Scenic vistas enhance golf in the mountains

By TOM McAULIFFE

Roaring Gap, located in the scenic "West Forty" of the Triad, has been a favorite golf getaway since Donald Ross' classic mountain design, Roaring Gap Golf Club opened in 1914. Fifty years would pass before George Cobb's work debuted at nearby High Meadows.

But it's a third entry in the shadow of Stone Mountain that of late has become the darling of the print media. The stunning vistas found at Olde Beau may be the most photographed in the southeast, gracing more magazine covers than Jennifer Lopez.

"They come just to take pictures," marvels Gordon Fulp, longtime PGA club professional, Roaring Gap resident, and Olde Beau ambassador. "You have to see it to believe it."

Fulp would know. He's a longtime panelist and course rater with Golf Digest participating in the magazine's annual Top 100 Golf Course feature.

Hiking, fishing in the Mitchell River Gorge, and abundant wildlife are ancillary attractions to a layout with more rise and run than a lighthouse staircase.

If it were a ski resort, the more than 1,000 feet in elevation change at Billy Satterfield's creation would surpass the vertical drop at Ski Beech. And since its inception in 1991, built on a breathtaking tract once owned by R.J. Reynolds, thousands of golfers have left astounded by its raw beauty.

"To put the golf course in the face of the spectacular views you're confronted with terrain changes," Fulp said of a layout that's been called an adventure in cart navigation. "But this is one of the prettiest places you'll ever play."

And conditions over the course straddling the Continental Divide, buffeted by nurturing winds, sunshine and ample moisture "are always terrific," Fulp said.

Satterfield and a consortium of original partners are gone now, replaced by Curt Kennington and Wake Forest alum Billy Packer who are determined to take Olde Beau to the next level. Refinements will follow with lots of room to grow a first-tier mountain golf community over the 800-acre property.
"Billy Packer's a hands-on guy, terrific to work with," Fulp noted. "The staff thinks the world of him because he's always ready to listen."

Members enjoy preferred morning tee times, but public play is encouraged with villas and cottages readily available for overnight outings. And the dining facilities at Olde Beau, open to guests with proper attire, will not disappoint.

But Fulp points to his greens crew, under the direction of Frank Smith, as the key to the golf experience at Olde Beau.

"They're a cohesive group of professionals," Fulp said. And they're proud of their golf course."

Mount Mitchell
Back in 1972 Lee King and Jim Floyd were 26 years old, fresh out of the service and selling mountain property on the promise a new golf course would soon grace the land.

In the Yancey County seat of Burnsville, where the two shared an apartment, local murmurings in the local diner were more than skeptical.

"I think they were laughing at us," Floyd recalled.

But the project that would become the Mount Mitchell Golf Club had a few things going it. The primary tract consisted of 420 acres of pristine, verdant river basin. Two miles from the Blue Ridge Parkway and surrounded by 60 thousand acres of the Pisgah National Forest, the property is the first privately held ground to welcome the flowing headwaters of the south fork of the Toe River.

Heralded English architect Fred Hawtree was entrusted with the virgin mountain terrain and left behind an unsullied masterpiece.

"The land was just so right," Floyd remembered. "It was an easy course to build from that standpoint."

Twisting in the shadows of the Black Mountains and Mount Mitchell, eastern America's highest peak, the trout waters of the Toe impact strategy on 12 holes. The multi-tiered greens are of the perfect shape and configuration for the fairway each crowns. Like a thoroughbred, the golf course has great lines.

Since its coming-out party in 1975, Mount Mitchell has wowed visitors with its emerald mantel of bentgrass from tee to green. Tri-plex striped fairways offered an agronomic look ahead of its time in the high country and changed mountain golf mowing patterns forever. Greens superintendent Jim Laughridge trudged the laurel hills with Hawtree from the beginning and remains at Mount Mitchell to this day.

Today, where hunter's once shared tall tales at a place called the Guilty Lodge, town homes and houses overlook the golf course. The full-service restaurant has earned unanimous praise and the Hawtree Pub, with all ABC permits, makes for a more than adequate 19th hole in the memory of the late golf course architect. "Looking back at how we struggled at first its very rewarding," Floyd said of the maturation of the Mount Mitchell Golf Club. "Our customers have been very loyal as we've become more of a destination resort. Today, a typical group staying with us is two foursomes and on weekends groups constitute the bulk of our play."

