John McCarthy, CGCS is currently working as the interim superintendent at Painted Dunes Desert Golf Club in El Paso, TX, hundreds of miles from his home in Georgia. After nine years at his previous club in Georgia, McCarthy was let go as they wanted to go in a new direction. He landed his current job in Texas with help from his connections in the industry. While the job in Texas pays the bills for now, McCarthy coaches youth football back in Georgia where his teams have found great success, just as he has helped clubs succeed in Georgia and now Texas.

1. 28 Through the green November-December 2014
McCarthy Touches Down
In Transition (end) Zone
In case you missed it, the following report on Georgia GCSA director
John McCarthy, CGCS appeared n the October issue of GCM and
is reprinted with permission from GCSAA.
His football teams possess a record that would make even
Nick Saban smile. What truly makes him happy, though, is
what plays out on the golf course. John McCarthy, CGCS is not
necessarily facing a mid-life crisis. In this era of economic and
job-related uncertainty, though, it is life.
At what now is considered a temporary position as interim su-
perintendent at Painted Dunes Desert Golf Club in El Paso, TX
McCarthy is hundreds of miles from the gridiron that his team in
Georgia has, arguably, dominated. McCarthy, 44, finds himself in
West Texas by design. And a need to support his family, which
includes an Olympic-caliber swimmer and a quarterback in the
making, still based in Georgia.
He landed at Painted Dunes when they needed a superintendent
and he needed a job. After nine years at Crystal Falls Golf Club
in Dawsonville, GA McCarthy says they told him they wanted to
go a new direction and let him walk. It is a familiar scenario in the
industry. Any industry, really.
“You never know what can happen. It (job issues) hits everybody.
It doesn’t discriminate,” McCarthy says. “This (superintendent
job) is what pays the bills.”
He also works in a profession where networking is in the fabric.
Among those who put the wheels in motion to restart McCar-
thy’s career is Tenia Workman, Georgia GCSA executive direc-
tor. She contacted GCSAA past-president Dave Downing II,
CGCS vice-president at Golf Maintenance Solutions. There he
serves as agronomist for the Southeast region. He helped place
McCarthy at Painted Dunes.
“John has desert and warm- and cool-season grass experience,”
says Downing, GCSAA president in 2008. “It’s been a win-win
situation so far.”
Winning is a common denominator in McCarthy’s family. His
Midway Wolverines youth football team in Forsythe County, GA
won 36 games in a row in one stretch and recorded two cham-
pionships. His defense was like the 1985 Chicago Bears, à la
William “Refrigerator” Perry, allowing zero points in the first 17
games in that winning streak.
Now, McCarthy, who attended the University of Massachusetts’
Stockbridge School of Agriculture, coaches the middle school
NEWS
John McCarthy, CGCS balances a job in West Texas with football
and family back home in Georgia.