2. 222 Golf Course Management s February 2000
The sole private course at Barefoot Landing, the Dye course features significant elevational variances and was also the first of the four to be
completed.
known as Town Center that will
be designed in a Charleston/Sava-
nnah/New Orleans style; there’s a
marina with a 500-room hotel; and
ultimately there will be about 12,000
people who live here.”
The golf resort will adjoin the exist-
ing Barefoot Landing retail shopping
district in the heart of Myrtle Beach.
The district includes boardwalks built
over lakes, with shops, restaurants and
nightclubs such as the House of Blues
attracting scads of visitors annually.
The project is the darling of owner
Sammy Puglia and partners Shep
Guiton and Ronny Felts.
“They worked together for a lot of
years,”notes Downing,“and they decided
that if they had a chance, they wanted to
do some golf. And if they got the chance,
they decided to do it in a big way.”
Puglia decided he wanted four of
today’s best-known golf course archi-
tects to design the courses. He lured
Pete Dye, Tom Fazio, Greg Norman and
Davis Love III into the endeavor. If all
this wasn’t enough to give a superinten-
dent nightmares, Puglia hung his hat
on the hook that all four courses would
open on the same day.
“It’s been a tough deal to coordinate
and keep everything going as far as
contractors and subcontractors,”
Downing says. “But dealing with the
architects has not been bad at all. All of
them are very professional. They come
in, they do their jobs and it’s been kind
of fun working with them.”
Each has made at least three per-
sonal site visits, as well as assigning
design associates to oversee the projects
in their absences.
The Dye way
Of course, Pete Dye has always done
things his own way, and this project
was no exception. Unlike other archi-
tects, Dye will only focus on one design
at a time. “I don’t design it and then
give the plans to a contractor for them
to build it,”says Dye.“I bring a group of
young guys, and we build it and there’s
not a drawing on the place. There are a
lot of fine golf courses in Myrtle Beach,
and if I’m going to build one there, I
might as well come up with one that has
some features to it that make it really
look like a golf course.”
Dye spent nearly two months on site
in the late winter and early spring of
1999, and as a result, his course was the
first to be finished.
“My course is ready to play,”he noted
in November. “We could tee it off and
play tomorrow. I always build what I do,
and therefore I think we were able to get
done a little more quickly.”
Downing confirms Dye’s reputation
for hands-on creation of his courses:
“Everything you’ve heard about Pete is
true. He actually does get down in the
dirt and mold it — doesn’t really work
off the plans.You’ll see him get down on
his hands and knees every now and then
with his crew and he actually starts
drawing it in the sand.”
The Dye course differs from the
other venues in several ways. While the
other three will be public, the Dye
course will be private. And while the
property was originally flat, according
3. 224 Golf Course Management s February 2000
The Greg Norman-designed course at Barefoot Landing is the only one of the four adjacent
to the Intercoastal Waterway, and the only site featuring rolling sand dunes and “lunar-look-
ing” indentations.
to the architect, much of the material
excavated from cuts on the other
courses came to the Dye layout, allow-
ing him to create some significant
elevational variance, especially on
the holes that overlook the Inter-
coastal Waterway.
“The dirt from many of the lake
areas went over to Pete’s course,” says
Fazio. “So there was a management of
dirt. In fact, a thing like dirt manage-
ment was a major deal.”
Managing the big picture
Fazio notes that the courses are
interconnected despite being separate,
and credits Downing with a wonderful
job of coordination.
“It was really a fun project, and to
have them all built at the same time is
something,” Fazio says. “Even though
my project was the only thing I was
concerned about, the fact that it was
just one major component of the whole
makes it into a special place. It’s the
kind of thing that sounds good in the
planning stages, and then when you
start to get into details you say, ‘Well
gosh, how are you going to execute
that?’ Then the whole process is just a
matter of management.”
Master drainage is one of those chal-
lenges that cuts across course boundaries.
“Davis’ course is directly adjacent to
our course on the front nine,” Fazio
says. “So we had to balance that from
an engineering standpoint. His course
didn’t affect our course, but still from
the overall engineering aspect, there was
much to program in with the master
drainage and how lakes tied together.
