Owners

Ken Morton, Sr. – Morton Golf CEO, PGA Master Professional

Ken Morton, Sr. is a native of Sacramento. He was born in 1940 and attended the Carmichael Grammar School. Ken was a 4H Member and raised animals until he started caddying at the Del Paso Country Club when he turned 11 years old. He caddied, worked in the shop, repaired golf clubs and picked up the driving range at Del Paso while attending El Camino High School. He won the Northern California High School Championship and later won the California State Junior College Championship while attending Sacramento City College. On March 1, 1958, he started working part-time for Tom LoPresti at Haggin Oaks and is still there nearly 50 years later. During his career at Haggin Oaks, he was part-owner of the Auburn Valley Country Club from 1986 to 2001 and managed AVCC part-time from 1991 until he and his partners sold their interests in 2001. At the same time, he was a partner in Golf Resources which managed, owned and/or operated six golf courses in California and Oregon. Golf Resources was eventually sold to Meadowbook Golf, a large publicly-held management company.

In 1978, Ken Morton, Sr. was asked to become a faculty member of the PGA of America’s Education Faculty. Between 1978 and 1982, he ran several PGA Apprentice Training Schools. Since 1982, he has presented hundreds of PGA Training Seminars for the PGA. During the early 1990’s, he was part of the National PGA Faculty working with Stanford Research Institute to design the new PGA Apprentice Training Program. In the late 1990’s he also participated on the design team to create Specialized Certification Programs for Head Golf Professionals. Today, he is one of less than 150 Certified PGA Master Professionals and is a Faculty Member to grade and interview those members applying for Certification and PGA Master Professional status. He is the only person who has been awarded six National PGA Awards and in 2005, was inducted into the National PGA Hall of Fame for his contributions to the PGA, the game of golf and its members.

Between 1990 and 1998, Ken was also part of a small paid group of six PGA Golf Professionals providing consulting, feasibility and evaluation contract work that the PGA of America has with the Pentagon for military golf course operations all over the world. He has performed consulting work throughout the continental United States, Japan, Korea, England and Alaska.

In 1983, Ken founded SAY Golf which is today called The First Tee of Greater Sacramento. He was the President from 1983 to 2001 and was an officer until 2006 when he dropped off of the Board of Directors to become an Emeritus Board Member.

Ken has dedicated his adult life to the game of golf and to his profession but feels his biggest contributions during his 60+ year career has been the creation of three charities. The first was the Sacramento Area Youth Golf Association (SAY-Golf) that was born in 1983 and then in 2001 became one of the original First Tee Chapters in America called The First Tee of Greater Sacramento. He was SAY-Golf’s original Chairman over its first 18 years. He was asked in 2010 by the Northern California PGA to help create the Northern California PGA Foundation and was its first Chairman. In 2011, Ken created the Morton Golf Foundation to enrich the lives of the less fortunate through the game of golf and was voted to be its original Chairman as well. He is extremely proud that these three charity groups have raised and granted several million dollars to grow the game of golf for kids, the disabled and the less fortunate.

Ken has received recognitions from the following groups:

• 1986 National Junior Golf Promoter of the Year- Golf Digest Magazine
• Northern California Golf Association’s Grand Master Award
• California Golf Writer’s Contribution to Golf Award
• Arthur Anderson’s Best Business Practices Regional Award
• Named Golf Pro Magazine’s 72 Most Powerful People In Golf

Terry Daubert – Morton Golf President, CMAA, NGCOA Member

Terry comes from a farming/ranching background in Colorado. He started working at the age of nine, cleaning a local drive-in restaurant parking lot near his house. Every morning, his job was to clean that parking lot before going to school.

At age thirteen, Terry’s father passed away and he took on new responsibilities to help fill the place of his father. He has worked on a farm raising cattle, growing alfalfa, corn, sugar beets, and other farming products. At age eighteen, he worked on a ranch in Colorado for two years raising, feeding, and breeding cattle, not to mention growing hay, and got comfortable riding a horse every day.

Terry was very active in sports in high school through college. At age twenty, he attended the University of Northern Colorado on a two-year golf scholarship and obtained his BS degree in Business Administration with an emphasis on management. He was offered a scholarship in basketball and golf, and decided to pursue golf in college. He later attended graduate school at Colorado State University where he continued his Masters studies in Business Management.

In 1975, Terry opened and operated an art supply/framing/gallery for 10 years near the college he attended. He had three locations with over thirty employees in the town of Greeley and distributed wholesale products to outlying cities until 1985.

Terry joined the Haggin Oaks Golf Shop in 1985 and became an apprentice golf professional. Initially, his career goals were to become a Head Golf Professional. Because of his educational background and his previous small business experiences, he became more valuable in an administrative position than as a golf professional. Over time, he was selected to become the General Manager of Haggin Oaks Golf Complex and today is the President of Morton Golf.

