Bill “Lang Willie” Engelson is one of the familiar faces in hickory golf, especially around the Pinehurst area and in North Carolina generally where he helped found the Carolina Hickory Golf Association. He also finds time to manage the group’s website. For more than three years, Bill served on the board of the SoHG as an equipment, tournament and handicap chairman. His wisdom, patience and guidance were instrumental in growing the Society.
(The following is from an SoHG profile of Bill that published earlier this year.)
Bill, originally from Michigan, grew up in Wisconsin where his family has had a presence on Washington Island since 1892. He joined the U.S. Coast Guard in 1961, retiring as a Commander in 1982. He and wife, Donna, have been married for more than 30 years, have four children and 12 grandchildren, “the source of our true wealth,” he says.
Since 1984, Bill and Donna have operated The Leadership Edge Inc. She specializes in job matching services (putting the right people in the right jobs) to clients using psychometric assessments available over the Web. Bill serves as a strategy consultant to CEOs and executive teams from mid-size companies. “Neither of us plans to retire from our business as long as we are able and the work is enjoyable,” he says. “It is axiomatic that my client CEOs play golf. They love it that I live in Pinehurst.”
An uncle, the only one in the family who played, “infected” Bill with a love of the sport. “In junior high and high school in Kenosha, Wisc., I used to sneak onto the municipal course with a neighbor and we both learned to play, after a fashion. We had a vacant lot between his house and mine that we used to whack balls by the hour.”
He played little while in the Coast Guard. Following retirement, he developed a yacht sales enterprise in Annapolis, Md., then formed The Leadership Edge. Building a business left little time for golf. Bill says it wasn’t until the mid-1990s that he began playing again. Around that time, he spotted Mort Ohlman’s book in a golf store. “That was all it took to get me into hickory golf and firmly hooked.”
In 2004, Bill met Rob Pilewski at Oakhurst who invited him to attend the inaugural Mid Pines Hickory Open later that year. He and Donna had already visited the Pinehurst area on the way to visit a grandchild and were considering relocating to the area. “We came down to the MPHO a day early, looked at houses and narrowed our choices,” he says.
Bill then learned there was a group of hickory players who met monthly in the Sandhills. In April 2005, after the Engelsons did move to the area, Bill visited local golf store owner Tom Stewart and asked how he could join this monthly group. He was told the group was not yet a reality, only a wish. So, “with a little prodding, probing and prevailing, I helped to co-found the Carolina Hickory Golf Association in December 2005 and have served as its Captain ever since,” he says.
The group plays monthly hickory golf on some of the finest golf courses available and typically has 20 to 50 players at each event. “We welcome all hickory players,” Bill says. Go to www.carolinahickory.com for information on the group and its events.