“It wasn’t over-managed or over-
planned, which could happen in a pro-
ject like this. The concentration was on
the big scale, and that’s how you get
those projects done. If you worry about
the detail, you’d say it’s insurmount-
able, but you have to stay with it
because nothing is automatic. Just
because you hire good people doesn’t
automatically mean it’s going to hap-
pen. There could be complications, or
problems, or somebody doesn’t do
their job, and you can’t afford to know
that at the end.”
Downing has talented superinten-
dents managing the courses: Todd
Puckett, a three-year GCSAA member,
on the Dye course; Patrick Donelan, a
member of the association for 14 years,
overseeing both the Norman and Love
courses; and David Zeidler, a one-year
member, on the Fazio course.
Despite all the combined talent and
expertise of architects and superinten-
dents, nothing could have prepared
them for what happened in September.
Weather nightmares
“Hurricane Floyd wreaked a little
havoc,” Downing notes. “It dumped
about 20 inches of rain on us, so we had
a significant amount of erosion. We
were probably within four weeks of
being finished when Floyd hit us.”
The tropical-storm season created a
delay of about two months, with the
postponement of scheduled activities,
the cleanup of devastated areas and the
need to replant turf.
But there was a bright side, Downing
says: “We were fortunate that the high
winds didn’t really hit us. We had been
moving a fair amount of trees with a 14-
foot tree spade, and we did lose a signif-
icant quantity of those. We moved 160
trees and lost about 140, but we’ve
already gone to work replacing those.
“The biggest thing was our erosion,
especially on areas that had been newly
grassed. So a lot of that was just going
back with rakes and shovels, picking the
sod up and throwing it back down
again. Ever since the hurricane came
through and we saw the delay it was
going to cause, we’ve been sodding
everything.”
Having started earlier, the Dye team
had completed all its major earth moving
and most of the grassing before Floyd.
Other designers weren’t so fortunate.
“We had it done, and then Hurricane
Floyd came in and washed away three of
our holes,” says Jason McCoy, chief
design associate for Greg Norman.
Downing says that the hurricane was
a frustrating experience because the
courses were so close to being done:
“Some sand had been in the bunkers for
months, some had just been put in days
before. Some holes we had just sodded
the day before. You bust your butt for a
year to get this thing where it was, and
we’re almost to the end of the tunnel
and to have that happen was extremely
frustrating. It took about a week just to
comprehend where to start to fix it, but
once we got going, it’s gone pretty well.”
It’s hard to plan for or even compre-
hend what 20 inches of rain means to an
excavation of this magnitude. Drainage
systems designed to function in the
most adverse situations were taxed.
“On the Love golf course we had two
48-inch pipes that go from one lake to
4. 228 Golf Course Management s February 2000
another to handle the storm drainage.
Water came over the top of that box and
washed the road out,” recalls Downing.
“There was another place on the Fazio
golf course where the water overflows
into a box and goes into a 36-inch pipe.
It was too much water for it to handle so
it eroded, undermined a bridge and
brought some irrigation pipe out of the
ground. It’s just amazing to see the
damage water can do.”
As weather watchers remember, that
wasn’t the end of the deluge for the
Carolinas. “After Floyd we had
Hurricane Irene come through and
bring about 6 inches of rain, but there
was really no wind at all from her,
either. Then we had one other rain-
storm where we got 3 or 4 inches of
rain. Other than that, it’s been pretty
good,” Downing says, adding that the
experience has made him keep a close
eye on the tropics. “Ever since Floyd we
know where all the depressions are.
We’ve got about six Web sites we go to.”
Although the rainy weather had
pushed the grassing envelope for
Downing, by early November he had
fuzz on nearly every green and was
hopeful that he could nurse the grow-in
through the cold weather. October had
failed to deliver a killing frost and even
produced some daytime temperatures
in the 80s — conditions conducive to
grass growth.
“As with most properties, they kind
of evolve,” Fazio reflects. “Especially
now that we’re basically finished and
have struggled through the storms of
summer. Come time for play, all that
gets forgotten, especially for the guests
that come from out of town — they
don’t even remember there was a storm.
