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 the…
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.…
Lonnie Poole Golf Course has become a certified Audubon International Signature Golf Sanctuary and member of the organization’s Signature Program. Charles Peacock, a professor in North Carolina State’s crop science department, emphasizes that the Signature Program is an elite Audubon International category. Peacock, who has worked for the past 15 years with close to 200…
By DAVID DROSCHAK Kyle Franz has worked as an understudy for some of the top architects in the business – Tom Doak, Bill Coore, Ben Crenshaw and Gil Hanse – and on some of the best projects – the Pinehurst No. 2 restoration and currently the 2016 Olympic course in Rio de Janeiro – prior…
Facing greens that were last redone in the 1960s and some brutal North Carolina summers, Pine Needles and Mid Pines Resort president Kelly Miller knew he had to pull the trigger sooner than later on his struggling putting surfaces at Mid Pines. Miller met young architect Kyle Franz a few years ago while he was…
By STUART HALL In Steve Johnson’s 30-plus years of working in the golf industry, only once in his travels has he found a place as unique a golf destination as Pinehurst. “The first time I went to St. Andrews I was struck by how alike the two places are,” said Johnson, regional general manager for…