2002 to be a Quiet Year
for New Courses in the
Old North State

By Shane Sharp,
Contributing Writer

CHARLOTTE, NC -- If you’ve had a chance to play Davis Love III’s course at Barefoot Resort, you know that he and his brother Mark take pleasure in designing “what you see is what you get” style golf courses.

Plenty of room off the tee, and plenty of healthy par 4’s that require some skill with the long irons is what you’ll get with a Love III design. Its no surprise that Love’s design group churned out such a layout at Anderson Creek Golf Club, located between the Sandhills and Fayetteville on Spring Lake.

Anderson Creek sports 48 bunkers, most of them quite large, and water is in play on only three holes. The course plays to over 7,100 yards from the back of the bus, but nary a hole takes the driver out of your hand.

“The holes are straightforward,” said head professional Harold Thomas. “What you see truly is what you get. From the back tees, you can hit it all day if that is what you want, but you also can move up and play the course much shorter – and still face the same challenges. It is a fair test of golf for everyone.”

Unfortunately, “everyone” is not the operative word when discussing the recently opened Eagle Point Golf Course, designed by Tom Fazio.

Fazio, who makes his home in Hendersonville, N.C., has begun to turn his talents towards his homestate over the past four or five years. His artistry is on display in the historic river town of Wilmington, at Eagle Pointe. Fazio fans be warned: Eagle Pointe is a private facility, and memberships are going fast. Porter’s Neck was Fazio’s first design effort in Wilmington, and Eagle Pointe builds on the success of this popular course.

Ah, let’s get back to courses that you can actually play without pretending to be Mr. Underhill from the movie Fletch. Eagle Ridge Golf Club is coming off a successful inaugural year in the Triangle, and is poised to become of the region’s most popular golf courses, according to local reports. From the rich get richer department, three more new tracks opened around the Triangle in late 2001: The Heritage Club in Wake Forest, the Preserve at Jordan Lake and the Old Chatham.

The Tillery Tradition Country Club, designed by J.T. Russell and Sons, is a semi-private facility located in Mount Gilead that has met with rave reviews. Brier Creek Country Club, designed by the Palmer design group, adds yet another private course to the Triangle’s arsenal.

After an explosion of new courses between 1998 and 2000, 2001 was a quiet year in Charlotte. The Springfield Golf Club opened just over the border in Fort Mill, S.C., adding to the Queen City’s roster of high-end, daily fee golf courses.

The Stonebridge Golf Club went out of business and reopened without anyone noticing, and is still one of the best golf courses in the Piedmont for the money. Skybrook Golf Club, which opened in Huntersville in 2000, continues to bedazzle golfers with its elevated tees and greens.

It was even a fairly quiet year down at the beach, where the hum of front-end loaders and bulldozers building new golf courses is often accepted as perfectly normal background noise. The Farmstead Golf Club opened in the fall of 2001, and preliminary reports have it pegged as one of the better inland courses in Brunswick County.

The North Carolina portion of the Grand Strand should see little action in 2002, as the only course on the drawing board is the fourth course at Ocean Ridge Plantation. With the recent tragedies of Sept. 11 and a travel market that is doing its best to regain its old form, no one is complaining about the lack of new golf course activity throughout the state.