The Work We Do: Ron Tauriello, Cedars Golf Club

My name is Ron Tauriello and I’m the head golf instructor at Cedars Golf Club for our kids camps. They run in July and August and they are four-week camps.

Basically what we do is we try to make it fun for everybody. That’s the biggest thing. With the young kids, a lot of them haven’t played golf before. It’s a lot of fun seeing them get really excited to play. We just want to make it fun and exciting, and the kids really do have a great time coming here.

That’s one of the biggest challenges is to get them to want to play and it becomes a lot easier once they become excited about it.

I’ve been playing golf for about 25 years now. I started when I was 16. It started as a part-time job working at Spring Lake in Middle Island.

And then I got the job at Laurel Links. That’s how I met Tim McManus and Paul Pawlowski.

And when they reached out to me a couple years ago to ask to do the kids camps here, I jumped at the chance. I said, what a great opportunity.

My favorite thing about golfing is the challenge. The challenge to push to be better, not just at playing golf, but it builds character, integrity. You meet a lot of great people. It was a great way to mature as a 16 year old, and I just found it to be a lot of fun.

It’s character development. We want to make these children understand that it’s not just a game. It’s not just that we come out and run around. We want them to have manners and respect for one another. Most of the time, they do that and they’ll hold each other aside and say, “let’s let so-and-so go first,” and it’s really awesome to see.

It really is awesome to encourage these kids, to see them play, to see them grow. It can be a child who comes in here shy, a little hesitant. And then after the first camp or two, they’re the ones running around showing others what to do. They love showing what they can do. We as coaches and adults are very proud to see that and we want to foster that and encourage that. From the first day to the twelfth day, the amount of growth that goes on is absolutely phenomenal.

“The Work We Do” is a Suffolk Times multimedia project profiling workers on the North Fork. It is made possible by Peconic Landing in Greenport. See photos on Instagram @thesuffolktimes.