Jesse Horner, who has experience working at private (Sewickley GC) and semi-private (Oakview GC) clubs and an upscale daily-fee facility (Olde Stonewall GC), is the new Director of Golf at the Cranberry Township, Pa. municipal course and will be joined by Terry McGrath as Head Professional and Jody Barrett as Director of Instruction. The goal is to bring “things I’ve learned” to help make an already-strong operation at Cranberry Highlands “a little more efficient and better,” Horner says.

Jesse Horner has embarked on a new venture that is much different than the previous two clubs at which he worked, the Pittsburgh (Pa.) Post-Gazette reported.

Horner, 57, was the first head golf professional at Olde Stonewall Golf Club in Ellwood City, Pa., spending 11 years there and helping to launch the spectacular upscale facility into what it is today—one of the best daily-fee courses, the Post-Gazette reported.

Horner then left Olde Stonewall to invest in Oakview Golf Club in Slippery Rock, Pa., the Post-Gazette reported, thinking he would stay there three to five years to help rejuvenate the former Armco Golf Club facility. He ended up staying at Oakview for eleven years.

Now, Horner has moved to Cranberry Highlands Golf Course in Cranberry Township, Pa. as its new Director of Golf, the Post-Gazette reported. And he doesn’t have to worry about immediately addressing the need to pump life into the property, with Cranberry Highlands established as one of the top public courses in the tri-state (Ohio, West Virginia and Pennsylvania) region that does approximately 32,000 rounds a year.

Cranberry Highlands’s golf course was designed by Bill Love and opened in 2002, the Post-Gazette reported. It is owned by the municipality of Cranberry and was named by Golf Digest as one of the best municipal courses in Pennsylvania.

“I’m looking at it as a big challenge,” said Horner, who also formerly worked as an assistant professional at Sewickley Golf Club. “To help them here, it was an opportunity to stay in Butler [Pa., where he lives] and I’m excited about the plans we have for the future.”

Like all courses in Pennsylvania, Cranberry Highlands is closed until at least April 12 because of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Post-Gazette reported. But Horner has already hired Terry McGrath as his Head Professional and retained Jody Barrett as Director of Instruction.

“What I’d like to do is bring my experience to the operation—things I’ve learned working at Sewickley, a country club; working at Olde Stonewall, an upscale daily-fee facility; and working at Oakview, a semi-private club; those three mixes of businesses,” Horner told the Post-Gazette. “Now it’s a municipality. I’m just trying to bring whatever I can to make the operation a little more efficient and better.”