WARM SPRINGS — If you play golf in Central Oregon, you have seen his work.

Now Jeff Roundtree is putting his years of experience in golf course maintenance and construction to use in a new position — as the head golf course superintendent at Kah-Nee-Ta Resort & Spa.

Roundtree, 48, accepted the position at the course after four years as an assistant superintendent at Juniper Golf Course in Redmond, one of his many stops in a career that has spanned more than 30 years in Central Oregon.

He has left his mark on many of the courses in the area, helping to construct various holes, bunkers and common areas at Aspen Lakes, Tetherow, Pronghorn, Eagle Crest and more.

It is that experience that opened the door for him at Kah-Nee-Ta, where he started the job just last week.

“He has so much experience with a variety of things on a golf course,” said Kurt Noonan, the head superintendent and Roundtree’s former boss at Juniper.

“He has the experience in a lot of different areas, is super well-rounded, and just needed the right opportunity to come around for him.”

On the course

Roundtree has been digging in the dirt since childhood, growing up on a farm outside of North Bend on the Oregon Coast. “I think I was on a bulldozer when I was 10 years old, digging ditches and the like,” he recalled last week.

Taking a job in the pro shop at Coos Country Club in Coos Bay when he was 16, Roundtree did not take long to decide he would rather be working on the course.

“I found out the maintenance department paid 65 cents more per hour, so I stopped the greens superintendent on his mower, told him I wanted to work for him, and that was it — I fell in love with it.”

Following another job at Salem Golf Club, Roundtree made his way to Central Oregon, taking an assistant superintendent position at Bend’s Mountain High Golf Club (now The Old Back Nine). It was there that he began a long career in construction on courses in the area.

“I helped construct the back nine at The Old Back Nine,” he laughed.

Jobs at Bend Golf and Country Club, Eagle Crest in Redmond and Aspen Lakes in Sisters would follow, and along the way Roundtree learned the ropes from career superintendents. Roundtree helped to construct bunkers, tees, common areas and the entryway to the clubhouse at Aspen Lakes, where he worked under the tutelage of Mark Shepherd.

“Probably the two biggest mentors in my life were Dennis Olson (at Coos CC) and Mark Shepherd at Aspen Lakes,” he said. “They taught me how to do a lot with a little — using small crews and small budgets to get the work done.

“They also taught me that a superintendent wasn’t a guy sitting in his office, pushing papers and dictating duties. He needs to be out there doing the job, and I’ve always done that. I always try to outwork my crew.”

The Nicklaus encounter

One of his stops, at Pronghorn, involved the original construction of the Nicklaus course, where he ran into a small problem.

“I went to work for Nicklaus Design in the early stages of building, moving dirt and putting in drainage and catch basins, then progressed into being a finish shaper,” Roundtree recalled.

As a finish shaper, he used a tractor to shape the sand and soils in and around bunkers and in the fairways.

But his tractor was replaced with a shovel when the designer, golf legend Jack Nicklaus, decided he did not care for the look of the bunkers on the course.

“He said they looked like hot tubs,” Roundtree said. “I remember after one of his visits, I said, ‘Oh God, they’re going to come get me.’ They did — and took away my tractor and gave me a shovel.”

He used that shovel to reshape the bunkers on the course. “It was good, I learned a lot, and if you look at the bunkers out there now, they were all shaped by hand.”

He continued on the crew at Pronghorn before moving on to help with construction at Tetherow and then going on to Juniper.

“At Juniper, they allowed me to build a green, a bunker and some common areas, and sent me to Eureka, California, to work on a course down there,” he said.

After 30 years in the business in Central Oregon, Roundtree finds it gratifying to play the courses in the area — courses he had a hand in building.

“It’s very satisfying for me to go play golf, see the holes and know that ‘OK, I did that and it’s still there,’” the veteran super said.

Roundtree has played competitively since high school, and his knowledge of the game has translated into a secondary career as the girls golf coach at Redmond High School. He had been an assistant for a couple of years, and when the head coach, Vicki Sime, left after the 2012 season to coach across town at the new Ridgeview High School, Roundtree was promoted at Redmond.

At Redmond, he coached his eldest daughter, Emily, in her junior and senior years and has his youngest daughter, Elizabeth, coming in to play as a freshman in the fall.

“It was really satisfying to take over the program and coach Emily her last two years,” he said.

He is building the program from the ground up at Redmond, where the Panthers have a long way to go to catch up to powerhouse Summit of Bend.

“I joke with Jerry (Hackenbruck, Summit girls coach) that he’s just the bus driver,” Roundtree said. “Meanwhile, I’m explaining to my girls everything about golf, because they’re coming in having never played before.”

At Kah-Nee-Ta

Roundtree is familiar with the course at Kah-Nee-Ta, having played it many times over the last 20 years.

While golfers were out enjoying a course that appeared to be in good shape last week, the new superintendent sees his job as a restoration project, returning the course to superb conditions for faithful locals in Jefferson and Wasco counties and Bend-area players, who make up a large percentage of Kah-Nee-Ta’s customers and travel some 75 miles to tee it up.

“I would like to bring the course back to the way it used to be,” Roundtree said. “It was immaculate up here, a destination course, and I want to get it back to that.”

He cites normal golf course maintenance as the means to get it there — mowing, fertilizing and top-dressing on a regular schedule.

“It’s all the basics to maintaining a golf course,” he said. “We get on a consistent maintenance schedule, it will come back and things will start popping again.”

The course is not far away from where he would like it to be, he said. “It just needs some love.”

— Reporter: 541-617-7868; kduke@bendbulletin.com.