“After you’ve done lots of golf
courses on all kinds of scales, on short
schedules, long schedules, almost noth-
ing seems to phase you. You just can get
it done. You’ve been there before. You
just program it and do it, and when it’s
done you say, ‘Gosh, all those problems
you thought were going to be problems
are no longer problems.’
“To me it’s just good management,
direction and staying on top of it. That’s
what gets the job done.”
The Norman course
“Our piece of land is the only one of the four that has holes adjacent to
the Intercoastal Waterway,” says Jason McCoy, design associate for Norman.
“We have approximately five holes that play along the canal, or either a tee
or green goes against it, so you get good views.”
McCoy believes their piece of property is the most conducive to a
dynamic golf course. “Our site is a rolling, sand-dune type. They had a lot of
dredge spoils back when they were dredging the canal which they had to
pump back up onto our piece of land. That created what we’re calling
“lunar-looking” indentations that Greg fell in love with. We tried to utilize the
natural terrain as much as possible on our project.”
After an inspection of the site, Norman’s team divided the property into
three pieces. Six of the holes resembled the Norman-designed Reserve
Course, including large fairways with sod-walled bunkers.
“Then we took six of the other golf holes and incorporated rough around
those holes, so some of the holes have rough and some don’t,” notes
McCoy. “Then we took another niche and brought in yellow material for
waste bunkers. This created a different look on three other golf holes, and it
really fit with the topography and the land we had to work with. The best
part is that it won’t be six holes running simultaneously. It could be 1, 2, 8
and 9 that look that way, but it’s really broken up and really a different
experience.”
-B.L.
AD INFO #916001
5. Golf Course Management s February 2000 229
Side by side
So in retrospect, which way does
Downing claim is more difficult:
Building four courses back to back or
building them all at once?
“It’s a lot tougher doing four at
once,” he laughs — despite the econ-
omy in bulk purchasing. “It was
extremely intense. We were buying the
materials for most of it to take advan-
tage of the bulk buying power. Our pro-
ject manager, Donny Ray, did a phe-
nomenal job making sure things got
coordinated between the contractors
and making sure roads were built to get
the contractors around. . . Every day
was a new adventure.”
McCoy, Norman’s chief design asso-
ciate, says competition wasn’t evident.
“You get those four egos in there and
you expect the‘I want to outdo this guy’
mentality, but that never really hap-
pened. We never went on anyone else’s
golf course, and I don’t think anyone
came on ours. They all just did their
own thing, and that was how the owner
AD INFO #275003
The Dye course
Pete Dye likes the fact that his chunk of the 2,300 acres was very self-
contained.
“We’ve built a very walkable golf course, and that’s a big thing to have in
the Myrtle Beach area — a golf course that’s very accessible for walking,” he
says.
“We had some wetlands, but we were fortunate enough that we didn’t
have to have big walks between one drive area to another. We could work
around the wetlands. We could hook the whole thing up so it’s continuous and
you don’t have these long green-to-tee walks that sometimes are mandated
by the wetlands and the government.
“We have made an extensive effort to use different local native grasses —
centipede and zoysia — which I think adds a framing to the golf course.
When I first built Harbor Town, it had that look, with bermudas offset by cen-
tipedes and bahias.
“Another thing that’s helped us is that we had four holes that weren’t too
far off the Intercoastal Canal. Therefore we could make some pretty major
changes in elevation, because even though the ground was flat, it was consid-
erably above the water table of the Intercoastal. We were going to put two
major lakes in that area, but when we dug them and saw they were all sand,
we just left it as a big chasm through four holes. It’s quite distinctive.”
-B.L.
6. 230 Golf Course Management s February 2000
AD INFO #224002
Sam Puglia wanted it. Obviously we
wanted to do the best we could because
we are in with such great names. And
what better opportunity can you have
than to place your work side by side
with them?”
