U.S. Opens, in 1987 and 1998, and in between put his name on one golf course design of his own: Wolf Run, in Reno, Nevada, the home of the University of Nevada’s men’s and women’s golf teams. John was brought in on the job by good friend and former head professional at the Olympic Club, Lou Elguren, and this is when John’s son Pete entered the world of golf.
Pete, then in college at the University of Montana, came to work at Wolf Run during the building phase, and stayed on as assistant superintendent for a couple of years while continuing his studies at University of Nevada, Reno. This was the beginning of a long and varied career in golf course management. The 3rd-generation of Flemings to work in the golf business, Pete has racked up experience in assistant superintendent and full superintendent roles at a wide variety of golf courses. After two years back in the Bay Area as assistant superintendent at Claremont Country Club he returned to Reno where he took on superintendent duties at Wolf Run for nearly a decade.
After returning to the Bay Area, now with a growing family, Pete oversaw operations at courses and facilities as varied as shoestring-budget muni courses in Hayward, the Ocean Course at the Ritz-Carlton resort in Half Moon Bay, and Peninsula Golf & Country Club in San Mateo, a private club with a high-end, state-of-the art maintenance operation.
Seeking a change from the demands of the 24/7/365 life of a course superintendent, Pete moved to his current inside sales position at Sierra Pacific Turf Supply in Campbell in 2020. The move enabled him to apply the experience he had gained over the years – backed by what he learned in the highly regarded Turf Science program at Rutgers University, and a degree in Communications from University of Nevada, Reno – to supporting the needs of Sierra Pacific’s clients, the majority of which are golf facilities.
His familiarity with the grass-roots level requirements of a golf course allows Pete to help Sierra Pacific’s customers keep their facilities in top condition while staying within their budgets – fertilizer, seed, chemicals and irrigation systems are big investments, and irrigation is an ongoing maintenance requirement. By rebuilding irrigation controllers, implementing a board exchange program, and selling refurbished components at reduced rates, Pete keeps Sierra Pacific’s customers happy, helping them to keep their systems up and running without costly upgrades – and keeps them onboard as customers. With stores in Campbell, Rocklin, and the Reno-Sparks area, Sierra Pacific has the reach to serve golf courses and a range of other turf users throughout Northern California.
Pete Fleming himself has a unique position in the golf course business in the Bay Area and Northern California in that he can see the past, present, and future of Northern California golf all within his own family.
Of his grandfather, Jack, whom Pete was lucky enough to get to know before his death when Pete was 14, he says, “He was an amazing guy.” Many of the courses Jack Fleming built or remodeled have disappeared, and Pete has tried to play as many of his grandfather’s existing courses as he could. “(The Fleming 9) is something that my grandfather built within Harding Park,” Pete says, “so that everyone in the city had a place to play. You’ve got par-4s and -5s in there – it’s a bring-your-whole bag kind of nine-hole course.”
He can also look to his father, John Fleming. John, who died in 2011, spent nearly 30 years at San Francisco’s world-renowned Olympic Club – an almost unheard-of length of career at a single high-end facility – overseeing 45 holes of golf and a crew of 45–50 workers through, among other things, two U.S. Open Championships. His legacy lives on not only through his son, but through the many of his assistants who moved on to their own superintendent positions.
For the present and the future of the Northern California golf business Pete can look to his own experience, and maybe to his sons, Jack and Cole. Engineering students at Washington State and University of Colorado–Boulder, respectively, both are working golf-related summer jobs. Jack is working with his father at Sierra Pacific, and younger brother Cole is working on the maintenance crew at DeLaveaga Golf Course in the hills above Santa Cruz.
It appears that golf in Northern California will be in good hands as long as the Fleming family is around.