Tobacco Road’s 30-Year Journey

Caption: Tobacco Road

By Lee Pace

Tobacco Road’s 30-Year Journey

It began three decades ago on what was “kind of a lark,” as Mark Stewart remembers. Stewart and a golf buddy and business associate named Tony Woodell had traveled from their homes in Sanford to Myrtle Beach in 1996, and after playing one of the nearly 100 courses along the greater Grand Strand area thought, “Why can’t we do something like this?”

Stewart was president of Lee Concrete Co., and Woodell was vice president of construction. They figured they had access to some land just south of Sanford that was used for farming and sand excavation, to plenty of construction equipment and to some financial resources.

They began researching the golf industry – particularly the design and course-construction segments – as part of an informal feasibility study. Along the way, they met Doc Lachicotte, a partner in the Caledonia and True Blue golf courses in Pawleys Island, S.C., and a two-time client of architect Mike Strantz.

“He told us we either needed to build, on a scale of 1 to 10, a ‘1’ or a ‘10’ – but don’t mess with anything in between,” Stewart says. “At first we were going down the road of a ‘1’ ….”

But the more they talked and studied and pried into the business, the more they decided to go in the other direction. Toward that end, Lachicotte recommended they hire Strantz, a former protégé of Tom Fazio and one of the game’s top new architects.

“We interviewed several architects, and Mike’s work was the most unique we’d seen,” Stewart says. “We figured if we wanted a ‘10’ in this area, this close to Pinehurst, we’d better go with the most exciting architect we could find.”

The result was Tobacco Road Golf Club, which opened in the fall of 1998.

“We wanted a name that would absolutely identify us with where we are, in North Carolina,” Stewart says. “There’s not another golf course with that name and won’t be, either. We’ve protected the name.”

Caption: Tobacco Road

Stewart and Tobacco Road are at the 30-year mark of the idea being hatched and two years away from the same anniversary of the course opening.

“It’s really surreal at times,” Stewart says today. “We’ve covered a lot of ground. It’s been a lot of fun and very gratifying. We would never have made it far even in our dreams.”

“There are so many memories,” adds Mark White, who was 32 years old and one of the course’s construction workers. “Tobacco Road was totally different from anything ever done in this area. It was really neat to be a part of it. As a shaper, you loved the opportunity to be creative. Mike gave us that opportunity. Mike always said, the older a course gets and the more it matures, the better it looks. That’s the case now at Tobacco Road. It never looked better.”

A native of Toledo, Ohio, Strantz graduated from Michigan State in 1978 and began his career working at the Inverness Club, which would be the site of the 1979 U.S. Open. Tom Fazio was modifying parts of the course for the USGA prior to the Open and was impressed with this young member of the grounds crew. Fazio hired him and Strantz moved immediately to Hilton Head to begin working on a Fazio project there. Over the next eight years, Strantz apprenticed on courses such as Moss Creek Plantation, Wild Dunes, Black Diamond Ranch and Osprey Point.

“Golf course design is one of the few trades today where apprenticeship is the only way to get good experience,” said Strantz, who died of cancer in 2005. “A good designer needs to have excellent knowledge of soil structures, engineering and vegetation, as well as a feel for the average golfer. I was fortunate to work with and learn from one of the best in the business.”

Caption: Tobacco Road

Strantz left Fazio in 1987 to work full-time for Wild Dunes, which was reconstructing parts of its Links and Harbor courses, and later worked for developer Larry Young of Myrtle Beach in designing the Parkland Course at The Legends complex. Strantz did his first solo project in 1993 when he was asked to turn an ancient parcel of hunting and fishing lands near Pawleys Island into a course named Caledonia.

That project was a hit, and with his other three courses garnered a variety of accolades within the golf industry and press. Caledonia was named fifth-best public course in America by Golf Digest in 1995 and in the “Top 10 You Can Play” by GOLF Magazine. Up in Virginia, Stonehouse was named “Best New Upscale Public Course” in 1996 by Golf Digest, and Royal New Kent got the same award in 1997.

“Since getting Mike on board this project has turned out to be an ‘11,’” Stewart said on the eve of Tobacco Road’s opening. “It’s more than we ever dreamed about.”

Now with the opening of The Matchbox, a 12-hole par-3 course played through a forest and around a pond adjacent to the big course, Stewart and Tobacco Road continue the Strantz legacy.

“There was nothing like Tobacco Road 30 years ago,” says White. “There’s nothing like The Matchbox today. Courses like this are part of the future of golf.”

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.

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