Terry has spent thirty years quietly becoming the leader of all aspects of Morton Golf. He is happily married to his wife Karen, and has two lovely daughters, Mary and Jenny.

Ken Morton, Jr. – VP Retail and Marketing, Author, AGM Certified Retail Merchandiser, Chairman of the Board for NGBA

Ken Morton, Jr. was born in 1972 and quite literally into the golf business. With his father as head golf professional at Haggin Oaks Golf Course, Ken was introduced to the game early on. At the tender age of eight, he would travel to work with his dad on Sundays and give change on the driving range (as these were the days before change machines.) At the age of 12, Ken abandoned all other sports and dove into his first love, golf. He began working as a starter on the weekends and hones his golf game after school. He won the Little Linker Championship at age 12 and went on to win the Haggin Oaks Junior Golf Championship the next four consecutive years.

Ken played varsity golf on the El Camino Fundamental High School golf team all four years, making it to the Nor Cals and finishing 9th in state in 1987. He played in hundreds of junior golf events, winning the Sierra Nevada Junior Championship at the age of sixteen. In addition, he spent two years on the Northern California Junior Golf Advisory Board. It was also at sixteen that Ken Jr. found his true calling in golf. He had moved into the retail store and was involved both as a salesperson and a merchandiser. He spent after-school hours and weekends in the shop, learning customer service skills. At high school graduation, he headed off to Washington DC and worked a season as a shop assistant at Congressional Country Club. There, he continued to learn merchandising as well as instruction under Golf Digest Top 50 Teacher Kent Cayce. Ken would also go on to work three annual consecutive weeklong stints at Edgewood Tahoe GC during the Celebrity Golf Championship in their merchandise tent in the early 90’s.

Upon returning to Haggin Oaks, Ken Jr. turned professional and took over the soft goods and hard goods buying for Haggin Oaks as well as four additional golf courses in Northern California and Oregon- both private and public. He worked full-time while going to college, graduating in 1995 from California State University of Sacramento with a BA in Organizational Communication. In 1995, Haggin Oaks brought their advertising in-house and Ken because their Director of Marketing as well. Combining his vision with his father’s, they opened the Haggin Oaks Golf Super Shop in 1997. It instantly gained praise from the golf industry with Golfweek Magazine & Golf World Magazine naming it Public Golf Shop of the Year. Ken Jr. did all the design again when the shop doubled in size exactly ten years later- bringing the on-course shop to just over 15,000 square feet.

Ken has become an active voice in the golf industry through his work in education and the Association of Golf Merchandisers. He has given seminars to PGA sections and AGM groups in a dozen different states and is a contributing writer to such publications as the AGM e-Tailer, Golf Pro Magazine, Golf Business, Golf Today, PGA Show News Daily, Northern California Golf Guide, Health and Fitness Magazine, Golf Retailer, California Golf Lifestyle Magazine and Golf Product News. Under his guidance, the golf store won the Golf Digest/GolfWorld 100 Best Golf Shops Award an unprecedented 30 straight times.

His creative promotional and event ideas have garnered national attention. In 2000, he was named as one of the 40 most influential people in golf under the age of 40 by Golfweek Magazine. He also became a member of the Board of Directors of the AGM and in 2001 was presented with their Excellence in Education Award. In January of 2006, he became the organization’s President and served for six years. He has been on the education committee for the AGM for 20+ years. In 2006, his book The Little Book of Big Golf Promotions was published and became a leading industry resource for marketing and promotional concepts. He has followed it up with The Little Book of Big Golf Promotions II- A Second Helping in 2009, Little Book III in 2011, Little Book IV in 2019 and Little Book V in 2021. He also penned a book titled Life (and Business) Lessons From The Greens with his father Ken Sr and former Golf Digest editor Bob Carney in 2021. In 2019, he joined the Executive Board for the National Golf Buyers Association and in 2021 became their Chairman of the Board.

He believes strongly in family and community values. His is happily married to his wife, Jennifer, and has three young men, Brandon, Taylor & Carson and a daughter Heather who has him wrapped around her finger.

He spent seven plus years as a member of the Rocklin Fire Department as a volunteer firefighter and has coached over two dozen youth soccer and baseball teams. He’s an award-winning photographer and an aspiring songwriter. His Golf & Guitars Music Festival has raised over a million dollars for disadvantaged children’s and disabled charities – as well as granted over 200 college scholarships. In his spare time, he writes for several country music publications including Nashville Scene, Country Weekly, Engine145.com, the9513.com, AmericanNoise.com, SavingCountryMusic.com and ThatNashvilleSound.com.

