THE BUSINESS OF GOLF
By Bill Huffman
‘TRUE GOLF’ PuttTek builds realistic courses without windmills or loop de loops
M
ost people who work in the golf industry got into it via their love for the game. Believe it or not, that wasn’t the chief reason why Camron Howell, the Arizona Golf Association’s Player of the Year in 2011, took that giant leap of faith three years ago and left a career as a successful financial broker to found PuttTek. “I guess the reason I wanted to switch careers midstream, so to speak, was because I wanted to do something meaningful,” Howell said of his booming backyard/commercial putting course company called PuttTek. “I’d already made money through my insurance and tax strategies business. And with the financial world driven off 28 | AZ GOLF Insider | SPRINGSUMMER 2019
rates and making money, you can’t always guarantee the market. But I can guarantee you this: Our putting courses always make people happy — even nongolfers — and that makes me feel like we’re making a difference, which is what it’s all about.” Like the putting course PuttTek built at Cardon Children’s Medical Center in Mesa, where a giant red heart adorns the sixth and final hole. “Say a dad comes out, his child is stricken with cancer, and he needs that place where he can get away, at least for the moment,” Howell noted of the course that was built specifically for wheelchairs and walkers. “That’s a wonderful feeling knowing we can help him and his child out. Or any kid or parent that might need a fun moment to forget about everything.”
Howell also has built an elaborate Putt-Tek course in his neighborhood in Queen Creek. “Everyone seems to love it,” he said of those residents who live in The Pecans. “In fact, I see this father and his daughter over there playing it almost every day. That’s the part of the business that I really enjoy.” They are amazing works of art, these 25- to 50-foot-long Putt-Tek greens that feature a teeing area, fairway, penalty area and greens that are so true that they Stimp out at 10.5 to 11. And they are a kaleidoscope, as PuttTek blends three shades of green (fairway, rough and green surface), as well as blues, yellows, reds and whites to perfection. Oh, yes, and stone bridges, fancy scoreboards and everything else that’s golf. “I wanted true golf, where balls don’t ricochet off edges. Where you can go (out of bounds) or end up in a water hazard and take a penalty. Where reading the slope matters,” Howell noted. “And while each hole plays to a par of two or three, and you always want www.azgolf.org
