It’s been 80 years, but Ernie Schneiter Jr. can still pinpoint exactly when he stopped skiing.
It wasn’t an easy decision, given that he had a good winter job working at the recently opened Snowbasin ski resort above his hometown of Ogden. His dad, Ernie Schneiter Sr., was the manager at Snowbasin and gave his son the plum assignment of being last person down the hill each night, hoisting the rope tow onto tall hooks to prevent it from being buried the next morning in the event of a heavy snowfall.
It was a pretty sweet duty, all alone on the slopes as the sun began to set in the west.
But in the summer of 1945, the year he turned 15, Ernie went to Nibley Park Golf Course in Salt Lake City and won the Utah Junior Open.
“So I quit skiing,” he says. “I didn’t want to hurt a leg or whatever.”
Turned out to be a great decision for a man who, eight decades later, still goes to the golf course every day.
Turned out to be an even greater decision for Utah golf.
You’d be hard-pressed to find a greater lifetime ambassador for the sport in the state, and even harder pressed to find anyone who would argue the point.
It began with Ernie’s father, Ernie Sr., who was 10 years old in 1917 when he started caddying at Ogden Country Club — for two simple reasons: he lived next door to the course and his widowed mother Margaritha, who recently immigrated from Switzerland and was doing janitor work at Burch Creek Elementary School, could use the financial help.
This was long before “Schneiter” became a regal name in Utah golf circles. Up to this point, there was no history of golf in the German-speaking clan, no hint there would be much of a connection.
But the game grabbed Ernie Sr. and never let go. By the time his namesake son came along in 1930, he had made the leap from caddy to club professional, launching a career that would not only land him in the inaugural class of the Utah Golf Hall of Fame (along with his younger brother George) but, of much greater impact, inspire future generations of Schneiters to grow and build the game from one end of Utah to the other.
Ernie Jr. was at the front of that line. He followed up his Utah Junior Open victory in 1945 — the trophy that got him to quit skiing — with two more in 1946 and 1947. That led to an invitation from Oklahoma State to interview for their golf team. Instead, Ernie decided to turn pro and start making some money. He was 19 when he was hired at the municipal golf course in Tooele, his first job in golf.
Then, paradoxically, he took a break and became a farmer. His dad, who was now head professional at Ogden C.C., his old caddy grounds, bought a 30-acre farm in Morgan and talked Ernie into running it. After years of milking 30 cows a day, Ernie came to the realization that “I liked golf better than farming” and went back to being a golf pro, first in Twin Falls, Idaho, then at Ben Lomond Golf Course in Ogden. (The farm years helped his distance: After years of hoisting 100-pound bales of hay, Ernie won three straight state long-drive competitions, his longest drive carrying 285 yards — off a persimmon club.)
Then, in 1959, he bought his own farm. But not so he could milk more cows — so he could turn it into a golf course.
The property was next to the Weber River on the southern outskirts of Ogden. He and the farmer, who was elderly and amenable to selling, struck up a handshake deal: 76 acres for $500 an acre. The terms were pay-as-you-can.
In addition to his income as a golf pro at Ben Lomond, Ernie was able to help pay for the property with his tournament winnings. Among his top wins were the 1964 Idaho Open and the 1966 Utah Open ($2,000 to the winner). His most prestigious victories came in the PGA Sectional, which he won three times, in 1957, 1968 and 1970, each one qualifying him to play in the PGA Championship alongside the best players in the world. (At the 1968 event in San Antonio, Ernie likes to quip, “That’s when I tied Jack Nicklaus,” before pausing and adding, “We both missed the cut by one stroke.”)
For the last 56 years, Ernie has served as head professional at the course he bought, designed and bears his name: Schneiter’s Riverside (he also designed and built Schneiter’s Bluff in Davis County in 1999).
The course is pristine and friendly, like Ernie, who at 95 still looks like he might get carded. He doesn’t play as much anymore, or give lessons like he used to (Ask him for his No. 1 golfing tip and he says: “Take some instruction”), but he’s on the scene every day, surrounded by many of his children and grandchildren who work there. He typically arrives around 10 and leaves around 5:30, ready to do “anything I see: fill the range buckets, sweep the porch, go back and cook a hamburger.”
But his favorite part is talking to the golfers.
“Aren’t they fun?” he says. “There’s so many different kinds. They’re so interesting.
“I think we all need to be social,” he adds. “I think we all need to have exercise and discipline, and get outside in the sunshine.”
And he’s found the perfect way to do that.