With Boilermaker grit and entrepreneurial spirit, Kipp Schulties built a thriving business reshaping the country's most storied golf courses

When planning a spring break trip to West Palm Beach, Florida, most college students pack swimsuits and sunscreen. Kipp Schulties (BSCE’92) packed a pair of jeans, a T-shirt and a stack of nerve.

“I opened up the Yellow Pages and there were 10 golf course architects listed in Palm Beach County,” he recalled. “I thought, at least I ought to go figure this out.”

So while his friends slept off the night before, Schulties walked into the golf course design offices of Jack Nicklaus — one of the most famous names in the sport — asking simply if someone would tell him about the business. “The secretary looked at me and basically said, ‘We don’t have time. Go down the street to Gary Player’s office.’” So he did. Tom Walker, vice president of Gary Player Design, happened to have an open schedule and invited Schulties in for a discussion that would last two hours.

That chance conversation launched a career Schulties never imagined for himself while growing up on a wooded lot in southern Indiana. As a boy, he cleared bike trails, constructed trails with sloping and banking and built ponds using plastic liners to hold water within drainage channels — all before he’d heard the words “civil engineering.”

Golf, too, had always been part of his life. A record-breaking high school player, Schulties tried balancing competitive golf with engineering at the University of Evansville. “Two months in, I knew something had to give,” he said. Golf shifted from center stage to lifelong passion, and he transferred to Purdue, determined to find a career that kept him outside, “shaping the land, not sitting in a cube.”

Vineyards Country Club, Naples, Florida (Photo: Evan Schiller)

Still, his mother nudged him to think differently. “She said, ‘you enjoy playing the game — why don’t you design golf courses?’” Schulties said. That spark, combined with his spring break initiative, led him to a senior year internship at Couples Bates Golf Design, the firm newly formed by PGA star Fred Couples and architect Gene Bates.

“Most people start in maintenance, work their way to construction and hope to get lucky enough to join a design firm later in life,” Schulties said. “Instead, I walked into the right office at the right time. Two months later I was flying around the country with Fred Couples — the No. 1 ranked player on the PGA Tour.”

By age 25, Schulties was senior designer, leading multimillion-dollar projects. Still, the engineer in him wanted more stability and control. He earned an MBA in finance from the University of Miami, then took a leap. “I turned in my resignation. I was responsible for millions in design fees, but I was only making $30,000 a year. I saw the opportunity and went for it,” he said.

That bold step marked the start of Kipp Schulties Golf Design, his own firm headquartered in Florida. Initial projects proved his talent, and by the early 2000s he had found his niche — not in building brand-new courses, but in renovations and redesigns.

“Everyone was chasing new developments,” Schulties said. “For two decades, the industry had been building golf courses at an unsustainable rate. There was a golf course on every corner in Florida and they were all going to need rehabs. Nobody was focusing on that.”

Kipp Schulties (BSCE’92), left, and his wife, Ashley (Fritz) Schulties (CFS’03), center, have four children, Ava, Kane, Elliana and Kolton.

Today, Schulties is known as one of the leading renovation architects in the country. His firm has rebuilt or reimagined more than 50 courses in South Florida alone. “We don’t just tweak a green,” he said. “We take it all down to dirt and rebuild the whole golf course. It’s a brand-new course on an old footprint.”

The work allows him to blend technical expertise with creative vision — and to live the life he values most. Unlike many in the industry who spend weeks away on airplanes, Schulties committed to being hands-on and local. “That’s what got me market share,” he said. “While others course designers may be chasing work in the Middle East or Asia, I’ll be onsite the next day. And I go home every night to my family.”

Now three decades into his career, the name Kipp Schulties is attached to some of the most respected golf courses in the Sunshine State. And it’s his turn to mentor the youngsters dreaming of a career on the fairway.

“Course design fits me to a tee,” Schulties said. “It’s the perfect combination of civil engineering and golf. I tell people all the time — if you love your job, you’re naturally going to work hard at it. And when you care that much, you’re going to be successful.”

Wycliffe Golf and Country Club, Palm Beach County, Florida