By STUART HALL On a winter night in December 2008, Tim Kreger was conducting a fundraiser to benefit the golf team at his alma mater, Clemson University. At night’s end there was a tee time to play Prestwick Country Club in Myrtle Beach, S.C., still available. Kreger did not want to see a free round…
By DAVID DROSCHAK Certain victors and venues in sports are forever connected. There is Babe Ruth and The House That Ruth Built, Bobby Jones and Augusta National, and a legendary University of North Carolina hoops coach and the Dean Dome. As the U.S. Open Championship approaches this June – for the third time in the…
By Kurt Dusterberg For more than a decade, Dona Lerner made her name as a golf instructor at The Preserve at Jordan Lake Golf Club outside of Pittsboro. That was her comfort zone, until she asked herself a question. “There’s a time when you say: ‘Am I complacent? Am I making the effort to touch…
Former Holly Springs baseball player turns to collegiate golf By Kurt Dusterberg Wes Conover grew up with athletic genes on both sides of his family. His father played small-college basketball and his grandfather starred at Syracuse. So Wes followed suit on the court at Holly Springs High School. On his mother’s side, he had four…
By STUART HALL Chip Watson hasn’t tired of listening to praise golfers have for Lonnie Poole Golf Course. At times, though, the general manager of the North Carolina State University layout became weary of the first impressions and last words. “When you rode up here, the first thing you saw was the trailer [as…
By DAVID DROSCHAK When the Pinehurst/Southern Pines/Aberdeen Area Convention and Visitors Bureau proclaimed itself the “Home of American Golf” neighboring Lee County wasn’t necessarily in the equation. After all, Sanford was once “The Brick Capital of the World” and very little high-end golf existed. But if there was ever a game changer it was Tobacco…
Campbell University course to celebrate 40th anniversary in 2014 By STUART HALL The two weathered silos standing sentinel by the eighth green of Keith Hills Golf Club’s White Course are as much a conversational design element as they are confounding. The silos, remnants of an old dairy farm that were used to store grain, have…
Former caddy for Payne Stewart shifting golf careers By DAVID DROSCHAK Mike Hicks has read thousands of left-to-right putts on the PGA Tour during his 33 years as a caddy, toted the bag for major champions Payne Stewart and Justin Leonard, traveled the globe, and witnessed professional golf’s psychological pressures up close and personal. A…
By Kurt Dusterberg Knocked flat by the Great Recession, the retirement and second home golf course real estate market across the Triangle and North Carolina is finally coming back to life. For proof, look no further than St. James Plantation, the 6,000-acre golf and marina community near Southport, which has attracted approximately $50 million in…
By JOHN BRASIER No more than a decade ago, replacing healthy bentgrass greens with bermudagrass putting surfaces would have been unpopular and bad for business for elite golf courses along Myrtle Beach’s Grand Strand. “Everybody wanted to play bentgrass greens,” said Max Morgan, vice president of agronomy for National Golf Management’s 22 Myrtle Beach-area courses.…