The best golf GM in America

Castle Pines’ Keith Schneider hands off club he helped make one of the best

By Jim Bebbington

Photos by Christian Marcy-Vega

The story is an old one, but it’s worth re-telling.

It’s 1981 and Keith Schneider, an Ohioan, had just recently fallen off the turnip truck and found himself as the interim club professional at a still-under-construction new golf club south of Denver, the Castle Pines Golf Club.

For three years Schneider had been working for the greatest professional golfer of the time, Jack Nicklaus, helping operate his pride and joy and home course northwest of Columbus, Ohio, the Muirfield Village Golf Club.

One day Jack had asked to speak to his young, green assistant golf pro.

“I said, OK, what did I do wrong?” Schneider recalls.

Far from it, Jack said.

Instead Jack ‘asked’ if Schneider would be willing to uproot his life, move 1,200 miles away, and help one of his clients – Jack Vickers – get a fledgling golf club off the ground.

“I looked at him and I said, well, how soon do you need to know? And he looked at that gold Rolex and he says ‘Pretty much now,” Schneider said. “Two days later, I’m in my car driving to Colorado.”

Schneider, all of 26, arrived a few days later at a construction site.

“When Keith came out here Happy Canyon Road was still a dirt road,” said George Solich, the Denver oil executive and current president and Chairman of Castle Pines Golf Club.

Working out of a double-wide trailer, Schneider helped the club’s visionary founder, Jack Vickers, get started.

Vickers’ vision was simple: he wanted to build the Augusta National of the West.

That first summer the course greened up early, and within a few weeks, Jack Vickers wanted to hold a ceremonial first round of golf with course architect Jack Nicklaus on hand and all his members getting their first taste.

There was one problem, however. There were no caddies.

Schneider called the president of the Evans Scholar House at the University of Colorado and spoke to the president, Roger Hiyama.

“Roger, this is what we’re doing: I got Jack playing an exhibition to introduce some members to the club, then the members are going to play the next day,” Schneider recalled. “I’d like to have you caddy for Jack on the round. We called it Round One. Then the next day with 100 members I need 25 caddies to come down. I’ll send a bus to pick you up, bring you down here, caddy for the day, bus back to Boulder. I’ll put a keg of beer on it on the way back – not on the way down.”

The sign-up sheet filled up fast, including a CU sophomore named George Solich. Castle Pines Golf Club was now officially open.

“He’s seen everything from day 1,” Solich said recently. “That’s a wealth of knowledge. What’s really important as I transitioned into the executive committee first and chairman second, I’ve been working with Keith closely for 14 years. He’s meant so much to Castle Pines – not only the golf club but the membership. He’s very member-centric – that’s one of his strengths. We say we treat the members like family and their guests like members.”

That spirit is strong throughout the staff and the club’s members, largely thanks to Schneider.

“He very much cared that Castle Pines be the best version of itself that Jack Vickers envisioned,” Solich said.

Now, 43 years later, Schneider is retiring at the end of the year. He served as head pro for 23 years, then 20 as the general manager.

In his time he helped guide nearly every aspect of a club that sought to live up to its promise of providing ‘The Best Day of Golf in America.”

The trailer clubhouse has long since gone. In its place is a modern complex that underwent a full renovation and expansion in the past 10 years. Nearby is a secluded enclave of what the club calls cottages – multi-story residences with separate living quarters on each floor. They give visitors unrivaled access and views along holes No. 1 and 9.

In 2018 when Vickers died and Solich became the chairman, they launched an update that touched every corner of the building and the course.

“When George Solich became chairman and president of the club, that’s the best thing that really happened for us,” Schneider said. “He really appreciated and cherished Jack Vickers’s vision.”

Everything needed to be updated. That work began. The course – if it was ever to challenge the PGA Tour’s best again – needed to be improved. They called Jack Nicklaus back in to oversee it.

“It’s not necessarily that the architecture was changed, it’s just we modernized it. And that’s what we’ve worked so hard to accomplish – we’ve done the clubhouse, the cottages, the golf course. We did all of this together the last 10 years, with the dream of the BMW (Championship) coming to show the world what we have done.”

This summer’s BMW Championship was a near-perfect reintroduction of the club to the world. The weather was ideal. The grounds looked fantastic on TV. And the competition came down to the final hole.

“I think the people here that came really enjoyed it,” Schneider said. “It was a huge success.”

During those 43 years, Schneider married and raised a family. He and Beth married 36 years ago and Schneider became stepfather to her two children, Tom and Lindsey. They had one son together, Drew, who followed Keith into the golf business and is now the assistant GM at Lakewood Country Club in Dallas.

The club operations business is well-known for its challenges. Different members can want different things. How do you succeed at that for 43 years?

Mike MacAdams, the club vice president and CFO, has worked alongside Schneider for 20 years. Schneider has succeeded by being himself, MacAdams said.

“Keith makes everybody feel welcome here whether you’re an employee, a member, a guest,” MacAdams said. “The individual can feel that. I think that’s one of the best things – his leadership by example.”

“One of the key things Keith taught me is what details to pay attention to,” MacAdams said. “How to see all the details and teaching me about Mr. Vickers vision – when people come here they come for home cooking. When you walk through the clubhouse you’re looking into the corners – did we vacuum into the corners? Even when you’re walking through the clubhouse you still say ‘Are we on our game to the best of our ability?’ ”

His successor as general manager, Dwight Dyksterhouse Jr., is 33 years old and part of a new wave of staff who are tasked with keeping the club vibrant and relevant for decades to come. He said he has come to appreciate what Schneider accomplished as he looks forward to his job ahead.

“I would say the biggest takeaway so far for me is he’s given his life to this place – 43 years is a long time,” Dyksterhouse said. “It shows in the way he treats the members and their guests and the way they treat him. When you spend so long in one place it’s evident he’s admired and respected and frankly loved.”

As this final summer approached Castle Pines members gathered last spring for their annual kickoff. Schneider was their guest of honor. They gave Schneider their highest honor – a membership to the club for life – and before a crowded room relived his accomplishments at helping make the best day of golf in America a reality.

“There were standing ovations and tears,” Solich said. “And that is not all that common at clubs.”