Tom Morton – Director of Coaching & Development, PGA Master Professional

Born in Sacramento, Tom is the second son of Ken & Kathy Morton and has played competitive golf since the age of five. Tom’s golf career was fostered through the Haggin Oaks Junior Golf Programs and through the instruction of his father, Ken Morton, Sr., a five-time national PGA award winner and long-time PGA Director of Golf at Haggin Oaks. Tom has played tournament golf since the Little Linker program at age 7, and then played on the Junior Golf Association of Northern California Tour and American Junior Golf Association events. His scholastic achievements and golf game enabled Tom to receive a golf scholarship to the University of California at Santa Barbara where he played competitively for 4 years. Tom’s golf career highlights include:

• 2-Time National PGA Award Winner:
  • 2014 Youth Player Development Award
  • 2017 Player Development Award
• 7-Time Northern California PGA Section Award Winner:
  • 2002 Assistant/Apprentice of the Year
  • 2006 & 2015 Horton Smith Award
  • 2008 & 2012 Youth Player Development Award
  • 2012 & 2014 Player Development Award
• 2014-2016 Chair, National PGA Player Development Committee
• 2017-2018 Golf Athlete Development Model Expert Group
• Golf Range Association of America – Top 50 Growth of the Game Teacher
• 2009 U.S. Kids Master Kids Teacher in America
• 2002 NCPGA Apprentice Championship Winner
• 2017 NCPGA Match Play Champion
• 2017 Participant, PGA Tour Barracuda Championship
• Member 2014 NCPGA Cup Team
• Member 1999 & 2000 NCPGA Assistant/Apprentice Cup Team
• All-Big West Conference Selection for UCSB (Spring 1997)
• Assistant Golf Coach UCSB (Fall 1997)
• Two-time selection U.S. collegiate team for Pacific-Rim World Collegiate Championship in Japan
• Member of Jr. America’s Cup Team for Northern California
• 1992 Northern California High School Champion

Tom is a certified club fitter for: Titleist, Cobra, Ping, Tour Edge, Taylor Made, and Callaway, as well as many other major club manufacturers. Tom is also certified to utilize TrackMan and SAM Putt Lab technology.

As the PGA Director of Coaching & Development for Morton Golf (Haggin Oaks, Bing Maloney, Land Park & Bartley Cavanaugh), Tom is heavily involved with designing and coaching many programs.

Tom is married to his wife, Erin, and has two children.

Mike Woods – PGA Director of Golf, Morton Golf Partner, Morton Golf Foundation Vice President

Born and raised in Marin County, sports have always represented a large part of Mike’s life. Mike excelled in soccer and golf at a young age and played both competitively as a youth, in high school and in college at Sac State.

When Mike wasn’t playing soccer, he was playing golf with his father. They enjoyed playing golf together whenever they could and Mike feels it was golf that taught him the importance of a strong character and hard work.

In 1990, Mike started working part-time at the Haggin Oaks Golf Complex as a starter and after graduating from Sac State with a B.S. in Business, he decided to try the golf business as his career. In 1992, he was promoted as an Assistant Golf Professional and started the PGA Apprentice Program. While learning to be an expert clubfitter, golf instructor and salesperson, he received his PGA Class A Membership in 1996. Next, Mike was named the Head Golf Professional at the Haggin Oaks Golf Complex, becoming only the third Head Golf Professional in the history of Haggin Oaks. Today he is the PGA Director of Golf for the facility at Haggin Oaks.

In 2001, Mike became a Morton Golf Partner. He considers the relationship between the five partners to be the main reason for the long term success of Haggin Oaks. This culture has been developed and nurtured over many years of hard work, all led by the mentoring of Ken Morton, Sr.

Over many years, Mike has managed a variety of departments at the Haggin Oaks, including:

• Haggin Oaks Golf Super Shop Sales Floor – America’s Most Awarded Golf Shop
• Golf Instruction Team – including 15 golf instructors and a wide variety of programming
• The First Tee Programming
• Golf Course Maintenance for 36 holes
• Pro Shop and Green Fee Department – including 36 holes of golf, FootGolf and Fling Golf
• Tournament Department – responsible for hosting over 1,200 events per year
• Northern California’s busiest club repair facility
• 24-Hour Driving Range
• Golf Cart Fleet Management –  including 140 golf carts and 4 Golf Boards

Some of Mike’s career highlights include:

• 2008 PGA of America Merchandiser of the Year Award recipient
• 2007 NCPGA Merchandiser of the Year Award recipient
• 2004 NCPGA Horton Smith Award recipient
• 1998-2008 Sacramento Golf Council Member
• 1998-2008 California State Fair Championship Tournament Director
• 2010-2018 Sacramento Golf Club President
• 2017-2018 Poppy Holding Board of Directors

Mike is married to his beautiful wife, Leslie. Mike and Leslie are very proud of their two kids, Sean and Leah.