Tag: Golftown Journal

The Tale of Henry Picard

The classy star of the Great Depression who helped shape the modern game

By Lee Pace

Henry Picard was 25 years old and one year into his position as head golf professional at the Country Club of Charleston in 1931 when the Great Depression choked the club and forced it to tell Picard it could no longer afford his salary. Picard had five dollars cash in his pocket one day when he went to his bank to make a withdrawal and found a sign on the door: “Closed Indefinitely.”

Picard, a Massachusetts native who learned golf as a caddie at Plymouth Country Club, was tall at 6-foot-3, impeccably dressed and well-mannered. He patterned his golf swing after Bobby Jones and was known as a particularly adept long-iron player. He and his wife, Annie, were expecting their first child in the fall of ’31, and some kindhearted benefactors at the club stepped up to say they’d pay him based on his golf scores — $5 for even-par, $10 for one-under and so on. So “Pic,” as he was known to the members and his fellow golf pros, at a young age learned the pressure of parlaying good golf scores into food for his family.

He responded with aplomb and his game blossomed in 1932. He won the Charlotte Open at Charlotte Country Club in September and beat Walter Hagen by 10 shots in a playoff for the Carolinas Open in Greensboro in October.

“Pic is the pick of the pack,” the always quotable Hagen said after getting whipped in Greensboro.

He told Picard privately, “Nice work, kid. You can be one of the greatest golfers in the world if you work hard on your game.”

Picard then tied Al Watrous and Al Houghton in the Mid-South Open, played in mid-November at Pinehurst No. 2. It was a one-day, 36-hole affair, and Picard seemed well on his way to victory until he double-bogeyed the 11th and three-putted 17 in the afternoon round. He hung on for the first-place tie and made an impression on Donald Ross, the golf architect and manager of the Pinehurst golf operation.

“He has everything,” Ross said, “the strength of youth, the temperament, a sound swing, and above all a beautiful putting stroke that is as good in practice as it is in theory.”

Several days later, Picard returned home to Charleston for an exhibition with Hagen on his home course. He shot a 73 to beat the wily veteran by three strokes.

“That boy is a beautiful golfer,” Hagen said. “He is going to go somewhere.”

Indeed he did, and he did so in the most curious of times — during the Depression and into the early years of World War II. Picard essentially retired from regular travel on the pro tour in 1942 to spend time with his wife and four children and settle into club pro jobs, the most noteworthy of which were at Canterbury in Cleveland in the summer, and Seminole in Palm Beach in the winter.

“Money and fame, they never meant a damn to me,” he said.

To say Picard’s timing was off is to put it mildly. He won the fifth Masters in 1938 — but before they gave green jackets to the champions. He had 26 career wins on the PGA Tour — more than Johnny Miller, Gary Player, Raymond Floyd, Hale Irwin, Greg Norman and Ben Crenshaw. But few recognize the name, and one national wire service account of his win in Augusta in 1938 added a “k” to his last name, spelling it “Pickard.”

“A lot of people told me, ‘He was the Tiger Woods of his day,’” son Larry Picard said in 2007. “I pooh-poohed that away. But he really was. He didn’t play full-time until ’35, and won that many tour events during that time. That’s a stretch like Woods had.”

Picard won the North and South Open at Pinehurst in 1934 and ‘36 and during one sizzling stretch from 1934-35, broke or matched par in 51 of 54 tournaments. He beat Bryon Nelson in the final of the 1939 PGA Championship, played then at match play, and qualified for four Ryder Cups and was the leading money winner in 1939.

“At that time, he was probably the best of them all,” Sam Snead said.

“Henry has the best swing in golf,” golf writer Herb Wind offered.

Picard, who was inducted into the World Golf Hall of Fame in 2006, had a major influence on three young golfers who would also go on to Hall of Fame careers.

Sam Snead was his first mentoring project.

Snead was in his early 20s when he asked Picard if he should give pro golf a try. Picard said that Snead was in fact good enough and arranged for Dunlop to sign Snead to its playing staff, giving him a set of clubs, a dozen balls a month and $500 a year. In early 1937, Snead was haunted by a whippy-shafted driver, and on the practice range at the Los Angeles Open, Picard gave him a stiff-shafted Dunlop driver.

“God, this thing is good,” Snead said.

“Keep it, it’s yours,” Picard responded.

One week later, Snead won his first tournament, the Oakland Open. He used the club for 20 years.

“See, one trouble I was having was with my driving,” Snead told author Al Barkow in Getting to the Dance Floor. “I had a whippy-shafted driver I couldn’t control. The driver I got from Picard had a stiff shaft, and my driving improved 40 percent right there.”

Another protégé was Ben Hogan — first with a financial endorsement and second with a grip change.

Picard was traveling to the West Coast in early 1938 when he ran into Hogan and his wife, Valerie, having lunch in a Fort Worth hotel. The Hogans were lamenting their financial strife — this before Hogan’s powder keg of talent had exploded — and Hogan was not sure he was going to make the West Coast swing. Picard told Hogan he was good enough to win and that if he got stranded in California with no money, he’d help Hogan out. The Hogans made the trip and, buoyed by the safety net of Picard’s offer, Ben played well enough to collect good checks at Oakland and Sacramento and continued grinding his way from town to town.

Two years later, Hogan approached Picard on the practice tee at the Miami-Biltmore and lamented the hook that appeared at the worst times. Picard said he could fix that “in five minutes” and adjusted Hogan’s grip to a slightly weaker position, helping take the left woods and water out of play. Later that spring, Hogan won his first pro tournament, the North and South at Pinehurst, then went to Greensboro and Asheville and won those two tournaments.

He was off and running and, years later, dedicated his instruction book to Picard.

“Henry is a very fine man, and I was fortunate to have enjoyed his company and friendship,” Hogan said. “That offer from Pic meant more to me than all the money in the world, because he told me I could play golf and win, and I needed encouragement at that point.”

Picard retired from Canterbury in 1973 and returned to Charleston, where he played golf at the Country Club of Charleston and gave occasional lessons there and at a public facility nearby. One golfer of interest was a teenager named Beth Daniel, who had taken formal lessons from Charleston pros Al Esposito and then from Derek Hardy, whom Daniel credits for turning her swing from a flattish plane to a more upright move suitable for the 5-foot-11 inch frame she sprouted into early in high school.

But when Picard arrived on the scene, Daniel was 17 years old and her mechanics were pretty well set. Picard helped her with the nuances. Once he surreptitiously replaced her rock-hard and long-running Top-Flite balls in her bag with softer Titleists and told her, “If you’re going to be a good player, you’ve got to play a good ball.” Picard might see Daniel one afternoon on the course and ask a question about shaping a shot or visualizing a greenside recovery, then ask for the answer 24 hours later.

“If I was wrong, he’d give me the correct answer,” she says. “If I was right, he’d nod and say ‘Thank you’ and keep walking. I didn’t realize it at the time, but what he was doing was helping me become a shotmaker.”

Daniel won two U.S. Women’s Amateurs, 33 LPGA Tour events and was inducted into the LPGA Hall of Fame in 2000. Henry Picard was among those she acknowledged for a helping hand back in her formative days.

“I don’t feel like he ever gets enough credit, but he was the kind of guy that didn’t promote himself,” she says. “He gave it up for his family. But I remember him well. He was quite the figure at the Country Club of Charleston, tall and handsome, always wearing his cotton dress shirt and tie, even in the 100-degree heat.”

The PGA Championship returns to North Carolina this summer, Quail Hollow in Charlotte the venue. What a shame that most of the players competing for a first prize in the neighborhood of $2 million would look at Henry Picard in his white shirt and tie and say, “Waiter, bring me another drink.” PS

Chapel Hill writer Lee Pace is working on a book about the Country Club of Charleston and its well-known progeny like Picard and Daniel. The book will be published in early 2019.

Of Sepia and Color

Pinehurst, the gift that keeps on giving

By Lee Pace

The first floor halls of the venerable Carolina Hotel and the 200 feet of what’s deemed
“Heritage Hall” half a mile away at the main golf clubhouse are replete with images extolling the resort’s gilded past and its always evolving present. There are sepia-toned photos of Ben Hogan and Donald Ross, recent shots of Martin Kaymer and Michelle Wie. There is Harvie Ward from yesterday, Tiger Woods from today. On display are replicas of trophies from the U.S. Open, Women’s Open, U.S. Amateur, Women’s Amateur, PGA Championship and Ryder Cup, events that have been contested outside on the No. 2 course. While there are courses that have hosted more championships, no other club or facility in America can equal its breadth.

“We love our black-and-whites,” says Pinehurst President Tom Pashley. “They’re what distinguishes us. They make us unique. Some places try to manufacture a feeling of history. Pinehurst’s is authentic.

“At the same time, we cannot exist in a time capsule. Those color pictures are important as well. We have to remain relevant today. We’ve got to be in the conversation about the top golf destinations in the country — not because of what we were, but what we are and what we’re going to be.”

