As a kid in the 1970s, Bob Hickam mowed nine greens for $5 at the old and now-no-more Juanita Golf Course in Kirkland, where JoAnne Gunderson Carner learned to play, where Hickam learned to play.
Blake Riva played basketball at Bellevue High, and later at Washington, where he lettered his senior year in 1984 playing with Detlef Schrempf. Tim Caviezel, brother of actor Jim Caviezel, grew up in Mount Vernon and played a couple of years of basketball at Washington as well. They have all been drawn to the latest gold rush in California, working for a firm called East West Partners, which is also building a Whistler-style ski village at nearby Tahoe Northstar.
Hickam, 47, directs golf at both Old Greenwood and Coyote Moon in Truckee, as well as has having his hands in the development of Gray’s Crossing, a private third course scheduled to open in 2007. All Hickam wanted to do was play golf at Seattle University after graduating from Juanita. He played a couple of years at Bellevue Community College, and when the time came in 1981 to transfer cross the lake, Seattle U cut back on golf.
A team was left hanging. En masse, pretty much, it transferred to the University of San Francisco, another Jesuit school in a big city. Scott Taylor, Dave Wahlin, Kevin Cochran and George Price all went, and Hickam joined them.
“Our home courses were the Olympic Club, San Francisco Club and California Club,” Hickam said. “Not bad.” Neither was a summer job at Pebble Beach, where Hickam became infatuated with the business side of golf. “I put aside my aspirations to be a player and teacher,” he said.
Hickam became the Head Assistant at Pebble Beach, then the head pro at nearby Spyglass Hill, then, at age 29, was hired to open the Spanish Bay resort. He obviously did well. Opening courses became his career: a club in New Hampshire, Greg Norman’s Wente Vineyards in Livermore, Calif., then Tehama, a private club in Carmel Valley built by actor Clint Eastwood. He played with CEOs and actors, like Cisco’s John Chambers and television’s Bryant Gumbel. He worked for Eastwood. Life was good, but there were more courses to open.
He went east, to Newport, R.I., for the debut of Newport National, then came back to Tahoe, where he had worked for four years at Squaw Valley, to usher in the so-called Nicklaus signature course at Old Greenwood. “Jack only does a few signature courses,” Hickam said. “It means you get more of his attention.”
Hickam’s boss is Riva, a Senior Partner with East West who has worked his way through business the way he did basketball. At Washington, Riva played a year of intramural basketball, then two with the knock-around junior varsity team before traveling with the varsity as a senior.
Riva was a real student-athlete, obtaining a Degree in Accounting, later ordained as a CPA. He worked for Arthur Andersen, then made the move into real estate development with the Lakemont project in Bellevue. East West is known most for a major development in Beaver Creek, CO, near Vail, but understood the need for a four-season resort near Tahoe, where development had slowed because of the lake’s finite size and environmental concerns. One of Riva’s salesmen at Old Greenwood is Caviezel, who said his brother, Jim, was an occasional visitor to Old Greenwood but wouldn’t say how much better he’d gotten as a golfer after playing the part of Bobby Jones in a movie (SeattleTimes).
