Par for the course

By Cody York

How does someone who studied history at Elon become the vice president of rules and competition for the PGA Tour? For Mark Russell ’74 it all started his senior year at Elon, when he took a trip to visit a friend in Florida during Winter Term. “Everyone was wearing flip-flops and shorts in the 80-degree weather. I realized I was missing the boat if I didn’t head that way,” says Russell about his plans to move to Florida. 

Next he would need a job, which he found at the local amusement park—Walt Disney World. While he started out operating the Jungle Cruise, he soon realized he would enjoy working at a golf course instead. He loved the game, having been exposed to it by his father at a young age. He transferred over to the park’s golf resort and his career in the golf business was underway. “If I couldn’t compete in golf, the next best thing is to be around it,” he says. It wasn’t long before he became the director of golf and chairman of the Disney Golf Classic, which is where he met all the players and PGA Tour executives. In 1980 he was asked to join the rules committee for the organization.

The transition from golf operations to the PGA Tour rules committee has a steep learning curve, as Russell discovered. “I thought I knew something about the rules until I got there and realized quick that I didn’t know anything,” he says. He would soon learn the pressures of making a ruling on a Sunday afternoon, in front of galleries of people on the course and on TV. But it was all worth it. He was named vice president of rules and competition in 2008, a position he holds to this day. His team is responsible for a vast amount of planning and preparation for each PGA Tour event, including conducting the competition, determining where the hole goes on the putting surface and how high the rough is. “Our mission every week is to set the golf course up as difficult as it can play, but fair,” Russell says. “That’s what the players want.” 

Once the competition starts, he and his staff are on the course for any rules questions and to monitor the pace of play. Known for his sense of humor, Russell describes his job as “hours of boredom and moments of terror.” That’s because he is ultimately responsible for any rulings made on the golf course, and he has been part of some memorable ones. In 1996, at the Disney Golf Classic, he was informed that American golfer Taylor Smith might be playing with an illegal grip on his putter. Russell determined that was the case, which meant Smith had to be disqualified from the tournament and miss what would have been a playoff with Tiger Woods, marking an early second-tour win for Woods at the beginning of his remarkable career. While those types of moments can be stressful, Russell is thankful he doesn’t have to handle them for the NFL or NBA; those officials, he says, have to make far more snap decisions. “We can take our time to review a situation and be fair about it,” he adds.

While being around the best players in the world is one of the reasons he enjoys his job, Russell says just being around “the great game of golf” has been a rewarding experience that has allowed him to make friends around the world. He also appreciates the fact that the PGA Tour is a nonprofit that impacts countless communities through the game. “As long as I’m healthy and I feel good, I’ll keep doing this,” he says. “The commissioner said I’m not going anywhere, so that’s a good thing.”