Therein lies the crux of Pashley’s mission nearly three years into his tenure running this far-flung and complex business that has nine golf courses operating out of five clubhouses, three hotels and roughly a dozen restaurants offering everything from a quick hot dog at the turn to Australian lamb or Scottish salmon in the 1895 Grille.

Preserve the past and innovate for the future.

An ambitious drawing board in golf operations alone at the moment includes various restoration/tweaking projects for courses No. 1, 3, 4 and 5, a greens conversion on No. 7, a relocation of the popular Thistle Dhu putting course on the south side of the clubhouse, and the design and construction of a nine-hole short course.

Each is a domino tumbling from the restoration of the No. 2 course from 2010-11 engineered by architects Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw. That eye-opening project came at the behest of then-President Don Padgett, who felt No. 2 had lost its way trying to look too much like Augusta National and no longer sported the singular appeal that connected it to designer Donald Ross’ homeland in Scotland. The restoration was hailed by competitors and design buffs during the back-to-back U.S. Opens in June of 2014. When Pashley took over for Padgett three months later, he wasn’t sure what to capitalize and boldface on his to-do list.

“The restoration of No. 2 was such a watershed moment in the history of Pinehurst, and no club had ever hosted back-to-back Opens like we did,” Pashley says. “When I took over for Don, I remember thinking, ‘Wow, all the work is done. What am I going to be able to do that’s going to have an impact anywhere near that?’”

Pashley allows a modest smile.

“I don’t have that fear anymore,” he says. “There are a lot of opportunities presenting themselves right now.”

Certainly the most noteworthy on the docket is the work that begins in the fall to redesign the No. 4 course, a 1999 Tom Fazio creation that was, in turn, a brand new course on land occupied by a hodgepodge No. 4 with influences from various eras from Ross, Richard Tufts, Robert Trent Jones and his son, Rees. A confluence of reasons — ranging from wanting to covert the greens to Bermuda, to solve drainage problems, to have less of the clean and stark-white sandy expanses of No. 4 and more of the unkempt and burnished look of No. 2 next door — led Pashley to call architect Gil Hanse in the fall of 2016 to float the idea of major surgery.

“It was one of those moments when I put the phone down for a second and thought, ‘Is this
really happening?’” Hanse says of the idea of joining Ross (Nos. 1-3), Fazio (Nos. 6 and 8), Jack Nicklaus (No. 9), Rees Jones (No. 7) and Ellis Maples (No 5) in Pinehurst’s pantheon of architects.

Much of the routing will remain the same, though Hanse will take liberties with the positioning and elevation profiles of several par-3s. The preponderance of pot bunkers will change in lieu of more rustic edged traps with the wire grass and “volunteer” vegetation that has become part-and-parcel of the No. 2 look. The greens will be converted to Champion Bermuda and have fewer of the sharp roll-offs.

“I hope what Gil can do on No. 4 is change that dialogue a little bit,” Pashley says. “Introduce some debate. Maybe when it re-opens you’ll hear some talk in the bar afterward — that though you can’t rival the history of No. 2, maybe the fun and challenge and visuals will be close.

“The things people love about No. 4 won’t change. It’s secluded, there aren’t many houses in sight. It’s peaceful, it’s scenic, it’s a neighbor to some of the corridors on No. 2. There’s that big, beautiful lake. Those things won’t change.”

The short course, which will have nine holes ranging in distance from 65 to 117 yards, will occupy land where the first holes of courses 3 and 5 have been located — the same area, incidentally, where the practice range for the 2005 and 2014 U.S. Opens was positioned. Hanse and his team will design it over the summer and it will open
in the fall.

“Thistle Dhu has been such an overwhelming success,” Pashley says of the opening of the 2.5-acre putting course in the spring of 2013. “It’s quick, it’s fun, it’s for every age and every level of golfer. The idea for the short course comes from the same place. It can complement the experience of the hard-core golfer and introduce the game to another group of guests.”

The domino of needing the land occupied by those holes from 3 and 5 has been felt on the west side of N.C. 5, where the two courses are routed. The first hole of course 5 is now what was the second hole of course 3, only it runs in the opposite direction; then it connects with the second hole and the routing remains the same.

The problem on No. 3 was solved by Bob Farren, the resort’s director of grounds and golf course maintenance, with input from Hanse and architect/builder Kyle Franz, by taking two par-4s and redesigning them into pairs of a shorter par-4 and a new par-3. The revised No. 3, which opened in April, plays to a par of 68 at 5,155 yards. Franz, with some help from architect Kye Goalby and builder Blake Conant, have reintroduced more of the native Sandhills look a la No. 2 with wire grass, irregular bunkers dimensions and less of the monochromatic sheen of green grass.

The die is cast arriving at the new starter’s hut on the west side of N.C. 5. To the south is the new first hole of No. 5 with a meandering new fairway contour defined by natural areas of hardpan and wire grass. Ninety degrees away and headed to the west is the new first hole of No. 3 (the previous third hole) with a new bunker in the corner of the dogleg marked by an uneven perimeter and tufts of wire grass within the sand. Then from the tee of the second hole, the golfer plays across an expanse of sand cut into the hillside with more haphazard edges and assorted vegetation.

“Two holes into it, you know there’s something different going on,” Farren says. “It’s obvious there’s a new look and new feel to No. 3. Our members and guests both have embraced the ‘old look’ that Bill and Ben reintroduced on No. 2. It fits the land and the native vegetation. It fits our heritage.”

Franz will implement a few more modifications on No. 3 over the summer. No. 4 shuts down in the fall for one year. After that, No. 1 is earmarked for more retrofitting. And when the greens on No. 7 are converted to Bermuda this summer, all courses at Pinehurst except No. 9 will have hybrid Bermuda greens.

Pashley and Pinehurst owner Bob Dedman Jr. look at the landscape of the hot and evolving golf destinations like Bandon Dunes, Cabot Cliffs and Streamsong and know that history alone is not enough. Pashley says that one of Dedman’s visions is for “people to walk into the clubhouse and feel like they’re in golf heaven.”

“In the very near future, we’ll do a better job of saying to people, ‘You can do a whole trip to Pinehurst and never leave the clubhouse,’” Pashley says. “We can create something no one else can create. We have a ‘sense of place’ like few others.”

A sense of place that demands 64 crayons — from black and gray to every one in the rainbow. PS

Lee Pace has been writing about the Pinehurst golf scene for three decades and in 2012 authored the book, The Golden Age of Pinehurst — The Rebirth of No. 2.

2017 Department Golftown Journal

Donald Ross Revealed

Local author Chris Buie’s engaging new biography of Pinehurst’s Patron Saint of Design

By Lee Pace

Chris Buie moved to Southern Pines as a 10-year-old in the mid-1970s, was a regular golfer and swimmer at what was then known as the Southern Pines Elk Lodge, and later played on O’Neal School teams that won three state golf titles in the early 1980s. All of those PGA Tour stops at Pinehurst No. 2 in the 1970s — with winners from Johnny Miller to Hale Irwin, from Jack Nicklaus to Raymond Floyd — made an indelible mark on an adolescent Buie.

“It was amazing to see your heroes 10 feet away on the tee in a tight match,” he says. “It was absolutely fantastic growing up with that. It was mesmerizing.”

Years later, Buie found himself being similarly affected with the enormity of the 2014 U.S. Open at No. 2. Some 340,000 people flocked to the resort over a fortnight to take in the third Open to be played on No. 2 and the resort’s inaugural Women’s Open that would come the next week. Those events are on top of the two U.S. Amateurs, one Ryder Cup Match and one PGA Championship to have been played on the course that the Scottish architect Donald Ross cobbled from the sand over some three decades from 1907 to 1935.

“I was standing behind the 12th tee on Saturday and took in that panoramic view,” Buie says. “The entire place was packed. I couldn’t believe it. I was just really struck. I guess you could say I had an epiphany. The unusually clear thought is that not one of these people would be there if it was not for this guy Donald Ross.”

At that point Buie, whose career had ranged from social work to marketing and who had authored one book, The Early Days of Pinehurst, decided to delve into the Ross story on his own and produce a book with his findings. The result, The Life & Times of Donald Ross, was released this spring. The 296-page oversized book was published by The Classics of Golf, retails for $75 and is deep with previously unearthed details on Ross’ life and interesting visuals — from shots of a tweed-attired Ross driving a golf ball from the Library of Congress to a map of the 36 holes he built at Oak Hill in Rochester designed with eight “layers,” or starting and stopping points beyond the usual first and 10th tees.

Buie interviewed five people who knew Ross and took advantage of research advances today that allow an author to canvass innumerable newspapers more than a century old from the comfort of his own office and internet connection.

“Being able to tap into that is something that really hasn’t been available before,” Buie says. “Previously, you would have had to travel to a lot of libraries. Anyway, there were a lot of great interviews and information in those old articles.”

