City’s first female golf course GM seeks a kinder approach to the game

By Jesse Granger

Sunday, April 9, 2017 | 2 a.m.

Outfitted in a pink dress and leather, high-heeled boots, Jody Niemann greets a group of men as they approach a tee box at Royal Links Golf Club and offers them a wager.

If she can outdrive them, the deal goes, then they have to make a donation to charity. The men accept and snicker as Niemann steps up to the tee and digs her heels into the grass.

The laughs subside when she rips a drive 260 yards down the center of the fairway.

“They’ll hand me a $100 bill and say, ‘Here you go, sweetie pie, I’ll be back to collect that in a second,’ ” Niemann said. “Once they see me hit it, they usually swing too hard, so they shank it into the rough or out of bounds.”

In January, Niemann became the first female general manager of a Las Vegas golf course when she took over at Royal Links, on Vegas Valley Drive near Nellis Boulevard.

“It just kind of shows how slow the golf industry is progressing in certain areas,” she said. “It is something that we need to make more available to juniors and women. Golf has always been a sport for the elite, and we need to change that.”

Shelby Futch, who owns seven courses in Arizona, bought Royal Links from Billy Walters last November and didn’t hesitate to hire Niemann as the GM.

“It never occurred to me that she was the first until afterwards,” Futch said. “I just felt that she was by far the best interview and was really on top of her game in terms of the Las Vegas market. It was a no-brainer. I wanted her.”

Niemann grew up working on potato farms in Idaho with her grandfather.

“We had the option to either go shopping with Grandma, or go with Grandpa,” Niemann said. “If you went with Grandpa, it meant going to the potato farm in Idaho. You were in the backhoe or the dump truck and helped move irrigation lines. Or you went to the golf course.”

Niemann always chose manual labor and links over grocery bags and shopping malls.

“I hated shopping with a passion — and I still do, to this day — so I went with Grandpa,” she said. “I loved being in the dump truck and playing in the dirt, and I loved being on the golf course.”

Niemann first swung a golf club at age 8, and soon began practicing so vigorously that she tore up her mother’s front lawn. Her grandfather entered her into junior competitions, where she found immediate success.

Niemann was named an American Junior Golf Association All-American four times from 1991 to 1994 and was the Idaho high school state champion in 1992 and 1995.

She went on to golf at Arizona State, where she helped the Sun Devils win two national championships before competing on the LPGA Tour for three years.

Because of a back injury and the desire to spend more time with her children, Jordan and Jaxon, Niemann cut short her playing career. But she stayed active in the sport, coaching for eight years at Arizona and UNR.

She said she wanted to give back to a sport that she felt was the only thing that got her off of the potato farms in Idaho.

“Instead of the sport feeling very snooty and elitist, I want people to come here and have the same feeling I had when I walked into the clubhouse as a little girl,” Niemann said. “I want people to feel welcome, because if I wouldn’t have, then I would have never played, and who knows where I’d be.”

Royal Links might be one of the most traditional golf courses in the country, highlighted by a clubhouse that’s a replica of a Scottish castle. All 18 holes are designed after famous courses in Ireland and Scotland.

While Niemann wants to keep the course traditional, her ideas for the golf club are far from it.

“I want to blend the tradition with nontradition, taking a golf course like this and holding events like a beer fest, or drive-in movie night using the golf carts,” Niemann said.

Whether it’s outdriving men in a dress and high heels for charity, or removing the gate to make a golf course appear less exclusive, Niemann continues to change the golf scene in Las Vegas.

“I love challenging everyone. I get a kick out of it,” Niemann said. “I’m not interested in the same game. I want to be unique and different and hold events like no one has had before.”