Sandhills Pours Double Dose
By Lee Pace
They came from across the Eastern states and even the Midwest on a crisp morning in October 2023, these aficionados of the golf course artistry of Mike Strantz.
The venue was Tot Hill Farm, the course outside Asheboro, North Carolina, cobbled a quarter of a century earlier from the foothills of the Uwharrie National Forest and just reopened after an ownership change and major renovation. The occasion was the Iron Maverick, a golf outing for nearly 100 golfers drinking the Strantz Kool-Aid that have been periodically staged over the years at the seven Strantz courses in the Carolinas and Virginia.
Strantz was a former golf course maintenance worker in Toledo, Ohio, who caught on with Tom Fazio’s design team in the late 1970s. Strantz worked a decade with Fazio and then set off on his own from his base outside Charleston, South Carolina, where he had moved to help Fazio on his acclaimed Wild Dunes design of the early 1980s. Strantz designed eight courses, working them one at a time and setting up camp for a year or more at each site. He was a rising star in the industry before his life was cut short by cancer in 2005. He was only 50 years old.
His résumé: Caledonia Golf & Fish Club, Pawleys Island, South Carolina, 1994; Royal New Kent, Providence Forge, Virginia, 1996; Stonehouse, Toano, Virginia, 1996; True Blue Golf Club, Pawleys Island, 1998; Tobacco Road, Sanford, North Carolina, 1998; Tot Hill Farm, Asheboro, 2000; Bulls Bay, Awendaw, South Carolina, 2002; and Monterey Peninsula Country Club Shore Course, Pebble Beach, California, 2004.
Strantz named his design firm Maverick Golf Design for excellent reasons. He rode a horse around the property and made intricate sketches of every hole, then turned the drawings over to his shapers – and he shaped many holes and features himself. He would be covered in dirt after working the equipment all day or in paint after marking the lines of the various layers of the course – fairways, fescue rough, love grass, areas to be left in their natural sandy state.
“His golf courses were very strong; they were very artistic and had a lot of flair in terms of elevation and steep slopes,” Fazio said. “All of them are very memorable, just as Mike himself was very memorable. It’s a shame we lost him so soon.”
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.