Having visited Ross’ hometown of Dornoch, Scotland, twice for chapters in my own books about Pinehurst golf and its evolution, having visited the Dornoch museum and interviewed descendants of Ross’ contemporaries, and certainly having played dozens of Ross courses and written about many of them, I thought my reservoir of Ross knowledge quite extensive. But I found in Buie’s book morsel upon morsel of anecdotes I’d never read or heard before. To wit:

• On the look and feel of Dornoch in 1890, this passage from an English author:

“Although really a seaside place, it is surrounded by woods, moors and mountains, thereby combining such pursuits of the Highlands — as grouse or partridge shooting, deer driving (but not stalking) or fly fishing. Ladies who do not care to follow the gun or play the fly, can find charming spots to sketch, and Dornoch is surrounded by lovely walks and drives, and there are several charming excursions at greater distances.”

• On Sunday golf in Dornoch being considered sacrilegious, that some church-goers were taking odd-looking “walking canes” to worship but actually using them as golf sticks on the way home, sneaking into the dunes for a couple of holes:

“Despite their discretion, most of the villagers knew exactly what the ‘Sabbath breakers’ were up to. As with any small town, little happened without being known by everyone in short order.”

• On Ross’ upbringing in the conservative, strict schools of northern Scotland in the 1870s and an anecdote from his great-grandson, Alex Shapiro:

“He decided to dip the pigtails of a girl that was sitting in front of him in an inkwell on his desk. The teacher came over and hit him so hard that it broke his nose. Donald was so scared about telling his father for fear of what would happen to him that he kept it to himself. So it was never tended to and for the rest of his life he could only breath out of half of his nose.”

• On Ross apparently being at the vanguard of the idea to have front and back nines, an idea at odds to the links concept of the British Isles where most courses ran “out” in one direction along the coast, then turned “in” for the final nine:

“One of the desirable shapes for a piece of golf property is that of a fan,” Ross said. “It gives you the opportunity to place your clubhouse in the center or handle of the fan and lay out two loops of nine holes on either side of the handle … This layout affords another rather pleasant feature, as members can stop after nine holes and have refreshments.”

• On his meeting the titans of American business and being particularly fond of Henry Ford, who asked him to design and build a course for his workers in Dearborn, Michigan:

“(Ford) is a different type of any from almost any other I have met,” Ross said in a 1923 letter to Pinehurst owner Leonard Tufts. “He opened up pretty freely to me, and I have a cordial invitation to stay at his house, and I will accept some time. I would like to know him better. He surely likes peculiar angles, and I already know he has a mind of his own. He would be lost as a President — and it’s entirely outside of his line of endeavor. He is too frank to be a politician. He is a plain democratic man and wealth has not turned his head.”

• On the pressure he felt in the depths of the 1930s Depression to find new projects so that he could keep his workers employed:

“I want to get the contract to build it so that I can find work for a few of my good men here who must be discharged unless I can find other employment,” he said in a 1937 letter to his daughter. “That, you see, is the responsibility that goes with being a father to so many workers. I feel that they depend on me for a livelihood.”

By that time Ross had just completed his final routing of No. 2, adding the current fourth and fifth holes and discarding two that ran into ground now occupied by course No. 4, and had built seven courses in the Sandhills — four at Pinehurst Country Club, one at Pine Needles, one at Mid Pines and 27 holes at Southern Pines. Those were among the some 400 courses he would design across mostly the eastern half of the United States.

Buie says one of the most notable takeaways from his research was how Ross’ fingerprints are on so many elements of golf’s evolution in America — from design to clubmaking to helping elevate the status of the once lowly club pro. The second was how he “instilled the game with the proper spirit,” Buie says. “He was adamant about that. He wanted everything done ‘the right way.’ But he was especially strident about that when it came to golf. He was outspoken about that and vigilant, as well.”

Buie vouched that idea with an interview
he found from a 1939 interview in the Elmira Star Gazette:

“In my long association with golf, covering practically the entire life of the game in the United States, there has never been a scandal in connection with professional golf,” Ross said. “This is a glorious reputation for golf and must be maintained if the game is to continue to hold the respect of the public, and continue in the unusually fine atmosphere it has created.”

One wonders what Ross would have thought of the Tiger Woods story from 2009, but you get the point. PS

Lee Pace has written Golftown Journal since 2008 and has authored four books about golf at Pinehurst, his most recent “The Golden Age of Pinehurst” in 2014.

2017 Department Golftown Journal

The Eagle Is Landing

The PGA Tour goes to the beach

By Lee Pace

It was a cold February day in 1997, give or take a year as memories fade, and five men were sloshing through the woods and sandy waste of a parcel of land about 8 miles north of Wilmington. Four were men of considerable wealth and high golf IQs, the fifth considered golf’s top architect of the modern era. Together Billy Armfield, Bobby Long, John Ellison, John Mack and Tom Fazio were trying to determine if this tract just across the road from Porter’s Neck Country Club and across the Intracoastal Waterway from Figure Eight Island had potential for a new golf course.

Long smiles and shakes his head remembering the day.

“I thought that Tom Fazio, if he did not have such a great reputation, needed some serious psychiatric care,” Long says. “Trees are down everywhere, it’s raining, it’s 45 degrees, it’s miserable, it is a mess. But Tom is pointing here and there and saying here’s where the first tee’s going to be, where the 18th green’s going to be, where the clubhouse will be. He’s saying, ‘Man, this is great.’ I’m thinking, ‘You’re certifiably nuts.’ Tom saw something none of us did.”

Fazio merely shrugs.

“It’s just what I do,” he says. “Bobby Long can look at a balance sheet and it makes sense, and it’s Greek to me. I look at a piece of land and it makes sense.”

In time that vision would prove prophetic and crystal clear as the 230 acres became Eagle Point Golf Club, which has become one of North Carolina’s top golf environs and in May will be the site of the 2017 Wells Fargo Championship on the PGA Tour. The Wells (originally the Wachovia Championship when conceived in 2003) has been held annually at Quail Hollow Golf Club in Charlotte, but Quail’s 2017 position as host of the PGA Championship necessitated a one-year transplant.

Given that Quail Hollow President Johnny Harris is a member at Eagle Point and that Long, now the Eagle Point president, has been the guiding force in the resurrection of Greensboro’s spot on the PGA Tour the last decade in the form of the Wyndham Championship, there were plenty of synergies to do a one-off at Eagle Point.

“We thought it was a good opportunity to showcase the golf course, and we want to be a good citizen with Wilmington,” says Ellison, one of the four founding members of the club. “We thought this was a way to be a good citizen and help the economy. We like being a great private golf club, but also like being a good citizen. The two don’t have to be exclusive. We like the idea the restaurants and hotels and Wilmington will be seen in a way they haven’t since the Azalea Open left all those years ago.”

“Wilmington has some nice tradition with the Azalea at Cape Fear Country Club, and we thought it would be fun to kind of link back to that,” says club General Manager and Director of Golf Billy Anderson. “They looked at some other sites around the country for one year, but Johnny Harris and Bobby Long were afraid if it left the state, it would never come back.”

The Azalea Open was held at Cape Fear from 1949-72 as part of the annual Azalea Festival, and now the Wells Fargo at Eagle Point will be one peg in a considerable schedule of big-time golf in North Carolina this year. In addition to the Wells Fargo in Wilmington May 4-7, the PGA in Charlotte August 10-13 and the Wyndham in Greensboro August 17-20, Pinehurst gets in on the action with the U.S. Amateur Four-Ball on the No. 2 course May 27-31.

“Who would have thought a major would be coming to North Carolina and be somewhere other than Pinehurst?” Fazio muses, referencing the Quail Hollow layout on which he’s done considerable redesign work over two decades. “It’s more proof of the quality of golf in this state. You could take the 18 courses we’ve done in North Carolina, and that’s a pretty good career.”

Fazio was approached in the mid-1900s by Armfield, a Greensboro businessman who owned a beach house on Figure Eight Island and thought the Wilmington area was ripe for a unique public-private golf facility — a private course here, a public layout next door, common maintenance staff, equipment and infrastructure, and perhaps homes mixed in as well. They looked at a variety of sites and never found anything that worked. Eventually Fazio told Armfield he knew of a site near Porter’s Neck, which he designed in the early 1990s, that might be for sale. But it was big enough for one golf course only — no real estate.

“On that piece of property, you could only have golf,” Fazio says. “What they wanted was a purist golf environment, no compromises.”

The course opened in May 2000 and has grown to having nearly 500 members. It was run for its first decade by Armfield in the “benevolent dictator” manner of clubs like Pine Valley and Seminole, where he was also a member. When Armfield moved from Greensboro to Richmond, he passed the baton to Long. Sadly, Armfield won’t be able to see the PGA Tour come to Wilmington, as he died in July 2016 after a short bout with cancer.

But his vision is still intact — a golf-centric club, a full caddie staff, walkable layout and a few bedrooms for members from out-of-town. Some 11,000 to 13,000 rounds are played a year, and only on a few summer holidays does the course get jammed. Fazio built a nine-hole practice course as well, and that venue is the site of a regular Sunday night mixed scramble — you play with someone other than your own wife or girlfriend, and then repair to the clubhouse for dinner afterward.

“We wanted to play fast and play with caddies,” Long says. “Looking back, we might have had more money than sense. We did not have a clue what we were doing, and all of a sudden you’re into it pretty heavily and can’t let it fail.”

