Pleasure Doing Business: The Golf Shop

Golf professional Rick Yarrington has owned and operated The Golf Shop on Gulfport Boulevard since 1985 selling a complete line of equipment with professional golf instruction and a full-service equipment repair facility. Centrally located among a slew of golf courses, his shop is the only place in the area where a golfer can bring in a broken club or a loose grip and have it repaired and make his or her tee time within the hour.

Yarrington shoots straight with a no-nonsense personality and a powerful presence behind the desk at the back of his shop. He doesn't hesitate to suggest a repair instead of purchasing new equipment even though he has just about anything a golfer could want, brand new, in his store including clubs, bags, shoes, accessories and clothing.

“I fix their clubs and fix their swings,” he says. “We build custom clubs, we retro-fit people's clubs for them. We have a boring machine, a complete milling machine. There isn't anything we can't do to a golf club, including working on the old wood heads.”

Yarrington's son, Andy, is his only employee and demonstrates a powerful stroke with a driver in the practice area behind the shop on the day of this interview, even though his father isn't quite happy with his swing.

Rick Yarrington is a qualified judge of a power stroke, having won numerous long-drive tournaments some years ago. He traveled throughout the country competing against other long drivers for prize money back in the late 1980s and 1990s. He won the Florida state long-drive championship a number of times and was the Southeast champion in 1991.

His personal best in competition was an amazing 392-yard drive.

“It was pretty flat,” he said of the terrain that day in a competition outside Columbus, OH. “It was high humidity. When you hit it that far in the east, that's pretty good. Out in the west where there's no humidity, the air's so much thinner and the ball goes a lot farther.”

Originally from St. Petersburg, Yarrington's father, Roy, was the golf pro at Tierra Verde Golf Course. Rick became a club pro at age 18 and after Tierra Verde closed he became golf director at Isla Del Sol Yacht & Country Club in St. Petersburg for about a decade before he opened The Golf Shop.

“We opened that golf course back in 1965, a little nine-hole course,” he says of Tierra Verde, which closed in 1978 to make way for big new homes.

Rick has been in the area ever since and is content with life and business on Gulfport Boulevard and the customers who come from far and wide, as two did this past Tuesday morning needing a fix before a round down the road.

He spends some of his free time fishing in Boca Ciega Bay, favoring pompano, king fish, mullet and whatever's hitting. He also has a smoker ready to go behind his shop not too far away from the practice range. Arthritis has taken hold of his knees, so he doesn't get out on the course much, but he keeps up with the trends and keeps an eye on what golfers are doing wrong in their swings.

“When I go by a driving range, there might be 50 people out there hitting golf balls, and 49 of them are usually reinforcing their bad swings,” he says.

As much as big-box retailers have affected small shops in every industry, he doesn't feel the pinch.

“There's no competition for me,” he says. “They just can't do what we do. Somebody comes in here with a set of clubs and they want them regripped; they're going to be playing with them in a half hour. We get it done.”

He does no advertising and has no Web presence, but his location assures lots of golfers driving by on the way to nearby courses including Isla Del Sol, Mangrove Bay, Pasadena Yacht & Country Club, St. Petersburg Country Club and Twin Brooks.

He thinks things haven't changed all that much over the years in his neighborhood and likes doing business in Gulfport .

“I always liked Gulfport. It's like a little village. Close knit and good bunch of people here,” Yarrington says. “We've got the best mayor in the country. He's just a hands-on guy, as down-to-earth as he could be. He walks in the back door every once in a while, sits down and it's 'how you doin' and 'what's happening.' You can't beat Mike Yakes. He's the best.”

He plans to keep sailing along and is happy with the course he's on.

“All I ever wanted was a business big enough to support my family and small enough where I knew all my customers, and that's what I've got,” he says.

The Golf Shop is located at 5104 Gulfport Blvd. The phone number is 727-321-5343.