“It’s a big step for us,” says Love, now
in his third year of a design business
partnership with brother Mark. “Tom
Fazio has been kind of our inspiration
and our mentor a little bit. He and Rees
Jones have helped us learn some things
in the field. Rees built Ocean Forest at
Sea Island, and I’m on the board at Sea
Island, so I’ve been through two golf
courses with him. It really helped me
see how things are physically done. Plus
they’re right here in my backyard. Rees
let me have a lot of input on Ocean
Forest, and Tom let me have a lot of
input on Seaside. And those are two
top-50-in-the-country golf courses.
That was a great learning experience for
me. It’s like someone plopping down a
graduate course right in your house. I
just learned from two of the best right
there.
“Pete, who I’ve known since I was
very young, is someone I’ve always
looked up to in the business,” Love con-
tinues. “And Greg is ahead of us as a
player getting established in the business.
He really was the reason we ended up
with the job. He talked the Barefoot peo-
ple into giving us a shot, and we appreci-
ated that. That’s why we made sure we
watched what he did so we didn’t step on
any toes.We all worked together real well.
It was pretty amazing.”
Fazio says comparisons are
inevitable. “Every place we work the
The Fazio course
“The scale of this golf course is
very large,” notes Tom Fazio. “There’s
a lot of water that’s in place because
that’s how you gain dirt to create ele-
vation changes. The feeling of it is
big scale in terms of width and size
of golf. By being able to move a lot of
earth to create elevations and con-
tours, that is a distinguishing fea-
ture.”
The trick for the Fazio team was
to blend the layout into the rather
level site.
“We wanted to make it look as
natural as possible, so there’s been a
lot of landscaping, a lot of new trees
planted — specimen trees, and a lot
of aquatic plants on the edge of lakes
and around the forms to give you the
feeling of maturity,” he explains.
“Believe it or not, there weren’t
any pre-set, pre-determined criteria
for a certain style or type of golf
course. Obviously if you do your
homework when you hire someone,
you’re going to find out what type of
golf course you’re going to have. In
this particular case, the client
allowed us to program in the kind of
golf course we believed would fit
there, and we did that.”
-B.L.
7. Golf Course Management s February 2000 231
AD INFO #655002
expectation level is always high,” he notes. “So even though there
are four golf courses under one umbrella, it seems all my life I’ve
worked in areas where Pete Dye has a golf course, or Jack Nicklaus
or Arnold Palmer — it’s part of life. People are going to compare
them no matter what. They just happen to be on the same project.
At Myrtle Beach there are so many golf courses, it’s that way all
the time.”
Love says he looks forward to golf at Barefoot.
“You know I’ll be happy to go there and play all four courses to
see what they’re like,” he says. “And if I’m interested in playing
them, I bet a lot of other people will be too. I think the Barefoot
guys are thrilled that they’ve got four completely different golf
courses. And they all started on the same day — they’re not all
going to finish on the same day, but they’ll all be opening the
same day.”
Opening day is scheduled for about the first of March.
Downing isn’t sure of the exact day, but he knows one thing:
“They’ll all open on the same day, all four. Four or none,” he adds
with a hearty laugh.
Bob Labbance is editor of Vermont, New Hampshire, New York and Connecticut golf
magazines.
The Love course
“It’s pretty much just flat pine forest. It had a little bit of
movement to it, but nothing dramatic,” says Davis Love III of
his course at Barefoot. “It had a few wetlands you had to
avoid and maybe a few existing canals that were there to
drain the property, but basically it was just flat.”
Love clearly wanted to install a course that fit with the
others but didn’t mimic them.
“We knew what Pete was going to do, there was not
going to be much surprise there. Having spent a little time
watching Fazio work, I knew what he was going to do. And
Greg’s course is beautiful — it’s very flat, down on the
ground, his sod-walled bunkers are maybe the highest fea-
ture on the course,” Love says.
“So we tried to come in the middle, to build some land
forms where two greens and two tees would come together
on an area that made you feel like you were playing up and
downhill a little bit, but that didn’t make you feel like there
was a green stuck up in the air. (We had to) move a great
amount of dirt into those areas but then try to make it look
natural.
“We actually built some ruins in one area, including an old
wall that comes to what looks like an old tumbled-down
house ruin. A couple of holes come up against the wall and
the carts drive between the walls. We just tried to give the
golf course some kind of feeling that there was something
there before.”
-B.L.
G C M