Fazio built a half-dozen lakes and a couple of streams that run through the course, and the property is dotted with a few massive, draping oak trees so prevalent on the coast. He then planted hundreds of pine trees that started at 6 to 10 feet and are now 35 feet. Fazio and his team moved 2 million cubic yards of dirt, and the highest point in New Hanover County at 52 feet elevation is the 18th tee.

“We took the highs and made them higher and the lows made them lower; that’s why it feels like it’s fairly rolling,” Fazio says. “Construction capabilities what they are today, you cannot tell where we moved earth and did not move it.”

Like most Fazio courses, Eagle Point is gorgeous to the eye and not too difficult from the forward tees. The farther back you go, the more inaccessible pins become and the tougher the angles. The three par-4s in the finishing stretch measure at least 430 yards — and two play uphill into the greens — the par-3 15th is 222 yards, and the home hole is a par 5 at nearly 600 yards with a lake to the right.

“The first three holes are a nice way to start a round of golf. Then as you get further into it, the volume keeps going up,” says John Townsend, who joined in 2000. “No. 4 is a difficult par-5, and six a difficult par-5, seven a gorgeous hole but a little bit of a breather. You step on the eighth tee, you’d better strap on your seat belt. If you don’t get it the first seven holes, it’s tough to shoot a good score. The closing stretch from 14 home is about the best five finishing holes in golf.”

Adds Long, “Three times I’ve been 2-under going to 14 and not broken 80.”

Long, Anderson and the Wells Fargo staff have worked with Marsh Benson, the recently retired senior director of golf course and grounds at Augusta National, on a number of aesthetic tweaks to the course over the last year. Benson made one key suggestion of moving the originally planned entrance to the tournament from the north side of the property to the eastern edge, where spectators will access the course through the par 3-course.

“The sight views are stunning. Marsh is truly an artist,” Long says. “He’s enhanced what we had here. I think the golfers and the spectators who’ve heard of Eagle Point and never actually been will be glad they came.”

And that is a vision that only Tom Fazio could see on a blustery winter day two decades ago. PS

Chapel Hill-based golf writer Lee Pace, who appears monthly in PineStraw, wrote about the Azalea Open for Salt in the spring of 2014.

2017 Department Golftown Journal

Martins Redux

Catching up with a brother act

By Lee Pace

The sports world is chock-full of successful sibling stories. From coaching you have Jim and John Harbaugh, and Rob and Rex Ryan. From quarterbacking, exhibit A is certainly Peyton and Eli Manning. The tennis world features sisters Venus and Serena Williams, and brothers Bob and Mike Bryan. The Busch boys (Kyle and Kurt) have won often on NASCAR tracks, and you cannot get close to center ice without stumbling on a Stahl (Eric, Marc, Jordan, Jared).

Golf from way back had Lloyd and Ray Mangrum combining for 41 PGA Tour wins, from a generation ago Lanny and Bobby Wadkins emerging out of Richmond, and today Francesco and Edoardo Molinari are forces on the European Tour.

So what to make of Zachary and Joshua Martin, the dynamic brotherly golf duo from Pinehurst now plying their trade at the University of North Carolina?

“It’s an interesting sibling dynamic,” says Pinehurst teaching pro Kelly Mitchum, who gave both brothers lessons during their high school days. “They’ve competed against each other, but I’ve never sensed anything but them truly rooting for each other. They always wanted each other to do well.”

“It’s like they’re each other’s biggest cheerleader,” adds UNC coach Andrew Sapp, who brought Zach into the Tar Heel program in 2013 and Josh in 2015. “I really haven’t seen a sibling rivalry between the two. I was out of town with Josh once at a tournament and we heard that Zach had lit it up in a qualifying round back home. Josh was genuinely excited to hear his brother shot a good score.”

The Martin brothers have acquired over their dozen years in Pinehurst quite the golfing pedigree. The family was profiled in the Wall Street Journal in 2008 for its adventuresome move from Wilson in Eastern North Carolina to Pinehurst so that the boys could have access to the village’s largesse — courses, instructors and a 24-7 golf ambience. Bowie and Julie Martin gave their boys opportunities in all manner of sports as youngsters, but in time they gravitated toward golf. Bowie’s job as owner and president of a family business involved in manufacturing and distributing premium table tennis equipment worldwide gave him the freedom to relocate. At the time, Zach was 10 and Josh 8.

“I was too young to know how crazy it was with our parents having a business in Wilson,” Josh says. “But it worked out well for everyone.”

“I can better appreciate the history of Pinehurst as I’ve gotten older,” Zach says. “When we first moved, all I saw was a bunch of golf courses. Then you understand more about the North and South Open, the PGA Championship back in the 1930s, you definitely get a better appreciation. I think being in Pinehurst has definitely helped both of us develop as golfers.”

Zach first caught the attention of Sapp while shooting a 66 at Mid Pines in a junior tournament in 2012. “He made everything he looked at,” Sapp remembers. “He’d bang it, go find it and drain another birdie.” Zach’s birdie putt in a playoff on the 17th hole at Pinehurst No. 8 secured the state championship for Pinecrest High in 2013.

Josh won a pair of Donald Ross Memorial titles and four U.S. Kids World Championships, held each August in the Sandhills, and in 2014 at the age of 17 became the youngest winner ever of the North Carolina Amateur Championship.

And they evolved with a single-minded focus that’s an oddity today with so many social media and youth league sports distractions.

“They never canceled a lesson, never were late for a lesson,” Mitchum remembers. “No matter the weather, they were on time and ready to work.”

Josh’s ability in particular earned him somewhat legendary status around the resort and community — originally the family rented a house on Pinehurst No. 3 and several years later moved to Pinewild Country Club. Enter a Google search for Josh Martin and you’ll find one subjective yet interesting blog listing him among the top 10 child golf prodigies of all time (along with Tiger Woods and Michelle Wie), and included is one unsourced account of a golfer at Pinehurst allowing this 7-year-old kid with ketchup on his shirt to join him on No. 4 and Josh shooting a 78. The grown-up asked the kid for an autograph after the round was over.

“We joined up with older people all the time,” Zach says. “At first, they were a little hesitant because we were so young. No one wants to be held up by little kids who are just learning. But once they saw we could play, they enjoyed it. We had a good time playing with other people and made some friends over the years.”

Sapp says he often runs into golfers and families from around the country and as far removed as China who knew of Josh’s dominance in the U.S. Kids World Championship and Rich Wainwright, an executive at Pinehurst and assistant golf coach at Pinecrest High, whistles looking at Josh’s prep era that included him, Eric Bae (now on the golf team at Wake Forest), Doc Redman (Clemson) and Henry Shimp (Stanford) and says, “That’s U.S. Open material there.”

Zach has caddied for Josh twice in the U.S. Amateur, and this spring both are competing for regular playing spots on a Tar Heel lineup that is likely the deepest and most experienced it’s been in many years. Zach is 22 and a senior, Josh 20 and a sophomore.

Bowie Martin says one of the elements of golf that he and Julie as parents favored in their children’s evolution was the emotional control and manners one had to learn to succeed in the sport. More than a decade into it, that’s proven prophetic.

“Etiquette, patience, self-policing are parts of golf,” Bowie says. “You don’t have officials on top of you. In golf, you monitor yourself. That’s the neat thing about it. If you hit a bad shot, you might have five minutes before you can get it back. Patience is huge, staying even-keeled over a longer period of time.”

To put the Martins’ games in nutshells, Zach plays a power game, Josh a precision game. Zach hits the ball “forever,” as Sapp says, and can overpower a course. He shot the course record at UNC Finley, a 1999 Tom Fazio design that can stretch to 7,220 yards, with a 63 last fall, then broke it two weeks later with a 62.

“Off the tee, he’s probably the longest guy on the team,” Josh says. “When he gets it going, he can go really low. He makes a bunch of birdies and can beat anybody.”

Zach might bomb his drive over bunkers on a par-5, while Josh, by no means short, is playing a more tactical game with carefully aimed hybrids off certain tees. Josh has a legendary short game.

“He knows how to get the ball in the hole,” Zach says, slowing down and enunciating in the hole with extra bite. “I can’t emphasize that enough. He knows damage control.”

“Josh doesn’t miss fairways, doesn’t miss greens, and makes a few birdies along the way,” Sapp adds. “When both are on, they have tremendous potential in college golf.”

I first met the Martins in the spring of 2009 when I wrote their story for the May 2009 PineStraw. Their swings were being videotaped by Eric Alpenfels, also a Pinehurst instructor and colleague of Mitchum’s, at the base of the Maniac Hill practice facility. The building blocks were apparent then — skill level, love of the game, focus, parental support.

“The boys would like to play college golf,” their dad said at the time. “After that, who knows? Golf offers a lot of opportunities to play as part of your business. You can be a teaching pro. You can try the pro tour, but that’s a tough life. That’s not the goal. The goal is the challenge of trying to accomplish something, to master a skill and get better.”

