A Start in the Sandhills

How The Sandhills Helped Launch Fazio Career

Tom Fazio began working in golf design in 1962 at the age of 17 for his uncle George, a former PGA Tour player. They had several notable courses to their resume—Edgewood Tahoe, Jupiter Hills and Palmetto Dunes, among them.

There was a major downturn in the world economy in 1974 that trickled to the golf business, and the Fazios were relegated for several years to handling a lot of renovations for major championships — Winged Foot for the 1974 Open, for example.

“There was next-to-nothing new built in 1974 and ’75,” Fazio says. “Then the call came from Pinehurst.”

That was in 1976.

“We were a struggling business trying to get known and get recognition,” he says. “No. 6 coming along when it did was a dream come true. It was the biggest piece of cheese we’d ever thought about. It had amazing potential.”

George and Tom, headquartered in South Florida at the time, came to Pinehurst for a meeting and saw the land plan already drawn up for the site just north of the Village of Pinehurst.

“You looked at the contour map and saw there was certainly great potential,” Fazio says. “Of all the places you can design a golf course, I’ve always felt the Pinehurst region was the most natural, one of the easiest.

“All of that went well until we got to the last part of the conversation. It looks and sounds good, but you’re still waiting to get to the bottom line. What are you going to get paid?

“They wanted to do a turnkey price for $650,000. That was reasonable, not out of line, but it did take a little of the sizzle out of it because it would be restrictive. Because if it was Pinehurst, we wanted to be a part of the tradition, it was something we wanted to be a part of. We probably would have done it for $350,000.”

Nearly 20 years later, Fazio had assumed one of the top spots in the hierarchy of golf-course design and was attending the Masters in Augusta when he phoned his office for messages. He was told he needed to call Robert Dedman, owner of ClubCorp and its flagship resort property, Pinehurst. Fazio got Dedman on the phone and learned that Pinehurst wanted to build a course in honor of its centennial, which would be celebrated in 1995. Would Fazio be interested in the job?

“I was sitting there in one of the great places in golf, Augusta National, and got a call to do a course in another great place in golf, Pinehurst,” Fazio says. “It was like I had won the Masters. It was a great feeling.”

During that same mid-1990s time frame, Fazio was visiting Pine Valley Golf Club and struck up a conversation in the bar with Terry Brown, a Chicago native whose family had long been regular Pinehurst visitors and landowners via their passions for golf and equestrian sports. Brown and his family wanted to develop their land into a residential community with two golf courses. That conversation led to them retaining Fazio to create both layouts — the South Course opening in 1996 and the North following in 2005. Neither Brown at Forest Creek nor Pinehurst owner Robert Dedman Sr. had a problem with Fazio designing two courses just two miles apart as the crow flies. Forest Creek would be a private club within a residential community and No. 8 was a resort course — ergo two separate marketing pools.

Today in the Sandhills, you can play Fazio’s courses at No. 6 and No. 8 at the resort and 36 holes at Forest Creek. Fazio also designed a totally new Pinehurst No. 4 in 1999, and that routing remains mostly intact (one hole removed, one new hole added) though the look and personality of the course have changed since the 2017 Gil Hanse “re-imagining” of that course.

Fazio, design associate Blake Bickford and construction chief Ron Smith are supervising the 2026 renovation of the South Course at Forest Creek, which will open in October. He’s always receptive to a reason to visit the Sandhills.

“To me, the words golf and Pinehurst are synonymous,” says Fazio. “Why go to Pinehurst? To play golf. It’s a community that lives and breathes golf and loves golf. Not many places can be described in one word. But Pinehurst can, and that word is ‘golf.’ That makes the standard for outstanding design very high. Pinehurst is such a special place for golf. Put Donald Ross in the equation and it’s even more special. It’s been a historical destination for over a century. There’s a special feeling — a feeling for golf and its tradition and history and longevity.”

Lee Pace is a freelance golf writer who has written about Sandhills area golf for four decades and is the author of club histories about Pinehurst Resort & Country Club, Mid Pines, Pine Needles and Forest Creek.

Other Blogs