Bowman resigns post at Pryor Creek after city terminates management contract

By Ken MacLeod

Dennis Bowman has resigned his position as director of golf at Pryor Creek Golf Course after city officials terminated a contract with A&B Golf, a company run by his wife Donna Bowman that managed the pro shop and golf operations.

Bowman was a city employee who served the dual roles of head professional/director of golf and golf course superintendent. He had been in that position since July 1 of 2001 but had worked at the course back in the 1980s as well before leaving to help build and manage two public courses in Muskogee.

A&B Golf led by Donna had 11 full or part-time employees to staff the pro shop, maintain the cart fleet and driving range, beverage carts and all the myriad duties at a golf course. It had been operating under virtually the same terms through good times and bad for those 25 years. Talks between mayor Zac Doyle, elected in 2023, and the current city council and A&B Golf on a new contract apparently went nowhere. The previous contract provided A&B to fund its personnel and operations on 10 percent of cart revenue, 10 percent of membership fees and all pro shop and driving range revenue, Bowman said. City officials apparently decided those terms were too favorable to the Bowmans and wanted to reclaim the 10 percent of cart revenue, Dennis Bowman said. Emails to Doyle were not returned.

The Pryor Park Board, which nominally oversees operations of the golf course, was excluded from any say in the contract negotiations as beyond its purview.

Dennis Bowman, who will be 65 this summer, said he plans to retire, as does Donna. The city has already moved to replace pro shop help but may find that replacing Bowman’s expertise on both the golf and agronomic side is not easy. Basically he was doing two jobs for the price of one.

Bowman started at Pryor Creek in 1980 and was named superintendent in 1985. He left for Eagle Crest in Muskogee in 1989 and left there to develop Lin Lar (later named Cobblestone Creek) in Muskogee in 1997. He worked for Cherry Springs in Tahlequah (now Cherokee Springs) from 1999 until returning to Pryor Creek in 2001 and has been running both sides of the operation since.

“Dennis has been a dedicated member of the South Central PGA for his entire career,” said Brian Davis, executive director of the PGA South Central Section. “We are grateful for his commitment to growing the game by hosting numerous section junior events at Pryor Creek, which gave countless young players a place to grow, compete and learn the game. We appreciate his years of service and his efforts to support the Pryor golf community.”

Bowman said the course is currently in as good a condition as it has been in decades while rounds and memberships are also at near record levels. Like many courses, Pryor Creek has had its ups and downs. It was a much used release valve for Tulsa golfers when public courses there were overrun in the 1980s and early 1990s, but less so when many new public courses were opened in the metroplex including Bailey Ranch, Battle Creek, Forest Ridge, White Hawk, Cotton Creek, Scissortail, Cherokee Hills, South Lakes, and Clary Fields. Several of those – White Hawk, Scissortail, Clary Fields and Cotton Creek – have since closed.

In the post Covid 19 golf boom and with the city of Pryor having gained jobs and residents from the additions of Google and other companies, the course is thriving.

“I’ll be 65 next month and can leave on a good note with pride for what we’ve done here,” Bowman said. “I’ve done the best I can do and we don’t need all this. I don’t think the mayor or anyone on the city council is a golfer or has been to the golf course or understands much of what we have done over the years.

“Our golf course is in the best shape it’s been in a long, long time,” Bowman said. “We had it in really good shape in the early 2000s when we had free labor from an inmate program but that went away when we changed sheriffs. But it’s back now and we’ve been working on capital improvements and had more lined up.”

Pryor officials might look to their larger neighbor in Tulsa for an example of how trying to squeeze money from golf operations can go horribly wrong. The city-owned courses Page Belcher and Mohawk Park were successfully run by PGA professional George Glenn until the city decided to lessen its subsidies on the maintenance side by reworking the contract. Glenn resigned, an out-of-state management company was hired and conditions deteriorated miserably until operations were turned over to Sidorakis Golf in 2025, run by former Southern Hills general manager Nick Sidorakis and golf architect Randy Heckenkemper. The courses are now returning to the conditions golfers enjoyed in the late 1980s/early 1990s but it’s been a struggle that cost the city hundreds of thousands of rounds and the goodwill of the golf community.