Nearly a decade later, so far, so good. Both are good students at Carolina, Zach studying economics and Josh sports administration, but both want to play pro golf. If that doesn’t work, something in the golf industry would be fine — teaching, perhaps. And the boys have grown as siblings and friends and with no apparent rivalry gumming up the works. The elder Zach even says his younger sibling’s glitzy record flips the traditional big brother/little brother dynamic.

“His accomplishments so far outweigh mine, so I look up to him and feel like he’s mentoring me every time I play with him,” Zach says.

“We’re competitive, but at the end of the day, we put down the clubs and are great friends,” Josh says.

Stay tuned for the spring of 2017 in Chapel Hill and then beyond for Zach and Josh Martin. There’s plenty of room in the winner’s circle that houses the Mannings and Mangrums — basically everybody and their brother. PS

Chapel Hill-based writer Lee Pace has written “Golftown Journal” since the summer of 2008.

2017 Department Golftown Journal

Bag Man

Looking good off the rack

By Lee Pace

Yes, I have a wandering eye.
I have moved from one pretty thing to another. I check out the curves, the details, the accessories. I enjoy going into a busy place with a pretty one on my arm. I reflect on my exes and wince that I could have been so stupid to have been with that. If mine is hanging out with others, I’ll generally snicker at the ugliness of all that surrounds my jewel.

I admit it — I’m a bit of a tart for golf bags.

Just in the last decade I have been with Titleist, Sun Mountain, MacKenzie, Stitch and Nike (for the blink of an eye). I have had bags with a stand and without, made with leather, canvas and waterproof synthetics, and even with velour linings. Various models have had compartments or attachments for umbrellas, water bottles, iPhones and range finders, though the latter is a moot point. I’m too cheap to buy a high-tech measuring device, and I’m not vain enough to think it matters a whit to know I’m 133 yards from the flag for certain versus the 130 I can estimate for myself.

As I am ever the traditionalist who’d rather walk than ride, my bags have tended to the lighter weights and fewer geegaws, though I’m constantly in a balancing act between simplicity and lusting for modern creature comforts.

I was gifted one of the original MacKenzie Walkers in the early 1990s but didn’t have the good sense to appreciate the materials, workmanship and utter simplicity of the tan leather bag, benching it after a wet day when the leather seemed to hold the water like lead pellets. Over the years, moving it from assorted garages to attics, the bag developed a rash of mold and mildew, which the company tried gallantly six years ago to remove — with modest results.

I carried an apple green, double-strapped bag for a while but got a sore left shoulder with the pretzel motion of putting my left arm through the second strap. Once in a captain’s choice tournament, I won a hideous Nike Performance bag that had 12 slots for clubs and was white and black with teal accents; I quickly sold it on Craigslist to some poor fool who likely plays golf in sandals and black socks.

For several years I’ve carried a MacKenzie ballistic bag, a two-pocket, single-strap bag made of navy fabric in the same design as the company’s more famous leather offering. The bag served me well and I appreciated its simplicity. But over time I grew to want at least a nudge toward convenience — a more accessible spot for my wallet and phone without them mixed in with balls and tees, for example, or a place for a water bottle or umbrella. I considered yielding to the appeal of a stand bag to ease the wear on my back, but the spindly metal legs add such an artificial element I’ve resisted the urge.

I wrote in these pages in the spring of 2015 of an innovative company in Cary called Stitch Golf that makes stylish leather head covers and accessories under the “Dress Your Game” hashtag. Stitch flirted briefly in fabricating and peddling a utilitarian and soft-spoken carry bag in British khaki and green camouflage designs, but I found the five-slot opening a bit narrow and the clubs prone to getting stuck when you tried to pull one. In due time owner Charlie Burgwyn discovered a vintage golf bag company on the West Coast trying to reinvent itself and ditched his own model and began carrying the wares of the Jones Golf Bag Co.

Anyone who played high school or college golf in the 1970s and ’80s likely remembers the Jones bag, which came in basic primary colors with a wide white strap and a plastic base that could stand up to countless whacks after a fat 6-iron shot.

George Jones was a cab driver and golf enthusiast in Portland, Oregon, in the early 1970s who, in his spare time, cobbled together utilitarian golf bags and sold them from the trunk of his cab. The bags were popular enough that he founded the Jones Golf Bag Co., the enterprise finding a niche as a manufacturer of inexpensive carry bags that most schools could afford to buy in bulk and outfit their entire squad. Jones sold the company in 1990, and over two decades the line lost its appeal as golf exploded and consumer demand migrated to shinier bells and louder whistles.

“After 20 years, there was nothing left but the name and a lot of memories,” says Matt Lemman, who grew up playing a Jones bag. “The bag was missed. There was nothing that substituted for it.”

Lemman’s father bought what was left of Jones’ entrepreneurial efforts in 2011 and turned the operation over to sons Matt and Tim and a third partner, Chris Carnahan. They began manufacturing the original Jones bag with updated materials and since have added to the line with stand bags, cart bags, luggage and accessories. Lemman says the company broke even in 2015 and was comfortably in the black in 2016.

“It’s been fun to bring the bag back to life,” says Matt, 30 years old. “It’s no picnic to start a business, but we’re lucky to have a brand that resonates with a lot of people.”

“People like to be reminded of a time when life was simpler,” adds Tim, 28.

Indeed, the Jones Original and Players Series models I carried in 2016 are the archetypes of minimalism and function. Over six months I tried both the Original model in kelly green and more recently a navy version in the Players Series. Both feature the ubiquitous Jones braided handle and plastic base and come in at around three pounds each. Both have three compartments — two long, narrow ones on the strap side of the bag, and a larger one on the opposite side. The bags are reasonably priced, with the Original model at $140 and the Players at $160.

I’ve settled on the Players Series for several reasons. The spine makes it easier to sling on a motor cart if I find myself in the position of having to ride. There’s a slot for a water bottle — essential for the hot Southern summers. And I thought the wide white strap on the Original model a bit unsightly to my eye; the strap on the Players is narrower, and the neat touch of having some tacky material on the underside helps keep the bag from slipping on my shoulder. And like all Jones bags, you can find the name only on the bottom and on an understated metal plate positioned on the spine; carrying a bag with the manufacturer’s name taking up 50 percent of the face just seems, well, crass.

“It’s everything you need, and nothing you don’t,” Lemman says. “There’s a niche for people who want a simpler way of doing things.”

And over time, I’ve gotten a better grasp on what I don’t need. I’ve cut my set down to 12 clubs, taking a couple pounds off the carry weight. I’d rather master the 56-degree wedge than try to dial in several lofts, and if I’m playing a course under 6,400 yards as I should, my 18-degree fairway wood is all I need for second shots on par-5s and perhaps an approach on a long par-4. Anthony Cordes, the sharp young club-fitting expert at Pinehurst, suggested in fitting me for a new set of Titleist irons last spring that I create a hybrid set by using my preferred blades, the forged and more classic-looking AP2s, for my wedge through 6-iron and then go to the more forgiving AP1 for the 5- and 4-iron. I’ve never hit so many good 4-irons as I have the last year.

The bag, clubs, several extra balls and spray bottles of sunscreen and insect repellant measure 17 pounds — a comfortable weight to lug around the course, particularly by alternating shoulders. The set-up is functional and the bag, accented with one leather and one knit head cover from Stitch, distinguishes itself amid the rubble of the bag drop.

The decade of the ’70s was not renowned for its design acumen — industrial, clothing or otherwise. Thankfully, though, there is the Jones Golf Bag to take a much-welcomed second lap. PS

Chapel Hill-based writer Lee Pace promises to live by the Jones Golf mantra in 2017 — “Enjoy the walk.”

2017 Department Golftown Journal

Coincidentally

“Coincidence is God’s way of remaining anonymous.” — Albert Einstein

By Lee Pace

Another year dawns and the largesse of the Sandhills golf community continues to evoke awe and grace. Forty golf courses in a 15-mile radius, one USGA event coming in 2017, another on tap for 2019, an interesting and ambitious project to redesign Pinehurst No. 4 and create a new short course at Pinehurst set to commence this year. The populace revels in a golf-centric environment where at any point you’re liable to see a license plate like 4RT or WHIFF or GOLF’N or a pedestrian walking down a sidewalk, pronating his left wrist as if to make a solid move through the ball.

It has always fascinated and amused me to ponder the series of dominoes that fell over five years from 1895 to 1900 that allowed this “Accidental Resort” to sprout into reality. There was no big city next door to give birth to Pinehurst. There was no ocean or mountain range to make it an aesthetic or seasonable destination, no river to provide convenient access.

No, we have this “St. Andrews of American Golf” thanks to at least five unrelated but important dollops of happenstance.

— A chance encounter on a train in 1895.

James Tufts made his fortune in patenting, manufacturing and sales of apparatuses and syrups found in apothecary shops across the land and, as he neared the age of 60, turned his business operations over to subordinates. He was active in philanthropic work and sought on behalf of the Invalid Aid Society of Boston to locate a wintertime health resort for those suffering from consumption.

Col. Walker Taylor was a sharp businessman himself and had opened an insurance agency in Wilmington in 1866 following the Civil War. He traveled extensively throughout the Eastern Seaboard, and having a gregarious personality, was wont to introduce himself to perfect strangers. One day in 1895, pure happenstance landed Taylor and Tufts on the same train. They struck up a conversation, and Tufts explained his vision to Taylor.

