Queens, New York
Trade school gave me the tools. A golf course gave me everything else.
I'm a Electrician with 25 years in the field. The best jobs I ever had didn't come from a bid. They came from a round. I started The Front Nine Project because I watched the same thing happen to my son on a green one afternoon, and I want it to happen for every kid coming out of the trades.
The network gap
I've hired a lot of people, and I've been hired a lot of times. Almost none of it came from a posting. It came from someone who had spent time with me and could say, "He's good, call him." Trade school teaches the craft. It cannot teach you how to be that guy in the room. That's the gap, and I know exactly what it costs, because I spent years on the wrong side of it before someone brought me to a course.
55%
of jobs are filled through relationships, not job postings.
Technical foundations
They already have the trade. School gave them that, and we do not replace it. We build on it, so the skill they earned in the shop shows up in how they carry themselves everywhere else.
Six sessions. One crew.
Not a clinic. Not a one-off scramble. Students show up six times with the same group, the same instructors, and a growing circle of people who work in the trades. By the last session, they are playing a round with an employer who is hiring.
Business fluency
How you greet someone. How you keep pace. How you handle a bad hole without blowing up the round. Every one of those is a jobsite skill, and the course is where we practice them out loud.
Network access
Real rounds with contractors, facility managers, union reps, and business owners. Not a career fair. Four hours with someone who can vouch for you the next time a crew has an opening.
The Nine
The game already teaches the job. We name it so it sticks.
Integrity
Do the work right when no one is looking at the scorecard or the install.
Courtesy
Listen first. Don’t step on someone’s putt—or their sentence.
Confidence
Walk onto a tee or a job interview like you belong there.
Responsibility
Every stroke. Every lockout. You wrote it down.
Etiquette
Course manners are site manners.
Judgment
Club selection and career selection use the same muscle.
Respect
For tools, ground, competition, and the customer.
Sportsmanship
Win clean. Lose useful.
Perseverance
Finish the round. Finish the pull.
Three ways in
School, employer, or supporter—there is a seat.
Why I started this
I've played golf some of my adult life, and for a long time it was just something I did one Blue Moon. Then I started bringing my son. He was learning the game the way you learn anything hard, a lot of frustration and a few good swings. One day he had a shot that had no business working. Bad lie, long way to go, trouble everywhere. He hit it and it landed on the green. I don't think either of us said anything for a second. Then we were both yelling.
That shot carried the rest of the day. He walked differently. He talked to the other guys in our group like he belonged there, because for the first time he felt like he did. I've watched that carry into the rest of his life since. How he introduces himself. How he holds a conversation with someone twice his age. How he asks for what he wants. None of that came from a classroom. It came from a green, on a day when a grown man he'd never met told him "great shot" and meant it.
That's the whole program. I can't give every student my son's day, but I can give them the course, the crew, and the people who will be standing there when they pull off the shot. Everything else follows.
Built as a crew on purpose
Golf looks like a game you play alone. It isn't. You never play a round without a group. They keep your pace, they watch your ball into the trees, and they see the score you write down. The trades work the same way. Somebody taught every one of us, and somebody vouched for us before we'd earned it. That's why there are four names on this instead of one. A program about showing up for young people cannot be one person who might not show up.
Give a student that day
Clubs in their hands. A coach who teaches the game and the job at the same time. Six sessions with a crew that shows up every time, and people in the trades who will be there when the shot lands. I've seen what it does. Help me do it for the next one.
info@thefrontnineproject.com