With seemingly countless course options, contemporary golfers are in a buyers market. Yet the facility isn’t everything.

John Morris believes return business is built on the total experience.

“The biggest thing these days,” Morris said, “is having a pretty good course, and having the service be top-notch. You don’t want people going away mad.”

Morris is the new head pro at Eagle Bend Golf Course. Assistant pro since 2000, Morris was elevated this week. He replaces Jim Kane, who ran the city’s municipal course since it opened in 1998. Kane departed earlier this month to start preparing to join the PGA Senior Tour in 2007.

Fred DeVictor, director of the city parks and recreation department, promoted Morris largely because of his familiarity with the course, but also because the Lawrence native is well known for his genial personality.

“John is excellent,” DeVictor said, “in customer service.”

In essence, DeVictor opted for service over substance because Morris is not a full-fledged PGA professional, as Kane was.

“A lot of golf pros aren’t PGA certified,” DeVictor said. “John doesn’t have a PGA certificate, but he’s working on it and certainly we’d like for him to get one.”

In order to become a PGA professional, hopefuls must go through a three-stage process that involves on-site testing at the group’s headquarters in Ponte Vedra Beach, Fla.

“I’m still in the first stage,” Morris said.

Morris will be responsible for the day-to-day operations of the course. That includes the budget, programming and public relations. Kane did those jobs, too, but he was also in charge of maintenance.

Now, in an effort to soak up red ink, maintenance has been placed under the parks and recreation department umbrella. Kerry Golden, Eagle Bend’s course superintendent, now answers to Mark Hecker, who supervises all the city’s parks, and not Morris.

Eagle Bend lost about $57,000 in 2005, and has operated in the red in all but two years since its ’98 opening.

Morris, 45, is a Lawrence native whose background was in football. A former Lawrence High player, he worked 14 years as an assistant football coach at Haskell Indian Nations University before HINU became a four-year school. During his last three years at Haskell, Morris was also the school’s golf coach.

As head pro at Eagle Bend, Morris will run the course, do some teaching, conduct tournaments and, of course, thump the tub for the maturing 18-hole layout at the base of Clinton Lake’s dam.