Taylor, family legend has it, suggested that the train station in Southern Pines might be a good starting point for Tufts’ search for a site for his new resort. It was right on two of the nation’s major north-south transportation arteries — the railroad and U.S. Hwy. 1. There was cheap land available, and it was halfway between Boston and Florida. And thus Tufts did in fact search for land — and found 6,000 acres about five miles to the west of the train station in Southern Pines.

— An astute decision by Tufts to eschew the advice of a trusted aide that “golf is just a fad.”

At first golf was not part of the Pinehurst dossier, and visitors enjoyed activities such as horseback riding, dancing, recitals, carriage rides, cards and a croquet-like game called roque. But in the fall of 1897, Tufts learned that guests were hitting small rubber balls with wooden sticks around the dairy fields and, in the process, aggravating the cows. So he built a nine-hole golf course as a lark in 1898, enlisting the help of Dr. D. LeRoy Culver, a Southern Pines physician who was an avid golfer, had played in England and Scotland, and understood the gist of what a course should look like. But Tufts wasn’t sold on the game’s prospects and inquired of the manager of the Holly Inn, Allen Treadway, if he thought nine more holes would be a good idea.

“Save your money,” answered Treadway, who later would be elected as a Massachusetts congressional representative. “Golf is a fad and will never last.”

Tufts’ instincts and better advice from others in his circle convinced him otherwise, and soon he embarked on the expansion of the golf course to a full 18 holes.

— A fateful coin flip in the village of Dornoch, Scotland, in 1899.

Donald Ross was a 27-year-old employee at Royal Dornoch Golf Club and was in charge of maintaining the golf course, managing the caddies, organizing competitions, and building and repairing clubs. His boss was John Sutherland, the club “secretary,” i.e., general manager. One day a golfer visiting from Boston suggested to Ross that America was ripe for growing the sport of golf, and an ambitious expert in the game might do well to immigrate and carve his niche in the game’s expansion. Ross and Sutherland both took a fancy to the idea and decided to flip a coin — one goes to America, the other stays at home and runs the club at Dornoch.

Ross won the flip.

And so he set off to America.

“My mother and Mr. Sutherland’s daughter were great pals,” says Donald Grant, a lifelong Dornoch resident and club member. “They lived side-by-side growing up. I heard the story often. I have no reason to doubt its truth.”

— That it was Boston, not New York or Philadelphia or a dozen other cities, where Ross arrived in 1899.

Ross’ contact in America was Robert Willson, an astronomy professor at Harvard and a member at Oakley Country Club in the Boston suburb of Watertown. Upon arrival in Boston, Ross phoned Willson, visited his home, and soon Willson helped Ross find work at Oakley Country Club, which was located eight miles from Tufts’ home in Medford.

Now that Tufts had a full 18-hole course at Pinehurst and a vision for building more golf, he needed a golf professional to work during the October to spring season. He learned that Oakley had in its employ a sharp young Scotsman whose responsibilities were geared around the summer golf season — an ideal fit to go South in the winter. They met at Tufts’ home in Medford. Tufts hired Ross on the spot and Ross began his new assignment at Pinehurst in December 1900. He was busy at first making clubs, managing the caddies, giving lessons and organizing competitions. He also tried his hand at designing and building new golf holes.

— And that this ground in Moore County should be predominantly sand, prompting a serendipitous connection for Ross between Scotland and his new wintertime home situated 120 miles inland from the coast.

Millions of years ago, the Atlantic Ocean covered what is now dry land along the East Coast. During the Miocene Epoch (circa 20 million years ago), the ocean receded and left a strip of what is now ancient coastline and beach deposits. The Sandhills are part of that band some 30 miles across and 80 miles long. Tufts liked the land as he first found it because its sandy composition drained quickly and was thought to have health-giving benefits.

Pinehurst was perhaps not oceanside itself. But its location was a kissing cousin to the seashore. The word “links” can be traced to the Old English word for lean, hlinc, meaning “lean terrain formed by receding seas.” The ground was perfect for golf and Ross’s tastes. It provided, in essence, an “inland links” terrain; the earth was gently rolling and sandy. Rainwater flowed through the sandy soil at Dornoch; it did so as well in Pinehurst, allowing for a golf designer’s dream environment.

“He was particularly attracted to the soil conditions here, as they reminded him of the old links land at home,” Richard Tufts, James’ grandson, said years later. “Even our native wire grass seemed to remind him of the whins he knew in Scotland.”

What if Tufts had gotten off the train in Raleigh and chosen the heavy clay environment there? It might have had no attraction had Ross landed just an hour north.

And so the dominoes fell — Tufts debarks in Southern Pines, tweaks his vision to include golf, Ross and not Sutherland comes to Boston, and Ross turns Pinehurst’s sandy ground into an American golf nirvana that draws visitors from the population centers of the East, Midwest and Deep South. By 1919, Pinehurst had 72 holes of golf and was by far the nation’s foremost golf destination.

It all makes perfect sense and hearkens the immortal words of former baseball great Yogi Berra, himself a frequent visitor to Pinehurst from his home in New Jersey: “That’s too coincidental to be a coincidence.” PS

Lee Pace has authored five books on the evolution of golf in the Sandhills, most recently The Golden Age of Pinehurst—The Story of the Rebirth of No. 2.

2017 Department Golftown Journal

The Fazio Tradition

North Carolina’s dean of golf course architects reflects on his very productive life

By Lee Pace

To an 18-year-old in the summer of 1975, Hendersonville was Hicksburg USA and a town lacking any distinction beyond having an excellent high school basketball team (the Bearcats bounced Pinecrest High, yes, that Pinecrest High, in the 1972 state 3-A title game in Durham) and a convenience store on Sixth
Avenue quite liberal in dispensing beer to minors. We’d stock up on Budweiser and Slim Jims and cruise up and down Main Street between a city recreation park on the north and the Hardees on the south. I was off to Chapel Hill in the blink of an eye.

“I couldn’t get out of this town fast enough,” I told one of its newer residents some years later.

“And I couldn’t get here fast enough,” the fellow replied.

It was the early 1990s and golf architect Tom Fazio was showing me around the office he’d opened in Hendersonville in 1985 when, after discovering the appeal of the western North Carolina mountains in designing Wade Hampton in Cashiers in the mid-1980s, he and his wife, Sue, decided the environment was better suited to raise their six children than their previous home in the Palm Beach area of South Florida. Fazio looked out his office window to the west toward the crest of Laurel Park Mountain, golden-tinged on this particular autumn afternoon.

“Main Street with a view,” he mused. “What more could you want?”

As I mellowed and matured over the years and returned to visit my mother and marvel over the evolution of downtown Hendersonville — with its serpentine traffic pattern, ceramic bear statues, meticulous landscaping and neat confluence of restaurants and antique shops — I had to admit that Fazio had a point.

Often I’d work in a trip back home with a visit to Fazio’s golf architecture firm. Things were so flush as the 1990s golf boom evolved and Fazio had become arguably the world’s foremost modern architect that in 1998 he bought an entire four-story, 1923 neo-classical building at the corner of Main Street and Fourth Avenue and moved his firm’s headquarters to the top floor.

I witnessed Fazio Golf Course Designers’ operation in thick and thin. One afternoon in the mid-1990s, Fazio and his staff worked furiously to get some design drawings and documents printed and packaged in time to ship overnight.

“Everything builds to a climax waiting for the FedEx guy to come,” Fazio said.

And a dozen years later I sat with him in a quieter environment, the golf design business slowing to a crawl during the 2008-09 recession and his staff being lopped off in the aftermath.

“What’s different?” he asked rhetorically, cocking his head as if to listen. “The phones aren’t ringing.”

On my most recent trip to Hendersonville, on the last Friday of October, I found Fazio in his office signing copies of his 2000 book, Golf Course Design, and minding one of his granddaughters and one of the family dogs. He spoke of the annual winter sojourn to Florida planned for the following week now that all six children are grown and he’s semi-retired — but not until after Halloween night.

“Two of my daughters and four grandkids are here,” says Fazio, who lives nearby in Lake Toxaway at least half the year. “We’ll be on Main Street on Halloween night. They block off the streets and have games, trick-or-treating, music, lots of stuff for the kids. The kids have a blast.”

Exactly four decades ago, Fazio and his uncle and golf-design mentor, former PGA Tour player George Fazio, were trying to jump-start a struggling architecture business that had been relegated to remodeling jobs for U.S. Open courses during the early 1970s recession. They were asked to design Pinehurst No. 6 — the resort’s first course away from the village proper — and that course opened in 1979. Soon after Tom took on an ambitious project on the South Carolina coast near Charleston. Wild Dunes was a major success and, presto, his solo career (with George now in retirement) was off and running.

On this afternoon, Fazio is ruminating about one simple question: Where have all the years gone?

“You blink and all of sudden, your life’s flown by,” he says.

