Hillandale a Durham Tradition for More Than 90 Years

 By Patrick Jones

When you speak of God’s country to Zack Veasey, you are likely discussing the 111 acres comprising Hillandale Golf Course – a manicured land of fairways and greens that have provided him with a comfortable and defining personal, geographic and professional boundary for three decades of his life.

Veasey, the head professional at Hillandale since 1989, started hanging around the Durham golfing institution as a self-described 12-year-old “shop rat” interested in absorbing everything he could. He developed enough game to play collegiately nearby at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, graduated in 1982, decided to forego a potential life as a lawyer and returned to Hillandale to become the eventual groomed successor to longtime head pro Luke Veasey (a distant relative). 

“It’s where I grew up,” Zack Veasey said of Hillandale. “He (Luke Veasey) allowed me to come around. I picked up the range balls and put up carts when I was old enough. I emptied the trash and all that other stuff and hit all of the golf balls that I could possibly hit. It was kind of my home.”

When Veasey finished school at Carolina, he said Luke Veasey “laid out a plan for me” to take over the head professional’s job, a position Luke Veasey had held since 1960. “If things worked out, and I liked it, and continued to do what he wanted me to do, then I would have the opportunity to take his place upon his retirement, which is what happened on Jan. 1, 1989.” 

Who says you can’t go home again? It’s easy if you never left it and didn’t want to in the first place.

Through a combination of fate, predestination and growing where you’re planted, Veasey has been fortunate enough to spend the past 20 years pursuing his chosen profession in the same square footage where he chased his boyhood passion.

Hillandale, for those not familiar, is not some perfectly coiffed, pricey track laid out by the latest and greatest architect du jour. It is a modestly priced ($25 weekends) everyman’s destination that is beloved more for its city of Durham historic, social and philanthropic roots than for the lushness of its fairways and the trueness of its greens.

The mission of the course, according to Veasey, is “to be very community involved,” per the instructions of John Sprunt Hill, who left the Hillandale property in his will to be used by the people of Durham. The golf course is still held in trust by Central Carolina Bank, which the Hill family also owned at the time.

Hillandale Golf Course was originally called the Durham Country Club and opened in 1911 as the first golfing opportunity ever in the city.  The esteemed Donald Ross designed the original nine holes. An additional nine was later built and the original nine then renovated by Perry Maxwell, who, for the edification of non-architect groupies, designed Southern Hills in Tulsa and had a hand in renovations at Augusta National and the Colonial Country Club in Fort Worth, Texas.

In 1958, Hillandale shifted locations on the donated property by erecting a new clubhouse and building 18 new holes designed by George Cobb that opened in 1960. Veasey is fairly certain that some of today’s Hillandale layout still touches parts of the original Durham Country Club layout.

One of Hillandale’s most acclaimed features is not the course – relatively short at 6,300 yards, flat on the front, hilly on the back – but its award-winning pro shop.  Veasey (Luke) and Veasey (Zack) have over the decades squeezed a nationally recognized retailing dynamo out of 2,000 square feet of floor and wall space.

Most golf course pro shops settle for  having their logos slapped on clothing items and making a few clubs and putters available for purchase.  Hillandale takes the rare approach of going toe to toe with the discount store big boys by stocking its shelves with an extensive inventory of “hard goods” from almost every major club manufacturer.

And it’s done it well. The PGA of America has rated Hillandale Golf Shop as one of the Top 100 golf shops in the country for the last 14 years. Luke Veasey, who still lives off Hillandale’s fifth hole, was voted the PGA of America Merchandiser of the Year in 1988. Zack Veasey won the same award in 1992 and again in 1999.

“We basically take advantage of what we believe we can do well,” said Veasey. “And that is to utilize the PGA golf professionals we have on our staff and who our customers have faith and trust in. The pros go out on the range with our customers. We allow the customers to demo the product on the range, not a net, where they can, with the help of a knowledgeable golf professional who understands the swing and knows how to make things happen, find the right golf equipment for them and get the most out of their purchase.

“In a nutshell, that’s the philosophy of what we do,” said Veasey. “That’s our competitive advantage and what we try to focus on.”

The Hillandale pro shop has also prospered over the years in used clubs. They accept experienced clubs on trade, refurbish them and sell them again on what Veasey called the “secondary market.” He said it accounts for almost 40 percent of their business in the sale of equipment.

“It’s very unusual for a facility such as ours to focus on hard goods,” said Veasey, who is currently the president of the Carolinas Section of the PGA of America. “Most golf professionals have kind of given up on the retail aspects other than apparel. We’ve found it (selling hard goods) to be a niche of ours and if it’s done correctly, it can be a really nice business. It’s something Luke (Veasey) started well back when he was in business and it’s something we picked up on and continued to focus on and improve upon over the years.”

To the delight of many nostalgic and longtime Triangle golfers, Hillandale Golf Course has also once again picked back up on hosting the Durham Herald-Sun Golf Classic. The weeklong event was held at Hillandale for many years before the tournament and course parted ways in 1984. After an 18-year absence, the 56^th Herald-Sun Classic returned to the course this past June.

For Veasey, who first played in the event in 1974, getting the Herald-Sun Classic back to Hillandale was getting back a piece of himself.

“The tournament has always held a special place in my heart,” he said. “It was the highlight of the summer for me when I was working here as a kid. It’s one of the things that helped spur my interest in the game.

“It’s always been a very phenomenal little golf tournament,” Veasey added. “It was such a community-type event where people came out and watched you play. And because the newspaper sponsored the event, they provided a lot of coverage.”

Veasey said getting the tournament back to Hillandale was something he had been trying to do over the past five or six years, though he said he did not pursue the tournament “by any stretch of the imagination.”

Regular dialogues over the years with John Parham, the tournament’s director, finally turned into an agreement to reunite the event and Hillandale.

“John has a passion for the Herald-Sun Golf Classic and I have a passion for Hillandale Golf Course,” said Veasey. “And it just worked out so that both of us were able to agree on what was best for both entities. Hopefully, it will be a long relationship.”

Lasting commitments are something Veasey seems to have a handle on after spending his formative days and 20 years of his professional life thriving in the boundless 111 acres that make up Hillandale.

He wouldn’t have it any other way.

“If I’m fortunate, I will be here until I’m able to retire from this business,” said Veasey. “Those are my plans because it is my home. As far as I’m concerned, it’s the best job in the golf business. I certainly don’t want to go anywhere else.”