Meet the Member: Aaron Green, PGA
Aaron Green, PGA – From Opportunity to Leadership
For Aaron Green, PGA General Manager at La Cantera Golf Club, the path to his dream job started in guest services with no guarantee that golf would ever become his career.
Raised mostly in San Antonio, Green was introduced to golf by his father at a young age. The game stayed with him through high school, but when he enrolled at Baylor University, his future still pointed in another direction.
After graduating in 2001, Green planned to become a dentist. His father was a dentist, and Green began taking night classes to complete the science coursework he would need while working in guest services at La Cantera.
What started simply as a job quickly became something more.
Within his first year, Green worked his way into the golf shop and began seeing opportunities open around him. As the operation grew, he watched friends and coworkers advance into new positions and started to see golf as a profession rather than simply a place to work.
“I was finding myself really enjoying what I was doing here,” Green said. “Seeing the opportunities that were there in front of me was exciting. It just got to the point where I thought, ‘I’m going to put all my eggs in this basket.’”
That decision eventually led Green to PGA Membership and a career that continued expanding beyond the golf shop.
An entrepreneurship major at Baylor, Green had always been drawn to the business side of an operation. He enjoyed the numbers, but more importantly, he enjoyed having his hands in different areas. The General Manager position gave him exactly that.
“I don’t like to just do one thing,” Green said. “I still get to be a PGA Professional, whether that’s helping with a lesson, playing with members, or competing in a Section event, but I also get to be involved with the financials, food and beverage, and long-range planning. It just fits my strengths.”
After serving as Head Golf Professional at La Cantera, Green eventually pursued his first General Manager opportunity in Port Aransas before taking another position at a private club in Pittsburgh. Those moves helped broaden his experience, but San Antonio remained home.
When his longtime mentor Steve Shields announced his retirement, Green saw an opportunity he could not ignore. He applied for the General Manager position at La Cantera and returned in 2018 to the facility where his career had begun. It was also where he had met his wife, and with both of their families in the area, the opportunity carried meaning well beyond another professional advancement.
“This was my dream job,” Green said. “I didn’t know if I was ever going to get it because there were so many people who would have wanted that opportunity. I still pinch myself from time to time, but I also know we have to keep improving every year.”
That perspective is especially meaningful considering where his story at La Cantera began.
Green still remembers working outside services on September 11, 2001, running back into the golf shop with coworkers to watch the news unfold. More than two decades later, he recently found himself telling that story to a young tournament coordinator who had not even been born at the time. Moments like that have made the passage of time, and his own progression, increasingly surreal.
Today, Green’s focus has gradually shifted from advancing his own career to creating opportunities for those around him.
Nearly his entire golf shop staff, including his sales manager, Head Professional and assistants, began in entry-level positions. It is a culture Green understands personally because he followed the same path.
“We’ve created that culture here for a long time,” Green said. “Now I’m in a different role where I’m trying to grow them more than I’m trying to grow myself.”
Moving from the person being mentored to the person responsible for mentoring others can still feel unusual.
“It’s rewarding, but it’s odd at times to sit back and not do it yourself,” Green said. “A lot of times now, you’re training someone else how to do it. You kind of sit there and wonder, ‘Where did the time go?’”
Green’s career has come full circle at La Cantera. The young guest-services employee who once saw opportunity all around him now has the chance to create those same opportunities for others, helping the next generation find out just how far starting at the bottom can take them.