He nods toward Nina, his granddaughter. “Just yesterday I was rushing home to see a dance recital. Now that little girl has grown up and has children of her own.”

It pains him to look around his universe of friends and clients and see some of his favorites having passed, among them William McKee, the founder of Wade Hampton, dying in 2014 at the age of 62, and Billy Armfield, the founder of Eagle Point in Wilmington, passing this July at the age of 81.

“One of my fun jobs over so many years was helping people fulfill their dreams,” Fazio says. “A golf course is a dream for them. We literally build their dreams. It’s really tough for me when we lose guys like this. Every day I go to Wade Hampton, and I can’t believe William McKee is not there. He was younger than me. There’s a vacuum with him not there.”

Fazio’s oldest son, 39-year-old Logan, is now leading the design efforts on much of the firm’s work, and long-time associate Tom Marzolf is in charge of a new course at Adare Manor in Ireland, a job where the client essentially has instructed Fazio and Marzolf to build “the Augusta National of Ireland.” Fazio continues as a consulting architect at Augusta National and Pine Valley, and the firm has just completed a course at Davant Plantation near Ridgeland, S.C., and one called Silo Ridge Field Club two hours north of Manhattan. Construction is continuing on The Summit, a high-end residential community outside Las Vegas, and two courses that will occupy the firm in 2017 are set for Long Island and the Abaco Islands in the Bahamas.

Logan recently supervised a major renovation to Kasumigaseki Country Club’s East course, the host layout for the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games. The course opened for play in 1929 and was designed by one of the Golden Age’s leading architects, Charles Hugh Alison.

Now at the age of 71, Fazio talks with wide-eyed amazement at the next chapter in travel, technology and the business of designing golf courses. Years ago he refused to travel beyond the boundaries of getting back home for dinner; now he views drone clips from Logan of ongoing construction work from far-flung locales.

“I show my phone to Sue and say, ‘Can you imagine this? This is live, this is Logan sending us this. We’re looking at a golf hole,’” Fazio says. “He’s showing me how he’s shaping a bunker or moving a tree. Look at this big tree going across the stream, that’s live. It’s unbelievable the technology available. You don’t have to travel as much and go as often.”

Fazio has long cast a huge design shadow in the Carolinas and certainly in the Sandhills. There are 18 courses across North Carolina and 22 in South Carolina with the Fazio shingle. In Moore County he’s designed Nos. 4, 6 and 8 at Pinehurst, and 36 holes at Forest Creek Golf Club.

“You could take the courses we’ve done in North Carolina or those in South Carolina, and either list would be a nice career for someone,” he says.

Next year is going to be an interesting one for Fazio’s North Carolina portfolio as Eagle Point, his 2000 design in Wilmington, will be the site of the Wells Fargo Championship in May, and Quail Hollow in Charlotte, where he has done significant remodeling over the last two decades, will be the venue for the PGA Championship. Then the U.S. Amateur comes to Pinehurst in 2019, with stroke play qualifying being split on Nos. 2 and 8. The latter opened 20 years ago this fall and was dubbed “The Centennial Course” to celebrate Pinehurst’s 100th anniversary.

“I was at the Masters one year and I called the office for messages,” Fazio says. “I had a note to call (Pinehurst owner) Bob Dedman. I called him and he asked if I’d be interested in designing No. 8. I was sitting there in one of the great places in golf, Augusta National, and got a call to do a course in another great place in golf, Pinehurst. It was like I had won the Masters. It was a great feeling.”

Grandkids, playing golf, some design consultations — it’s a busy life even today for Tom Fazio. We say so long and on my way out of town, I drive past the sprawling Boys & Girls Club complex on Ashe Street, just east of downtown. Over two decades, Fazio has funneled untold dollars into the facility and recently wrote a check toward a new gymnasium. Fazio’s interest piqued in the mid-1990s when he noticed bored teenagers loitering on street corners after school. The clubs touch thousands of youngsters annually with tutoring, arts classes, recreation, athletics and mentorship.

“It’s an unbelievable place,” Fazio says. “Of all the things I’ve ever done, nothing comes close to that. Some people have boats and hobbies. I have golf, which is my business. Then I have my kids and the kids of the Boys & Girls Clubs. That’s been plenty for me.” PS

Hendersonville native, Chapel Hill resident and longtime golf writer Lee Pace has contributed to PineStraw since 2008.

2016 Department Golftown Journal

Money Well Spence

A new day for CCNC’s Dogwood Course

By Lee Pace

First impressions stick.

Robert “Ziggy” Zalzneck was a young accounting intern in Raleigh a long way from his Pennsylvania home during the holidays and was given access to the Country Club of North Carolina’s golf course on Christmas Day 1967. He had the place to himself. “I played 36 holes and it was 70 degrees,” Zalzneck says. “It was the prettiest place I’d ever been my whole life. I’ve loved the place ever since.”

Kris Spence was a young green superintendent at Greensboro Country Club in the mid-1980s when club staff and officers held a planning retreat at CCNC, the private, gated community nestled in the center of a triangle formed by Pinehurst, Southern Pines and Aberdeen.

“I’ll never forget coming onto the property the first time,” Spence remembers. “It was so impressive and set a standard you noticed quickly. It was a standard above even the best private clubs in the state.”

And Alex Bowness, a young homebuilder in Southern Pines, was invited to play the Ellis Maples-designed course in 1977 and knew immediately that he wanted to become a member.

“I’ll never forget playing the 15th hole the first time,” he says of the par-4 that kisses against the shore of Watson’s Lake — one of seven holes on the back nine accented by water. “It was April, the dogwoods were in bloom, and some dog ran across the fairway. It was a spellbinding vision. It took my breath away. I can see it today as if it were yesterday.”

Thirty-nine years later, Bowness is sitting in an Adirondack chair nestled in the pine forest between the fourth hole of the Dogwood golf course and his Williamsburg-style home. His cavalier king spaniel, O. Max, cavorts through the pine straw. It’s been home for Bowness and wife Susan since 2000.

“When we drive through the gate, our shoulders fall down,” he says. “It’s very relaxing. We live 2.4 miles from the gate, and it’s a nice, soft ride. From here we see golfers go by, we see little boats go by with fishermen. There’s even a bald eagle who lives near here; sometimes late in the day you’ll see him swoop through the trees. It’s almost like coming into a park.”

This “park” is now 53 years old, but it has a fresh coat of paint (and grass and sand and tree-scape) following a nine-month shutdown for Spence, now a golf course architect, to make significant changes to the course on agronomic, strategic and maintenance fronts. In nearly two decades of golf design, Spence has specialized in restoring and remodeling vintage courses by Golden Age architects like Donald Ross and then, from the next generation, Ellis Maples, the son of Ross’ green superintendent and construction foreman at Pinehurst, Frank Maples.

“Anyone who comes here has an expectation,” says Spence, who supervised the remodeling of the Dogwood course from November 2015 through Labor Day weekend of 2016. “It’s a lofty one. We can’t hit a triple here, we have to hit a grand slam. The expectation level is very high. The expectation was of excellence. When I came here to walk the course before the interview, it was anything but that. Time had just taken a toll on this golf course.”

While the Sandhills golf community had been built since the turn of the 20th century on resort golf and semi-private courses, a group of North Carolina businessmen believed in the early 1960s the state needed a private club centrally located that could draw members from Raleigh to Charlotte and beyond. Raleigh accountant Dick Urquhart, Greensboro investment banker Hargrove “Skipper” Bowles, Greensboro developer and builder Griswold Smith, and Raleigh attorney James Poyner were the four founding members and soon enticed three dozen “charter members” to join the club. They represented a Who’s Who of North Carolina business and philanthropy, among them C.C. Cameron of Raleigh, George Watts Carr of Durham, Frank Kenan of Durham, James Harris of Charlotte ,and Karl Hudson of Raleigh.

“What could be better than a good club centrally located for nearly all of us, ideally suited for golf, horses, hunting or just plain socializing?” Urquhart asked in a 1962 letter to charter members.

Willard Byrd studied landscape architecture at N.C. State in the late 1940s with an emphasis on land planning and had opened a shop in the land-planning business in Atlanta in 1956. He was hired to draw the master plan for CCNC, which would include approximately 300 residential lots averaging two acres apiece. The golf course was routed at the outset, with the lots to be arranged around the best land for golf. Much discussion ensued at the beginning over the issue of wrapping nine holes of golf around Watson’s Lake, thus eliminating some premier lakefront building lots.

At the time, Byrd was not officially a golf architect, so Maples was retained to collaborate on the creation of the golf course, to be named after the preponderance of dogwood trees on the property. The original plans have both the names of Byrd and Maples on the blueprint for each hole. Byrd created the routing and Maples designed the features — the green shapes and undulations, bunkers and placement of hazards.

“The course should be second to none from the very start,” said Urquhart, whose views that the golf course should get the premier lakefront exposure won out in that discussion.

