By Steve Huffman Gillespie Golf Course is recognized as a tight nine-hole tract, as good a municipal course as you’ll find. It’s also recognized as the site of one of the battles in the civil rights movement, a place where a group of black men sought to integrate a course they weren’t allowed to play.…
By Steve Huffman Jim Melvin grew up across the street from Gillespie Park Elementary School, an area of east Greensboro that in the early 1930s remained largely rural. Melvin, now 82, recalled that, “When I was about 7, I watched them build a golf course.” It was a project that was to become Gillespie…
By BRAD KING Private clubs around the Triad and the throughout the country have felt the pinch from on-going economic turmoil and uncertainty. Membership rosters have shrunk considerably. The majority of private clubs has fewer members today than a decade ago. A challenging economy, along with fierce competition and changing lifestyles have made attracting and…
DAVID DROSCHAK Growing up in the Hamilton Lakes section of Greensboro and learning the game from his father as a youngster at Starmount Forest Country Club it was probably a foregone conclusion Rick Barakat would join the private club when he returned to work in the Triad area after living in Charlotte and Virginia.…
By BRAD KING McConnell Golf recently held its annual executive meeting in which administrators from the company’s growing stable of clubs made a variety of presentations to the group covering numerous club-related topics. Michael Shoun, the director of agronomy, titled his presentation, “The Year of Extremes.” Golf course superintendents like Shoun are the caretakers of…
Resort’s Centennial Course celebrates 20th anniversary DAVID DROSCHAK A lot has happened since Pinehurst Resort honored its 100th anniversary two decades ago with the opening of its eighth golf layout – also known as the Centennial Course. Pinehurst brass Robert Dedman Sr. and Don Padgett Sr. are no longer with us, neither is golfing great…
By Robert Kimball After some time away from Bermuda Run Country Club a return visitor would notice nothing different about the journey back to the club. Same Advance, N.C., exit off the highway, same drive past Tanglewood Park, same Kathryn Crosby Bridge and same turn into the gatehouse. Walk up to the front door of…
By BRAD KING When he was contemplating converting the green complexes at historic Pine Needles resort in Southern Pines from bentgrass to an ultra-dwarf strand of bermudagrass, Kelly Miller didn’t have to look far for a good sampling — just across Midland Road, in fact, to the Mid Pines Inn & Golf Club. Miller, the longtime…
One of more than 40 Donald Ross designed golf courses scattered across North Carolina is on the market. The 9-hole Pennrose Park Country Club layout in Reidsville, which opened in 1929 under the ownership of American Tobacco Co. vice president Charles A. Penn, is for sale for $595,000. The Penn family has owned and operated…
By Robert Kimball Whether you strolled the fairways of some of the most exclusive private clubs in the Triad area, or were just a weekend warrior, you have no doubt seen it. The spray painted white lines that marked off “Ground under Repair,” par-4 holes turned into par 3s, the bare patches on what normally…