Lum’s legacy of excellence

Waialae Country Club celebrated the end of an era and the continuation of a rare feat last week when Allan Lum retired as general manager after 36 years.

Lum is only the second GM at the club, made more remarkable when you ponder all the demands of the job.

Waialae will host the 50th Hawaiian/Sony Open in Hawaii in January. Only The Masters and Colonial have been home to more PGA Tour events continuously.

The course opened Feb. 1, 1927, as part of a Territorial Hotel Co. promotional program to inspire luxury travel to Hawaii. Local golfers played as "privilege card holders" and a formal golf club with by-laws was formed in 1930.

Waialae was the site of military defenses and a military rec center during WWII and finally incorporated Sept. 30, 1942. One of club manager/head pro/greenskeeper Ted Benedict’s first hires was Hisashi "Mike" Noguchi.

He would serve as general manager for 39 years, becoming the first Asian-American to join the Club Managers Association of America in 1971, and hiring Lum seven years after that.

Lum graduated from Punahou with Norm Chow in 1964, then from the University of Hawaii’s Travel Industry Management program. He learned about the WCC position on the tennis court, where he spent most of his formative years.

He and Paul Leong were ranked among the state’s top three doubles teams for years and played national tournaments. They didn’t golf until their 30s, playing twilight in their slippers at Hawaii Kai’s par-3 course with no knowledge of the game or its rules — they splashed out of water hazards — but a great passion for gambling.

Back then, Lum also had a reputation as one of the state’s best racket stringers, working for Bo Ming Yee — the first Asian-American to play the U.S. Open — for $3 a racket.

After working at restaurants, and as a valet, he came to Waialae and was groomed/tutored by Noguchi before he retired, in 1981.

It has been all Lum, all the time, since, through a blur of boards and presidents, petitions and by-laws, capital improvements, golf and tennis pros and food and beverage managers, and almost 35 PGA Tour stops.

"The hardest part was getting to know everybody’s name," Lum said, not joking. "Membership when I started was at 1,200. Now it’s 1,400. When I started, it was predominantly Caucasian and now it’s flipped.

"I think that Waialae is what it is today for one simple reason — its multi-ethnicity. If you notice, all the other clubs, they’ve always been about 10 or 15 years behind us. We were the first ones that admitted all these Asians, and that happened in the early ’50s. All the other clubs didn’t start that until the ’60s or ’70s.

"The other reason is because we were the ones with the money. Because we had all this money we could do all the capital projects. Everybody would always ask how much, how much? I’d tell them how much and they’d faint. Then I’d say, we have this much left."

Lum planned to retire in 2016, but health issues hurried the process. His second stroke, last November, has prevented him from working the past year. Waialae brought in Brad Jencks as its third GM in July and now calls Lum "honorary member" and GM Emeritus.

Until July, members and Lum’s staff, many have been around a couple of decades or so, kept Hawaii’s only private golf club with a waiting list going. Waialae’s latest renovation — a 5,200-square-foot health/fitness club — opened in February.

It speaks to what has gone on the past 36 years and what gives Lum the most pride: "I’ve established a very good and dependable staff."

He is as meticulous and demanding about choosing sand for the bunkers — after a world-wide search the "best sand" was found in Idaho — as he is about the way dishes should be washed.

Not a fork, a by-law, a sentence in the infamous "handbook" or a member — of the club or staff — was left unnoticed.

"Sometimes I got so mad at these people I would go back there and wash dishes myself and say, ‘Here, this is what it should look like,’" Lum recalled vividly. "When they’d see me back there, it would be renewed enthusiasm. I knew what the problem was and how to fix it."

His touch was felt in more ways than most will know. It was Lum who drove employees to their cars after long days at the Sony, and convinced the club to follow through on a member’s suggestion of turning the seventh hole (No. 16 at Sony) backdrop into a "W" formed by palm trees.

That idea ultimately earned Waialae an award from the Club Managers Association, a 6,500-member group that includes 40 who have worked as a GM for more than 25 years and one Asian-American president. Lum is included in both.

He calls his 2010 presidency one of his career highlights.

"The CMAA has been around since 1927, which is the same year this club started," he said. "To be the first Asian-American president meant a heck of a lot to me. I went all over the country, all over the world, representing CMAA."

For the past 36 years, Lum has also been the mostly invisible face of Waialae to the world, following in Mike Noguchi’s pioneering footsteps. In a world where Lum readily admits "it is tough to say no," they have combined to create a 75-year legacy few clubs can claim.