( atc )
Member Clubs
Changing
Course
For former restaurant owner Mike Tate, becoming general
manager at Bull Run Golf Club was a dream come true
H
e was 48 years old and co-owned the popular and profit-
able Coach Stop Restaurant & Tavern that had become
an institution in the tiny Virginia hunt country village of
Middleburg, 50 miles west of Washington. Oscar-winning actor
Robert Duvall, who owned a nearby farm, was a regular. NFL Hall
of Famer and Washington Redskins broadcaster Sam Huff, another
local resident, had breakfast at the counter almost every morning.
Imelda Marcos once stopped in for lunch.
But after 30 years in the restaurant business, including the last
22 running The Coach Stop, Mike Tate was exhausted. He was tired
of walking down to the post office to pick up his mail and hearing
a patron tell him how the steak served the night before had been
tough as shoe leather. He was weary from all those 12- and 14-hour
days, many of them on weekends. He had spent so many hours
away from his wife, Beverly, and their sons, Sam and Jack, and it
was a constant struggle to find and keep good help.
And so, eight years ago, he was ready for a change. He and his
brother, Mark, who wanted to get into politics, decided to sell the
restaurant. But coming out of the Great Recession of 2008, not to
mention a rent increase for their space, there was not much interest,
and they both determined it was time to walk away and move on
with their lives.
Mike Tate wasn’t exactly sure what that might entail, but he
knew he wanted to start focusing on life after 50, and he was cer-
tain it did not include the restaurant where he’d started working
as a busboy during his sophomore year of high school.
After graduating from Virginia Tech with an aerospace engineer-
ing degree, Tate had actually begun his professional life as a civilian
employee of the Navy at the Patuxent Naval Air Station in Maryland.
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V I R G I N I A G O L F E R | J U LY / A U G U ST 2 0 1 8
He was single, liv-
ing in a tiny apart-
ment in Leonard-
town, homesick
and hating every
minute of it.
He’d worked at
The Coach Stop
all through col-
leg e, and when
owner Brian Jill-
son told him he’d
match his Navy
s a l a r y i f Ta t e
would come back
and help manage
the restaurant,
he jumped at the
Mike Tate made a mid-life career change that
opportunity. Jill- ultimately led to his dream job.
son also told him
he was thinking
about retiring in a few years and would give Tate the first oppor-
tunity to buy the business. He kept that promise, selling the
restaurant to Tate and his brother in 1988.
Twenty-two years later in 2010, in Tate’s mind’s eye, it was
time for a major change. He was also hoping that might involve
something to do with golf. He’d picked up the game in his early
20s, loved to play whenever he could get away, and started
making inquiries.
vsga.org
by LEONARD SHAPIRO