No one's laughing now, unless it's at another tall tale told at a post-round card table.

Sugar Mountain
Avery County, it was once said, is home to "one stoplight and four championship golf courses."

While the heralded clubs at Grandfather, Linville, Linville Ridge and Elk River fostered that description its no small irony that smack dab in the center of their ring of influence sits a municipal golf course worthy of praise.

The golf course at Sugar Mountain a municipal course worth a closer look. The Sugar Mountain Golf Club opened for play in 1974, a collaboration of design by Frank Duane and Arnold Palmer. Built over 60 verdant acres the course features nine par-3s, eight par-4s, and a single par-5. In spite of a fluid routing that courses through a property rich in laurel and rushing streams, putting surfaces second to none, and affordable access, the diminutive Sugar Mountain layout is sometimes hastily dismissed for its 4,560 yard maximum length.

And that's too bad.

In a region dominated by private facilities, Sugar Mountain is truly everyman's golf club.

From the senior player comforted by the layout's 325-yard par-4s to the A-player tackling the 200-yard par-3s through a single-file chute, the course possesses a universal appeal.

But the hallmark of the Sugar Mountain golf course is the greens. The grass is Poa Annuae Trivialis, that's 'Po' for short and sensational for sure. Putting east to west assures lots of movement while putting north to south demands the finest touch. Creativity, imagination and finesse get a workout in the three to four hours required to complete this executive course.

And just when you thought the game was getting too expensive in the High Country make a note. In the spring and fall, walkers can play for $10 everyday at 3pm. From Memorial Day to Labor Day, hoofers pay just $12 at four bells. Eighteen holes with cart costs from $22 to $37 through its seven month season of April through October. So add "value" to Sugar Mountain's list of superlatives.

This track's a struttin' bantam with the punch of a middleweight – a knockout waiting to happen.

Mountain Aire
This month, When the golf course at Jefferson Landing joins the ranks of private clubs after a decade as a semi-private facility, Ashe County's public golf options will be slashed by half. Now only Mountain Aire Golf Club stands alone as a public access course in a county famous for its hospitality, Fraser firs and rolling mountain terrain. But rest assured, visitors to the West Jefferson layout, which opened as a homemade nine-holer in 1948, will find all of those traits in abundance.

What you won't find is much semblance of the original layout routed by a committee of community-minded friends and neighbors. Mountain Aire's gradual evolution to its current 18-hole championship length took some time under the direction of owner Mark Hagel, but the end result is a popular public mountain venue easily described as friendly and affordable.

And the golf ain't bad either.

Hagel joined the operation in 1974 three years after father Carl bought the course. Dedicated to improving the existing holes, the family secured the necessary acreage for a second nine that opened for play in 1989. Landscape architect Dennis Lehmann developed the plan that included the blueprint for Fairway Ridge, a subdivision of homesites and townhouses. A decade later three brand new holes were unveiled, replacing three of the layout's weaker holes as Lehmann's re-mastered course configuration made its long-awaited debut, to great reviews, in 1999.

"We're not trying to match the new holes with the old," Hagel said during construction of the second nine. "We intend to build the new holes the way we want them and make changes to the old course to bring it in line with the new."

Credit Lehmann, whose contributions at Jefferson Landing are acknowledged by architect of record, Larry Nelson, for the natural flow of holes that is today's Mountain Aire. Only six of the original holes remain in play, but they have been modernized and improved for the better and feature the same outstanding bent grass putting surfaces found on the new holes. And while the course is characterized by the gently rolling topography typical of Ashe County farmland, two-hundred foot vertical drops from the tee boxes at the third and sixth holes highlight an outstanding mountain golf experience.

Outside the spacious clubhouse you'll find as fine a practice range as any found in the mountains, certainly in the public golf sector. The grill room is better than most, with maybe the world's best chicken salad and chili dogs worthy of a Cincinnati diner.

But in the end, visitors to Mountain Aire are sure to sense the neighborliness and community of golfers that is a 55-year legacy in West Jefferson.