Media Contact: Rick Schloss (619) 682-3407 rickschlosspr@aol.com Copyright SAN DIEGO UNION TRIBUNE PUBLISHING COMPANY September 7th, 2004 FALLBROOK, CA — At La Jolla Country Club, there is a ramp under the clubhouse that leads to the bag room. There, mostly twentysomething kids work to get through college, retrieving clubs for the members as they arrive to play. On Doug Dannevik's first day on the job in 1996, one older guy stood at the top of the ramp and had the gumption to clap his hands and loudly demand, "Boy, get my clubs for me!" "Boy?" Dannevik remembers thinking. Dannevik wanted to get in the guy's face and tell him he was a respected faculty member at UCSD; that he'd coached volleyball there for 17 years and had won six national championships in his tenure. He wanted to tell him he was a 42-year-old man; not a boy. But he took a deep breath and bit his tongue. "Boy, do I have a lot to learn," Dannevik concluded. "I have to learn how to suck it up." At the time, Dannevik couldn't have possibly connected in his head all the dots on the map that would lead him to his dream job. But he's arrived now, and the bag room is a fond and distant memory. In July, Dannevik was hired as the head pro at the Pala Mesa Resort. He got the job under tragic circumstances, as the replacement for Dana Gunderson, the popular pro who was killed in a car accident. But while mourning the loss of Gunderson, with whom he worked previously at Pala Mesa, Dannevik, a Patrick Henry High and San Diego State alum, felt a quiet joy. "To have overcome a ton of road blocks, and now to be chosen for this job " Dannevik said, his voice cracking with emotion. "I wasn't the great golfer who couldn't play on tour and becomes a head pro because that's all he can do. I didn't have roots as a golf pro. I had a passion for this. "This is exhilarating. I'm as proud as I can be." Dannevik's fellow volleyball coaches thought he was nuts when he decided to quit in 1996, 17 years after he started at UCSD when the sport was intramural. His women's teams won six national titles, including the Tritons' first in any sport in 1981. But Dannevik burned out. "It's almost like a mid-life deal -- I don't want to call it a crisis," he said. "I had no passion for it anymore." With the support of his soon-to-be wife, Cindy, Dannevik started at La Jolla for $6 an hour. He took a pay cut to be a Pala Mesa assistant (where he and Cindy held their wedding), and over the next seven years he worked at the Welk Resort, PGA of Southern California Golf Club in Beaumont, Desert Princess in Cathedral City, Quail Ranch in Moreno Valley and the private Canyon Crest in Riverside. Dannevik was a single-digit handicap as a volleyball coach, but it took him seven tries to pass the PGA's Players Ability Test. Meantime, he was working extra jobs as a basketball referee and a waiter to make ends meet. "At times, it was pretty rough," Dannevik said. All along, he was convinced he had something special to contribute to golf. That was affirmed in 2003 when Dannevik was named the PGA's Inland Empire Teacher of the Year. "As an older guy," he said, "you have life skills that a 22-year- old can't possibly have. "And I think people have looked at me as an asset in the business right away. It was a definite advantage, and they could see I had a tremendous desire to do this." If only the guy at La Jolla could see him now.