Dick Kopplin and I first worked together at The Country Club at Castle Pines in the Castle Pines Recreation Company. Dick was the Vice President of Club Operations, and I was the Vice President of Agronomy. The economy had stalled, Denver was in a mild recession, and our grand plans for a third course and a new clubhouse for The Country Club at Castle Pines stalled with it.

After an introduction from Jack Vickers, founder of Castle Pines, to developer Lyle Anderson, Dick headed to Scottsdale to lead at Desert Mountain and Desert Highlands. I remained at Castle Pines, hosting six PGA Tour events during my time there, but for Dick and me, the rest, as they say, is history, and our friendship has endured to this day.

When Dick started the firm and received requests for Superintendent searches, he would call me, and we began working on those together with Nan keeping us pointed in the right direction. Before that, I handled one or two superintendent searches on my own each year when people reached out to me. Upon experiencing the value of working alongside the KOPPLIN SEARCH INC. team, I was sold…But the timing wasn’t quite right.

In the early 2000s, Dick and Kurt Kuebler called and asked if I would begin formally assisting with more searches, including General Manager roles. At the time, I was managing a struggling golf course and residential development for a private lender in Pittsburgh while also overseeing the design-build of Sagebrush, a Top 20 course in British Columbia, alongside Richard Zokol and Ron Whitman. Simply put, I didn’t have the capacity to take on more than the occasional search.

A few years later, Dick and Kurt, as established partners in KOPPLIN & KUEBLER, reached out again, and this time, circumstances aligned. Now, here we are all of these years later with, with Tom helping drive KOPPLIN KUEBLER & WALLACE into a large, organically grown International recruiting and consulting firm – and we’re still having FUN! For me, all these years in the business and the ability to help clubs by connecting great candidates with great clubs has been and continues to be as good a reward as there is!

Armen Suny is a Search & Consulting Executive with KOPPLIN KUEBLER & WALLACE, a consulting firm providing executive search, strategic planning and data analysis services to the private club and hospitality industries. Armen can be reached at (833) KKW-HIRE, ext. 720 and at armen@kkandw.com.