Mike Rymer and his wife, Erin Courtesy John Steinbreder
EVANS, GEORGIA | Founded in 2005 and located some 15 miles northwest of the city of Augusta, Champions Retreat Golf Club is the only club that has three nine-hole courses individually designed by Arnold Palmer, Jack Nicklaus and Gary Player.
It has also served since 2019 as host site for the first two days of the Augusta National Women’s Amateur, which then stages the third and final round at Augusta National. That role has elevated Champions Retreat’s profile in the golf world and burnished its reputation as a special place for the game.
The club also distinguishes itself by having as its director of golf one the more highly regarded PGA of America professionals in Mike Rymer. And for the past decade the 54-year-old native of Laurel, Maryland, has set himself apart here as a player and teacher as well as a merchandiser and mentor. Rymer knows hospitality, too, and is credited with making sure that whoever visits this 365-acre retreat feels warmly welcomed.
Rymer has also proved himself to be pretty good at tournament operations, whether it is putting on events for his own members or assisting Augusta National when it stages one of the most important women’s amateur competitions in the world at his place of employ.
Growing up in Laurel, a community in Maryland horse country that lies about halfway between Baltimore and Washington D.C., Rymer had no idea he would one day make a life in golf.
“My parents did not play the game,” said Rymer, the oldest of two boys. “But my mom’s dad was a golfer, and he got me and my brother into the sport. My grandfather was a colonel in the Air Force and a pilot who in World War II had flown the Hump (the dangerous route over the Himalayas between India and China). Later, he was a pilot for Eastern Airlines out of Miami. I hit my first golf balls with him when I was 8 or 9 years old, on the range at Homestead Air Force Base in Florida. Some of my greatest childhood memories are going down there with my brother to see my grandparents for a couple of weeks in the summer. We played golf all the time.”
Water comes into play on several holes at Champions Retreat. David Paul Morris, Augusta National
When Rymer’s parents saw how much the boys liked the game, they joined Laurel Pines, a local country club that no longer exists, so they could tee it up back home.
“They did that entirely for us,” said Rymer of his IBM analyst father and his mother, who was a registered dietitian. “My mom would drop us off there at 7 most mornings in the summer and pick us up at 6 o’clock. All we’d do each day is play and practice with our friends.”
By the time he started attending Eleanor Roosevelt High School, Rymer had developed what he calls “decent craft,” becoming good enough to win the individual Maryland state championship his senior year.
“I liked the individual challenge of golf, of it being you against the world,” he said. “I also enjoyed the reward and feeling that came with hitting a great shot.”
“I had played a lot of soccer growing up,” Rymer added. “But after my sophomore year of high school, I really started to focus on golf.”
He enrolled at the University of Mississippi after graduating from high school.
“I played a year or two on the golf team, but really wasn’t ready to compete at that level,” Rymer said. “I became much better once I got into the golf business, a lot better at 30 than I was at 20.”
“Champions has a very cool local and national membership and provides an awesome golf experience.” — Mike Rymer
He was, however, a good enough student to earn a degree in history at Ole Miss while having what he describes as a “great experience” at that Oxford, Mississippi, institution.
Rymer had worked summers at some golf and country clubs during high school and college – cleaning clubs and carts and picking ranges, among other duties – and quite naturally gravitated to the business once he left Ole Miss. His first gig of note was at TPC Tampa Bay, when he served as an assistant professional.
“I loved being around the game and meeting so many different people through it,” Rymer said. “I also liked that I was able to work a couple of Champions tour events in Tampa and interact with greats like Jack Nicklaus, Gary Player and Lee Trevino.”
The golf business soon took Rymer back to the Washington, D.C., area and a relatively new club called Four Streams, which featured a course designed by Nick Price and Steve Smyers; a heady membership comprising politicians, lobbyists and lawyers; and a robust caddie program.
“Michael Jordan was also a member and so was his agent, David Falk,” added Rymer.
All told, Rymer spent 15 years at Four Streams, the last nine in the head professional job. And it was there that he honed his skills as a golf professional – and as a golfer.
“I started to play a lot during that time,” he said. “The director of instruction was Steve Bosdosh, and he became my swing guy. That is when I started to play a lot of golf, and to play better.”
Pine cone tee markers at Champions Retreat Golf Club David Paul Morris, Augusta National
By the time that Rymer moved to Champions Retreat in 2016 as its director of golf, he had established himself as a top-notch club professional. He and his wife, Erin – who was serving in the U.S. Air Force when they had met years before in the Washington, D.C., area and interpreting Morse code communications for the National Security Agency – had also started a family and were raising twin boys, who are now 16. And it wasn’t long before she started working in the golf industry herself, as the golf shop manager at Augusta Country Club.
(After moving to Georgia, Erin also started a home-based baked-goods business called Morsel that became renowned for its scones, among other treats.)
“Champions has a very cool local and national membership and provides an awesome golf experience,” Rymer said. “We have 19 cottages for members and guests to stay overnight, and each of the three nine-hole courses is a very distinctive design and has its own look, with the Savannah River playing an important part on the Palmer nine, which is called Island, and the Nicklaus course, called Bluff, having lots of elevation changes. Then, there is Creek, which Gary [Player] designed and is the only one of the three bordered in places by housing.”
“We use the Palmer and Nicklaus nines for the Augusta National Women’s Amateur, in large part because they are next to each other and connect so easily,” he added.
“We’re a year-round club and only close for a couple of weeks in July for maintenance,” Rymer said. “And our most active times are the spring and the fall.”
No time is more active than late March and early April. There is all the work that goes into getting the club and course ready for the Augusta National Women’s Amateur and making sure that goes off without a hitch. And then Champions Retreat transitions into a center of golf hospitality during Masters week for those who have come to town for the year’s first major.
“The cabins are fully booked, and we have anywhere from 300 to 350 golfers play each day,” Rymer said. “We even light up the range at night and have curated experiences for members and guests that include Trackman contests and lots of good food and drink.”
It’s a busy time but nonetheless an enjoyable one and just one of many things that Rymer loves about the golf business – and the rather unlikely career he forged for himself in the game.
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