The course opened in 1963 and was one of the original members of Golf Digest’s 100 Greatest Golf Courses and was site of the 1971 and 1972 Liggett & Myers Match Play Championship on the PGA Tour (won by Dewitt Weaver and Jack Nicklaus) and the 1980 U.S. Amateur (won by Hal Sutton). It has hosted six Southern Amateurs (with Ben Crenshaw and Webb Simpson among the winners), and the 110-year-old championship will return in 2017. It has been the venue for the 2010 U.S. Girls’ Junior Championship as well as multiple Carolinas Golf Association championships, including three Carolinas Amateurs and seven North Carolina Amateurs. The course remained in Digest’s rankings until 1999, when it was muscled out by the many outstanding new courses from the 1990s golf boom.

The original course was so popular the club built a second one and named it the Cardinal in keeping with the state of North Carolina theme. The course opened as 18 holes in 1981, a combination of nine holes each from Maples and Robert Trent Jones. The club converted those greens from bentgrass to Champion Bermuda in 2012 and liked the results, so a similar conversion was planned for the Dogwood, among other significant changes.

“We knew for five or six years we had a significant project ahead of us,” says Director of Golf Jeff Dotson. “The irrigation system was antiquated. The bunkers had reached the end of their useful life. It was a struggle every summer to keep the bent greens healthy, and the Bermuda greens on Cardinal were thriving.

“Dogwood had been one of the top courses in Southeast for half a century. We needed to set it up for the next 50 years.”

Much of the work was structural: convert the greens to Bermuda; install a new irrigation system; rebuild all the bunkers with the easier-to-maintain “Better Billy Bunker” system; replant the fairways with zoysia grass; open the vistas with the removal of several hundred trees that encroached over 50 years.

And much was strategic: bunkers repositioned to challenge more aggressive lines on dogleg holes; green approaches re-sculpted to allow run-up shots; a new green on the par-4 fourth built to reflect Maples’ original design that had never actually been built; a new green on the 15th hole positioned some 25 yards back from the original; a cross-bunker added in the landing area of the second shot on the par-5 18th, giving players more food for thought in planning their approach to the green.

“The structural issues have certainly been fixed,” Spence says. “Aesthetically and strategically, I think it reflects and respects Mr. Maples’ work. I wanted to respect his work but still adjust things to better suit the modern game. If you look through old photos of this course and others he designed, this still has that look and character of what I think he would approve of.”

Spence and Zalzneck were in the first foursome to play the remodeled course when it reopened on Sept. 2, Spence because he shepherded the work and Zalzneck because he’s now the club president.

“Kris was like a proud papa playing the course,” Zalzneck says. “And it was very rewarding for those of us who have worked on this project over three to four years. The changes reposition CCNC for a long time to come.”

And they preserve those first impressions that remain vivid in many minds despite the passage of time — not to mention creating new ones for residents like Alex and Susan Bowness from their Adirondack chairs along the fourth fairway. PS

Lee Pace has written about golf in the Sandhills since the late-1980s; his most recent book is The Golden Age of Pinehurst—The Story of the Rebirth of No. 2.

2016 Department Golftown Journal

The Cruds

The sacred golf buddy trip reaches 100

By Lee Pace

There’s nothing quite like the golf buddy trip: escape, golf, drinking, golf, gambling, golf, cigars, merciless razzing and needling, hangovers, golf and a special brand of childishness among grown men that few other venues can generate. Some guys are skilled players with deep pockets who play the British Open courses from the tips with a trip concierge. Others are 18-handicappers in cargo shorts who make a beeline from the 18th green to a Myrtle Beach honky-tonk.

In February 1967 a group of eight members at Hope Valley Country Club in Durham discovered that particular elixir of adventure and camaraderie that is the golf buddy trip. They ventured to Myrtle Beach when it was a sleepy town with three golf courses, enjoyed the occasion and decided to take another in the fall. Two more, spring and fall, followed in 1968. Ditto 1969, ad infinitum, and since the sixth trip, each has been a 54-hole weekend.

And so this October, this same group of men, certainly with some additions and subtractions over half a century, will travel to The Dunes Club for another 54-hole event — its 100th trip.

“This piece of paper goes back to the very beginning,” Russell Barringer Jr. is saying in his office at his Durham building supply company as he looks at a faded ledger pad. Across it are pencil notations with names, dates, hotels and golf courses dating back to that first trip when LBJ was president and the Super Bowl had just one Roman numeral.

“If you do the math, we’ve played 307 rounds of golf, with three of them on a special trip we made to Scotland in 1974. That’s 304 days of golf in Myrtle Beach, and we’ve missed eight days to weather. That’s remarkable — only eight of 304 rained out.”

He continues.

“Two hundred and twenty-five rounds have been at The Dunes Club.

“Forty-four men have been in our group. Eleven are dead. Three have resigned. Nine are inactive. That leaves 21 active Cruds left.”

Cruds? What’s a Crud?

Barringer relishes telling the story. The original eight golfers — all of them with handicaps of seven or less — enjoyed the trip so much they decided to expand the group and were talking the trip up to other Hope Valley members. The wife of one prospective member overheard a conversation and interjected: “Who’s going on this trip?”

The names were rattled off — all of them up-and-coming businessmen, doctors, lawyers and stockbrokers in their early 30s — and the woman sniffed, “My husband’s not going out of town with those cruds.”

“The name stuck. We’ve been the Cruds ever since,” Barringer says.

Barringer missed the first trip because he and his wife had a previously scheduled trip to Jamaica planned, but he was on the second trip and has not missed one since. The trip to the beach Oct. 13-16 will be his 99th consecutive, longest by a large margin over Bob Baker’s 80-some straight trips.

“Mr. Barringer’s been talking about number 100 for several years now,” says Dennis Nichol, director of golf at The Dunes Club. “That seemed to be his finish line. He’d say, ‘I’m hanging on for a hundred.’

“This is quite a remarkable group. I’ve known of groups coming to the beach for 20, 25 years, but nothing as long as this group. He runs a tight ship. Some groups are a cluster. They’re hung over, no one’s in charge, and sometimes they’re not even at the right golf course. Mr. Barringer is a stickler for the details, and his guys have such a good time and enjoy each other’s company.”

The Cruds did their share of barhopping in the early days, but no one ever got into serious trouble. One Crud was convinced he was beaten up in the bathroom on the back nine at The Dunes, when in truth he was so hungover his cleats tripped him entering the building and he took a nasty fall. And there was an over-served Crud who one year threw some furniture off the second floor balcony of the motel and resorted to putting the damage charge of $365 on his company credit card. That prompted one member to pen a poem by the next trip that opened:

Twas the second of October at Myrtle Beach shore;

The Cruds were assembled for a weekend galore.

Graciously received by the St. John’s Inn;

If only they’d known of the forthcoming din.

“There’s been a lot of teasing and razzing going back and forth,” Barringer says. “Guys will jump your ass over the smallest thing, but it’s never hateful or serious.”

Barringer assumed the role of secretary/treasurer from that fall trip in 1967 and since then has juggled raising three children, running his business and myriad other commitments with operating a taut Cruds ship. He spent 12 years in active Reserve, and eight others of the early Cruds had some military or service background, so it’s no surprise letters to the members might begin, “You will report to the Thunderbird Motel, 73rd Avenue North, no later than 2300 hours,” and “Officers” were appointed for such responsibilities as handicaps, Bloody Marys and even “regrets & remorses.”

The Cruds stayed mostly at the St. John’s Inn in the early days, sometimes at the Thunderbird, and the charge per man in 1968 was $14 per person per day, including room, breakfast and golf. Barringer joined The Dunes Club in 1974 and later bought a condominium and then a single-family home in the neighborhood, so now eight golfers each year can stay in his homes, and several other members have second homes at the beach as well. Most of their golf has been played at The Dunes, but in the early days they ventured out to courses like The Surf Club. Barringer says none of the Cruds have been heavy gamblers, so they put up $25 per man per day for various competitions.

The Saturday night dinner this October promises to be an emotional one. They’ll take a group photo on the 13th hole at The Dunes, each Crud wearing a navy blazer, off-white slacks and the matching shirts that Barringer has custom-ordered every five trips. The usual table will be set in the dining room for the 11 deceased members, with a photo of each golfer at his place setting, and after the invocation and Pledge of Allegiance, each fallen Crud will be recognized and toasted. It will pain Barringer to see two Cruds with medical attendants nearby, one having suffered a stroke and another needing dialysis four days a week.

“I’m going to make a prediction,” Barringer says. “This 100th trip will be the last by the Cruds as we know them. Four or five years ago, I proposed the idea that we think of turning the group over to our sons. I think the group will go in that direction after 100.

“We’ve really been bonded by golf. The Cruds have been such a part of my life, I don’t want to just let it go. That’s one of the reasons I want to perpetuate the group. I want my kids, now grown adults, to enjoy what I’ve had for so many years.”

Enjoy, indeed: the elegance of The Dunes Club and Robert Trent Jones’ 1948 masterpiece. The scent of the salty air off the Atlantic. A Bloody Mary at the turn. A crisp 7-iron and a good pal ready to giggle if you catch it the slightest bit fat. PS

Lee Pace’s first book on Pinehurst, Pinehurst Stories, was released just weeks before the 1991 Tour Championship.

2016 Department Golftown Journal