Young mother Sienna Voglis has the rare distinction of being a golf club general manager who is also a PGA professional
Juggling a full-time career with an ambition to play competitive golf is no easy task. Add being the mother of a 5-year-old daughter and it’s even more problematic. Sienna Voglis is that rare type of individual willing to push herself to the limit.
Since 2021 Voglis has worked as general manager at cluBarham on the Murray River. Her responsibilities include supervision of Barham’s 18-hole championship golf course, 14 lawn tennis courts, food and beverage, poker-machine precinct, live entertainment and on-site accommodation. Voglis’ dedication was recognised when she received the Management Professional of the Year at the 2023 Victorian PGA Awards.
Voglis managed to combine work with golf when she represented Australia at the 2024 Women’s PGA Cup in Oregon in October. The 54-hole strokeplay competition was created to promote the versatility of what is available to women who take up a career in golf as a PGA professional.
Voglis spoke with Australian Golf Digest Women about how she juggles her role as a general manager with competitive golf and motherhood.
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Australian Golf Digest Women: Where did you grow up playing golf?
Sienna Voglis: I grew up in Cohuna [the hometown of Stuart Appleby]. I played all my junior golf there. I started when I was about 11. I got down to plus-3 [handicap] before I began my traineeship when I was 19.
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Where did you do your traineeship – PGA Membership Pathway Program?
I did my first year at Murray Downs and then my final two years at Portsea. So I started in 2012, I was a full member by 2015. In 2015 and 2016, I played a little bit on the Australian circuit [now the WPGA Tour of Australasia]. Then I worked, got married in 2017 and in 2019 we had our first [child]. We had our daughter Mia. My husband’s also a PGA member [Matt Voglis].
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Was it always your intention to become a vocational PGA professional rather than pursue a playing career?
Yes. I always had an interest in management or running a pro shop. I love customer service. I love being within the pro-shop environment and serving people. I got married when I was young with Matt and family life [started]. Coming from the country, it was always [the intention to] have a family and a good job. The idea of playing kind of scared me. Being on the road. I never really was 100 percent committed to playing. I always felt nervous to not have a job.
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Did you think about a teaching career?
I actually taught from 2016 up until I had my daughter in 2019. I worked for Leisure Management in Melbourne and taught at Ivanhoe, Riverside. Then I spent time in the disability field. I ran a program at Northgate, like a special-needs school, and I loved it. But I didn’t really have the patience after having my daughter. Between Matt and I, we were teaching 200 kids a week. I lost the passion for it and it was longer days – we were finishing at 7 o’clock at night. I kind of stepped away from it.
So in 2019 after I had Mia, I got a role at the PGA [of Australia] and worked with them in the training sector for one year, marking assignments and helping out the associates, which kind of sparked my love for administration and that management side of things.
During COVID, the role at Barham came up. We looked at it and I said to Matt, “I’d love to go for it because it’s close to home [Cohuna], I know the area.” I read their annual reports and could see they had some good backing in the accounts. The golf course wasn’t performing, but from reading the annual report, I knew that whatever changes we made, they weren’t going to be stressing about money.
We thought that would be a really great starting point as a club manager if we were to get the role. I said to Matt, “I don’t think Barham will want a 29-year-old female [just] because I know the area.” But I said, “If they do pick us, it means they’re ready for change.” So I was really lucky. I was successful and got the role.
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You were recognised as the Management Professional of the Year at the 2023 Victorian PGA awards. What changes did you implement at cluBarham?
Since we’ve come here, we’ve created huge change. The pro shop used to average about $50,000 in sales. I think our first year we did $290,000 in sales. We put a lot of effort into stocking a really big range of ladies’ clothes, men’s clothes, bringing the quality that you can get in Melbourne down to the river at really good prices.
We introduced new memberships because they only ever had a full member or a country member. We created nine-hole memberships, five-day memberships – to get more people playing so they would have more options. We created a Saturday fixture for the ladies to follow the men’s [competition], what’s called the Ladies Gem, which was like a ladies monthly medal.
We introduced multi-tee. We got rid of blue, white and red tees, and created black, orange, green and yellow. All our competitions are multi-tee [where golfers can play from the set of tees they choose]. In any of our competitions there is a net component. So our membership grew. I think we’re up to around 330 members, when I started with 220 – but remembering that’s 15 percent of our population because we’re only a small town of about 1,800 people.
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How many staff do you manage?
I’ve got a team of about 20 people. I’ve got the grounds staff [seven for golf-course maintenance] and then I’ve got a head pro, which is my husband, an associate [professional] and about five or six other people that float through the bar and the pro shop… I have a liquor licence and pokies as well, so I oversee that side of things.
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You’ve also got on-site accommodation at Comfort Inn & Suites?
We’ve got two-bedroom, three-bedroom apartments, we’ve got cabins and a little RV caravan site. I also inherited looking after that… and we revamped our stay-and-play packages, which has been a huge success. We never really had a mark on the river. We’re situated between Rich River and Murray Downs but our marketing had never been that great. Once we started to market, and once we had condensed our package, it made a huge difference.
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What’s the greatest challenge of managing cluBarham?
I think the biggest challenge is creating change and educating the members. It’s all well and good making changes, but you’ve really got to take your membership along on the journey. It’s been slow change and as much as you want to go ahead and do it really quickly, I’ve had to learn to slow down and create stepping stones.
I’ve been extremely lucky. I have such a great team in the pro shop and in our bar. I educate them first about the process and then we do it with the members so that it’s seamless. In saying that, all staff here serve in the pro shop and serve in the bar because it’s a U-shape. [When] you start your round, you’re greeted by a golf professional.
You finish your round and you’re greeted by a golf professional who serves you beers and has a chat to you, which is pretty cool.
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How much time do you get to play golf?
Up until about six months ago, I wasn’t playing golf at all, really. I had lost a bit of passion for it as I was getting stuck at work and taking things home and [didn’t] really invest in myself. So I really had to think about how do I break this cycle? Then the qualifying for the [Women’s PGA] Cup was coming up – I went as part of the team in 2019 – and I thought, I really want to go again.
I took a step aside and thought, I’ll start not working weekends and I’ll start playing. Family love it. My daughter’s 5, she comes around with us. She enjoys it, and I get to spend time with my husband, who plays as well. Golf now is our family time, which is fantastic. We play most of our rounds at cluBarham. We try to get away and go play Rich River and Murray Downs or support some of the surrounding clubs. We’ll probably play here twice a week now. And we live on the golf course, so we’re lucky.
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What was the experience like playing the Women’s PGA Cup for the second time?
Absolutely fantastic. It was great to be able to go away and not be a mum and not be a manager. And it was good to remember that I am also a golf professional that can play golf. I didn’t play very well there, but it was good to go across, meet new people. [Matt] took [Mia] to Sydney so I was able to go away and have a good time.
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What advice would you give to women who are considering a career in golf-course management?
To not be afraid and to definitely give it a crack. I think, especially as women, we bring a lot of different qualities to the field, especially management. I believe we are very good at being empathetic, especially with our staff and with our members. We also bring a lot of patience to the environment.
I’m lucky that I’ve got three or four older mentors that come from different backgrounds that I always lean on. So making sure that you’re not afraid to ask for advice, especially from those in different roles. I definitely suggest having a mix of men and women.
The other bit of advice is to make sure that you always give yourself a break and to look back on your achievements and not focus on the negatives.
