Scott Larsen is “a working guy” whose work days get longer as the days get longer, and who’s hands-on and hands-dirty in his role as the superintendent of Emerald Valley Golf Club in Creswell.

That he does that job very well was evidenced Friday, when Larsen was recognized as superintendent of the year for Oregon by the Oregon Golf Course Superintendents Association.

Meanwhile, a couple of times week, if work allows, he tries to play an 18-hole round on the course whose greens and fairways he nurtures with love and pride.

Which means that at age 47, he’s pretty much “a weekend golfer,” and, in fact, a few years back, when Larsen admitted just that to himself, he started playing better.

Well enough that last year he won the Oregon Golf Association Tournament of Champions and tied for third in the Oregon Public Links tournament, performances that led to his selection for the OGA team that will compete against teams of amateur golfers, both men and women, from Washington, Idaho and British Columbia in the Pacific Northwest Golf Association Cup tournament Monday and Tuesday at Eugene Country Club.

It’s a Ryder Cup-style tournament, featuring best-ball and alternating shot matches as well as singles matches, in quest of the PNGA Cup.

“It’s exciting to me,” Larsen said. “What I look forward to the most is getting to play golf with these guys that I see at OGA events, that I’ve become real good friends with, and playing as a team.”

For Larsen, the ECC tournament will be somewhat of a homecoming. His father, Ted, has been a member at Eugene Country Club for 50 years, and Scott learned the game on the ECC course, going on to play for South Eugene High School — he was second in the state tournament as a senior in 1982 — and then for Oregon State.

At OSU, he found his future career. He was a solid collegiate golfer — his best tournament finish was a second in the Oregon Duck Invitational one year, and he finished 11th in the Pac-10 championships his junior year — but he realized that his dream of playing on the PGA Tour was probably unrealistic.

“Up until that point, I was all about being a golf pro, just like any other kid,” he said. “I thought I was going to give it a shot. Then I realized I probably just wasn’t good enough.”

As a sophomore Larsen began studying agronomy and turf management, and after graduation he went to work for a golf course management company. In the early 1990s, he started his own business building or remodeling golf courses.

In about 11 years of golf course construction, Larsen said, he worked on numerous projects, including Clint Eastwood’s Tehama Golf Club course, designed by Jay Morrish, in the Carmel Valley, and Stone Creek Golf Club in Oregon City, designed by Peter Jacobsen and Jim Hardy. But the business got financially tough — “I think I realized I just wasn’t big enough to compete in those situations” — and in 2003 Larsen came back to Lane County from Portland to be superintendent at Emerald Valley.

In that role, Larsen’s played an important part in the golf course’s resurgence under the ownership of former Oregon golfer Jim Pliska. Along the way, after only golfing two or three times a year during the decade-plus that he was building golf courses, Larsen started playing again.

It took him a year to get his handicap down to 0 — scratch golf — not that his play in tournaments reflected that.

“I’d play in an OGA event and shoot 80 or 78,” he said. “I just wasn’t comfortable out there. I was never a club-thrower, but internally I was just tearing myself apart.”

After a few years, he had an epiphany.

“I realized that my expectations were way out of whack,” he said. “I told myself one day that I was a weekend golfer. This is the honest truth. I told myself, ‘Scott, you’re a weekend golfer,’ and when I realized that, my expectations dropped. ...

“I’d miss a shot, and it wasn’t important at the level that it affects your game. And then I started realizing that I just turned that bad round into a 72 because all of a sudden I made a few putts, or I chipped it in. Most of us take it too seriously. A lot of us don’t learn that until you’re too old to compete.”

Compared with his collegiate days, Larsen said, he doesn’t strike the ball as well. “But my short game is much better,” he said, “and that absolutely is the key.”

In the PNGA Cup, Larsen will be one of four mid-amateurs 25-and-older on the OGA men’s team, which will also consist of two masters golfers (40 and older) and two senior golfers, including Chris Maletis of Portland, the 2010 PNGA senior player of the year. The OGA women’s team, two mid-amateurs and two senior golfers, will include former Oregon women’s coach Lara Tennant. The Washington team will include former major league pitcher Erik Hanson.

Monday’s schedule consists of four-ball matches beginning at 8 a.m. and foursome matches beginning at 1:30 p.m. Tuesday morning’s singles matches begin at 8 a.m., with the awards ceremony scheduled for 1 p.m.

Emerald Valley Golf Club will host three amateur tournaments during the first two weeks of August, adding to its reputation as the top competitive venue among Oregon public golf courses.

In fact, the Creswell course “has hosted more USGA, PNGA, and OGA Championships in the last 25 years that any other golf course in Oregon,” according to a blurb printed on the back of every Emerald Valley Golf Club scorecard.

August’s lineup will include a one-day, 36-hole event Monday in which about 40 golfers will compete for two spots in the 2011 U.S. Amateur, to be held next month at Erin Hills Golf Course in Wisconsin.

The Amateur Qualifier will be followed in short order by the Oregon Golf Association Women’s Stroke Play Championship, Aug. 6-7,and the OGA Men’s Stroke Play Championship, Aug. 12-14.

“As a privately owned, public daily fee facility in Oregon, there is no course that has supported golf more than Emerald Valley,” said Eric Yaillen, director of marketing and communications for the OGA.

Public daily fee courses often make a financial sacrifice to host an amateur tournament, Yaillen said.

While a portion of the competitors’ entry fees goes to the host course, it is usually less than the normal greens fee, he said. In addition, the use of power carts is not allowed in most amateur tournaments, cutting off an important revenue source for the course.

However, host courses do recover some of the lost revenue through increased sales of pro shop merchandise during OGA events, Yaillen said. “We pay all prizes in the form of pro shop credits.”

Emerald Valley is a popular venue for events like the U.S. Amateur Qualifier because it “is a very tough, competitive course,” Yaillen said. “It’s a lengthy course. It hosts some of the best players in the world on a regular basis.”

There is no doubt that Emerald Valley poses a challenge, even for very good golfers. At last year’s Men’s Stroke Play Championship, only three of 145 entrants managed to post subpar scores for the event. And Emerald Valley regulars like to point out that Tiger Woods never broke par on their course (he played two rounds during a Duck Invitational while he was at Stanford and the U.S. Amateur Champion).

“Frankly, the course is a far better course the last 10 years,” Yaillen said. “There’s been a lot of effort put in, from the motivations of (owner) Jim (Pliska) and the ability of (course superintendent) Scott Larsen.”

Pliska said one reason he purchased Emerald Valley in 1996 was that he wanted “to give something back to golf.” He said he is a strong supporter of junior golf “because I want the game of golf to grow.”

— Mike Stahlberg