Keith Hills Prepares to Open Second Course

By LEE PACE

            BUIES CREEK – Dan Maples was two years out of the Landscape Architecture curriculum at the University of Georgia in 1974 when he went to work for his father designing and building a new golf course for Campbell College. Maples chuckles nearly 30 years later, gazing at an expansive bunker wrapping the front and left sides of a putting green.

            “I was going to make my mark on the world of golf design,” he says. “Look at that monster bunker. I learned later from my father that ‘less is more.’ ”

            Maples was touring the course in the spring of 2001 at an important juncture in the evolution of Keith Hills Country Club. Soon the 18-hole facility would be double in size, with 18 fresh holes designed by Dan alone to compliment the original 18 created by Ellis and son almost three decades earlier.

            “I’m excited having a facility with one course from my dad and one from me,” says Dan. “Each course will have its own feel and character. We built some lakes and did some things 30 years ago you couldn’t do today. The new course will play over and around more wetlands — places we can’t touch now because of environmental restrictions. But something my dad did that I still do today—give the guy who can’t play a lick a place to hit the ball and make the scratch guy hit the ball with pinpoint accuracy.”

            The institution is no longer a college — it’s now Campbell University, and its academic mission is one major reason for the new golf course. The Professional Golf Management Program at Campbell was created in 1994 and sanctioned by the PGA of America in 1999. It’s one of 11 such programs nationwide that prepare students for a variety of occupations in the golf industry.

            “We have about 65 freshmen this year in the program and over 160 students total,” says Keith Hills director of golf Jon Hockaday. “The golf course and an expanded practice facility were important to our program. Without the PGM program, I can’t see the university having made this investment.”

            The golf-course design and construction were financed internally by the university and will be offset in the future by residential development around the new golf course and by added greens fee, cart fee and ancillary income. Keith Hills has done approximately 34,000 rounds a year as an 18-hole course and will be able to accommodate substantially more golfers with the new course, particularly during the peak spring and fall weekend times. Greens fees are very reasonable — never more than $45, and that’s for weekend play during peak season. Walking is allowed year around. It does plenty of range-ball and lesson business as well on its 32-acre practice facility that includes more than three acres of hitting turf.

Keith Hills is located about a 30-minute drive south of Raleigh. Ellis Maples, who learned his craft working under Donald Ross of Pinehurst, designed a traditional layout that has long been one of the state’s hidden gems, tucked as it is midway between the Triangle and Pinehurst. Dan routed the second course in 1987, but it took two more routings and more than a decade for the school to cross regulatory and economic hurdles and make the idea a reality.

Nine holes of the new course have been open since early in the year, and the remaining nine will open in late November. The new Maples course will be called the River Course.

 “The neat thing about the new course is that four holes are routed around wetlands, four run along the Cape Fear River, four are in open spaces like a links course,” says Hockaday. “The new course has a lot of variety to it.”

Dan Maples Design Inc. of Pinehurst did its customary turn-key job, with Maples not only designing the course but his in-house construction company building it as well. The River Course will have Crenshaw bent greens.

“We don't just sell plans,” Maples says. “We evaluate each and every course all the way through and build into it what we want. No matter how good the architect, a course is only as good as the builder. That’s why we like to build the course ourselves, if possible.”

Maples & Son built expansive lake areas on the old course but Dan had to leave the natural wetlands alone on the new one in this day and age of tighter environmental regulations. The fairways are more sloping and contoured on the old course, and the flatter site for the new layout at the base of the Cape Fear River required Maples to manufacture several fairways. A man of sharp modern marketing sense, Maples made sure to build a large bunker and fill it with glistening white sand within easy view of motorists on Hwy. 421.

“That’ll be sure to catch peoples’ eye,” Maples says.

Dan has designed more than three dozen golf courses and renovated a dozen more over the years since his beginning with his dad back on a bulldozer in Buies Creek. You can be sure he doesn’t design “monster bunkers” to impress anybody.

“It’s been fun to come back to where you got your start,” Maples says. “I think the new course will be like the one my dad built. The guy who shoots 90 is the one who pays the bills, and you’ve got to make sure he enjoys himself.”