Former BBHHS baseballer strikes it big as golf professional

by Judy Stringer

There’s 1,243 miles – and an immeasurable amount of hustle – between chasing birdies at Sleepy Hollow public golf course in Brecksville and running the show at the ultra-exclusive, Arnold Palmer-designed Deering Bay Yacht & County Club golf course in Miami.

Yet, Broadview native Craig Corcoran, 35, managed to make that journey in just over a decade.

Corcoran currently serves as director of golf for Deering Bay, a position he’s held for three years. In the job, he oversees “everything golf related” at the club, he said.

“Deering Bay is a young country club in Miami, and it’s been a whirlwind coming down here and taking this place from a $35,000 initiation fee to now a $200,000 initiation fee,” Corcoran said. “When people start paying that kind of money, they start having higher expectations, as you can imagine.”

The Brecksville-Broadview Heights High School graduate started his golfing career during college, landing a spot in Eastern Kentucky University’s nascent PGA Golf Management program and an internship at Louisville Country Club.

“The whole program takes about four and a half years,” Corcoran said. “So, I left EKU [in 2013] with a business degree and a PGA Golf Professional degree which really helped propel my career.”

Since then, he’s worked at courses up and down the Eastern seaboard, from Sankaty Head Golf Club in Nantucket and Fox Chapel Golf Club in Pittsburgh, to Seminole Golf Club in Juno Beach, Florida, and Old Palm Golf Club in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida. For much of his early career, he would travel between two different assignments, working at northern courses in the summer and southern courses come wintertime.

Corcoran, however, considers the role Old Palm Golf Club, where he accepted a job as head golf professional in 2018, his first “real full-time, adult job.”

“I worked directly with the general manager and director of golf there, and I took over all the operational and day-to-day operations of the club,” he explained.

It was also during his time at Old Palm that Corcoran began hobnobbing and hitting the links with Fortune 500 executives and PGA tour players, including Louis Oosthuizen, Ernie Els, Branden Grace, Shane Lowry and Brad Faxon.

“Just getting to be around these people, sometimes playing golf with them or getting to have them call you their golf pro, it’s a very unique position and something that I wouldn’t necessarily have access to at a course in Middle America,” he said.

Corcoran is an avid golfer himself, having played professionally since college and most recently competing in the South Florida PGA circuit. While he golfed outside of school – primarily at Sleepy Hollow – during his time at BBHHS, baseball was the focus of his high school athletic career.

“I just knew I loved playing golf, and I knew I could make a career out of it more so than baseball,” Cororan said.

Sleepy Hollow remains one of Corcoran’s favorite courses “because I grew up playing it,” he said, and despite his parents’ recent move out of Broadview Heights – after 40 years there – he makes it a point to get up to the area at least once a year to see friends and his sister.

“And to golf at Sleepy Hollow,” he said. “That’s where many of my golfing memories are.” ∞

Photo: BBHHS grad Craig Corcoran now manages the Deering Bay Yacht & Country Club golf course in Miami. Photo submitted.