12 North Shore Towers Courier n July 2014 SECRETS OF THE STARTER NST’s man at the First Tee tells all Every golf course has a starter. Done right, the job is shrouded in a bit of mystery – and maybe intrigue. He is the same guy who, in a good restaurant, takes your coat at the door, checks your reservation and sweeps the room to determine which table is just finishing coffee. All in one motion. Rudy Miller -- part shrink, part matchmaker, part maître d’, part diplomat, part handyman, part BFF -- has been a golf starter for the better part of 30 years, the last 12 years here at NST Country Club. Rudy claims his job just to keep people happy. If it were only that simple. A starter schedules tee times, controls the rhythm of play on the course, keeps groups from bumping into each other. On paper, at least, “the key to job is to keep everyone at the same pace,” Rudy says. But the art of the starter’s job is in mixing and matching golfers according to style of play – and character. Who talks a lot, who wants to be left alone. Who walks, who rides. Rudy learned the starter’s art as a teenager at Wheatley Hill Golf Course on Long Island, where he started as a caddie, age 16. “I loved it right away,” Rudy says. “My friends were earning $2 an hour that summer and I was making $40 or $50 a day. After that first year,” he says with a smile, “I bought a new car.” The only son of Con Ed boilermaker, Rudy would wake up at 4 a.m. and two buses to get from his house on Madison Street in Ridgewood, Queens to the course in East Williston. The view from inside the Starters shack, Rudy talking to one of his assistants from the bag room.
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