By Keith Jarrett When famed golf course designer Tom Fazio came to the mountains of Western North Carolina in the mid 1980s to design Wade Hampton Golf Club in Cashiers, it was love at first sight. Not only with the majestic scenery and views, and the potential to carve beautiful and challenging 18-hole layouts, but…
By David Droschak Growing up a few miles from Willow Creek Country Club in High Point, Thomas Walsh was always the biggest kid on the block. “On the golf course, I was able to overpower people,” says Walsh, who made the varsity golf team at Westchester Country Day School for coach Adam Schwartz as a…
By Brad King He has been there since the beginning. Tom Ducey remembers back in the early 1990s driving to the Stanly County Airport to pick up Tom Fazio, when the then-relatively unknown golf course architect was in the process of building what would become Old North State Club on 5,300-acre Badin Lake, along a…
By DAVID DROSCHAK John McConnell readily admits he never set out to purchase a stable of golf courses across the states of North Carolina and South Carolina. But as properties presented themselves throughout the past decade the business itch inside the former high-tech executive took over. So did his “pure golf” belief and affinity for…
By CARTER CHEVES In Georgia Tech Coach Bruce Heppler’s first season (1995-96), the Yellow Jackets finished dead last at the ACC Championship. In his second year they managed to beat one other team. In year three, Tech made a move to the runner-up position and in year four, the Ramblin’ Wreck won the ACC Championship.…
McConnell Golf, LLC has announced the purchase of its seventh premier golf club in the Carolinas, Sedgefield Country Club in Greensboro, N.C., a renowned Donald Ross design and site of PGA TOUR’s Wyndham Championship. Sedgefield CC’s membership debated the possible sale throughout most of 2010, and after considering all options decided that the sale to…