Where Are They Now – Collins Tamashiro

Collins Tamashiro knows golf and golf courses the way a fly fisherman knows fly lines and the reaches of a river, or a woodworker knows grains and hardwoods. His knowledge is both specific and broad, his learning acquired organically and over time, the base of which began developing long before he actually started playing the game.

He was six years old (in 1993), his brother three, when their father started taking them to the Cavendish Golf Course every Sunday, a day when the Lānaʻi Golf Association held its weekly golf tournament for members. Tamashiro recalls looking around the Cavendish golf course and seeing many familiar faces — cousins, uncles, family friends. He loved that his family, the Tamashiros, “were all in golf.”

The nine-hole golf course, eponymously named for its designer, Edwin Cavendish, was created in 1947, as island lore goes, for Dole Company’s pineapple plantation workers to enjoy and play golf during their free time — when they weren’t working in the pineapple fields.

Whether the golf course was truly intended for Lānaʻi’s field laborers is apocryphal, and ultimately inconsequential, for Cavendish exists, is still maintained and tended to, has no green fees (and never has, one of only a few such public golf courses in the United States), and is beloved by locals. It is affectionately called the Dish.

For Tamashiro, the Sunday outings to Cavendish remain some of his most cherished memories, the pleasures of, and associations to golf forever fixed in time.

Tamashiro says he first hit a golf ball when he was about six years old, and four years later, his father let him start playing golf. “He would wake me up at 4:30 a.m. [on Sundays] and take me out with him, Uncle Angel and Uncle George, and we would go to the store [Richard’s Market, which his father co-owned with brothers Wallace and Bobby], make sandwiches, load up with snacks and drinks for the round, and head to Cavendish around 6 a.m.,” Tamashiro says. “ We would be the first ones to go out and play as soon as the sun came out. By the fourth hole, my dad and uncle Angel would crack open a Coor’s Light. Those were the best times.”

Tamashiro played golf in high school and enjoyed the experience, but what resonated with him, as he was learning the mechanics of the game and developing his skills, was discovering how much he enjoyed helping his teammates get better. “This was a defining moment,” he says, a moment that came during his senior year, already a time of transition and impending change, when students are naturally preoccupied with a direction to choose and what the future might bring. That moment for the young Tamashiro brought clarity. He realized that becoming a golf pro was the career path he wanted to take.

He graduated from Lānaʻi High School in 2004 and made his way to California to embark on a golf career. Over the years, he has risen up the ranks at various golf clubs, landing his current position as an assistant golf professional at Southern Highlands Golf Club in Las Vegas in April 2024. Southern Highlands is part of the Southwest PGA — one of forty-one sections in the PGA of America, the world’s largest sports organization.

Tamashiro estimates there are about a thousand assistant golf professionals working in golf clubs in the Southwest PGA section, whose boundaries include the state of Arizona and Southern Nevada’s Clark County. As an assistant golf pro, Tamashiro is responsible for an array of tasks, the chief of which includes assisting the head golf pro in managing the facilities’ day-to-day operations, such as supervising and training golf operations staff, helping run golf club tournaments, playing golf with Southern Highlands members of all skill levels, teaching, and helping develop and mentor golf interns and associates.

Tamashiro says that coaching youths who are new to golf and watching them grow in the game, as well as mentoring those pursuing Class A membership are the most fulfilling aspects of his work.

“It is so rewarding when the kids are excited about golf,” he says. “When they tell me, ‘I made par on this hole’ or ‘I hit the drive so straight!’” Tamashiro tells a story of a youngster who came to the golf club one day; she had never played golf before and wanted to learn. So, Tamashiro taught her the essentials of golf, as he does with all young players: how to grip the golf club, the proper stance, how to swing, how to putt. He coached her through middle school and high school and watched her skills develop, and her love of the game grow. He was thrilled to learn that this young player clinched a golf scholarship to a Division 1 university. He enjoys his work with junior golfers at Southern Highlands, and on such events as Drive, Chip, and Putt, and dedicates time to the PGA Junior League, and the Southern Nevada Junior Golf Association.

While Tamashiro might not expect applause for helping develop and mentor young players, among other work, applause found him in the form of a high accolade.

In February 2025, Collins Tamashiro accomplished something no other golf professional has achieved in the Southern Nevada PGA: He was awarded the Southwest PGA Assistant Golf Professional of the Year. The honor recognizes “his dedication to the game of golf, his leadership with the Southwest Section and commitment to growing the game … for cultivating a workplace that values integrity and discipline.”*

It is a notable distinction, given that the majority of golf clubs in the Southwest PGA are in Arizona. Tamashiro says because of the way the section works, there are “hardly any opportunities to go down [to Arizona]. This award is for all my peers. I couldn’t have done this without them. They have shown me so much support.”

Attaining success of any kind reflects both individual commitment and hard work and the support of one’s colleagues and family. “I’ve been given so many opportunities in my life,” Tamashiro says, who makes it a practice to give back to a game and a community that have given him so much. “We’re all connected. We support each other. We show up if someone is hosting a conference.”

Tamashiro’s leadership in professional golf was decades in the making. He credits growing up on Lānaʻi as having shaped his outlook and how he treats others. “Growing up, all the uncles played at Cavendish. They looked after me, always asking me, ‘you need help?’” But these same people also kept him “in check,” he says. “They would say, ‘boy, you not playing in the PGA tour, so don’t get upset.’”

Tamashiro has his sights on being a head golf pro someday. He knows what it will take. He will use his own advice to get there, advice that has motivated many interns and associates and junior players, one that distinguished him from a thousand assistant golf professionals in the Southwest PGA field: “Talent can only get you so far. Hard work beats talent any time. You have to work harder, so you can be the best person you can be.”

*Southwest PGA press release

 

“Where are they now?” features alumni from Lānaʻi High & Elementary School, shedding light on their journeys post-graduation.