A Look at Golf’s New Crop of Course Developers

A handful of enterprising, thirty- and forty-something self-starters are turning the course development model on its head.

Mavis Staples and David Bowie are making a lot of noise in the background. They’re so loud in fact, Nick Schreiber has to excuse himself from a phone conversation to call for silence. Schreiber is at home and his dogs want some attention.

Unless he is on the phone, the 38-year-old is always happy to love on his doodles, both of whom have been living it up the last few months as Schreiber has put his actual job as sales and business development partner at the venture capital firm Hypothesis almost entirely to one side. He’s been focusing on Old Barnwell, the golf course he is developing a few miles southeast of Aiken, South Carolina, and about a 40-minute drive due east from Augusta National Golf Club.

“They’re out with me every day at the course,” Schreiber says. “And they’re not the only ones. We have dogs all over the place.”

Schreiber is one of a group of golf-loving visionaries in their 30s or 40s with business acumen and who want to build something great and lasting who are currently developing a golf course. Taking on such a venture of this magnitude independently requires a laundry list of items — finances, expertise, contacts, property, flexibility in schedule, positive reinforcement and, perhaps most of all, an absolute belief in what you’re doing.

Schreiber concedes he was fortunate to have a couple of those things. He’d done well financially, having sold a human resources-engagement company he co-founded in 2012 and whose clients included United Airlines, Hitachi and Spanx. Also, he had the support of his wife Sarah, who helped him make some of the project’s early decisions, including being responsible for the development’s name and choosing the logo. And though he makes light of the fact, he also had the guts to enter unknown territory.

What he didn’t have, though, was the necessary golf knowledge and experience. He needed a good deal of assistance picking the right site, but had virtually no contacts in the golf industry and was busy establishing himself at Hypothesis.

“It was something I’d dreamed of,” says Schreiber, “but I really never thought this would or could happen. When Sarah and I first discussed the idea of building a mission-driven club, she encouraged me to get a sense of how realistic it was. And, like her, I never thought anything would come of it.”

As a fan of classic courses having caddied at some of Chicago’s oldest and best in his youth and someone who had become increasingly aware of, and interested in, course architecture over the last few years, Schreiber had naturally come across the names of Brian Schneider and Blake Conant. Schneider is a member of Tom Doak’s Renaissance Golf team who had helped design, build and restore some of the world’s finest courses. Conant is a talented shaper and course construction expert who had worked on a number of Doak’s projects including Dismal River (Red Course) in Mullen, Nebraska; St. Patrick’s in Ireland; and the renovation of Bel-Air Country Club in Los Angeles. They each remain at their current companies — Schneider at Renaissance Golf and Conant at Dundee Golf — but the two now work closely together."

Schreiber made the calls, hit it off with both and hired them to help find suitable ground on which to build his golf course. There would be three actually — the main course and kids course opening in 2023, and The Gilroy (named for Schreiber’s father’s middle name), where Schreiber told the designers they could “break the rules,” coming in 2024. The courses would be integral to the socially-minded, but golf-centric, club that will give playing opportunities to students at noted Historically Black Colleges and Universities Paine College in Augusta and Voorhees College in Denmark, South Carolina, as well as aspiring women professionals.

“Nick has been such a pleasure to work with,” says Schneider. “He’s really focusing on building a special club and was astute enough to recognize his limitations and delegate accordingly. As with so many young developers — Blake and I have had phone calls from quite a few — I’m impressed with his level of energy and commitment. His lack of ego is also very welcome.”

Similarly wet behind the ears, and aware of what he could and couldn’t bring to the table, was Brad Ralston, 45, a former banker who had bought out the co-founders of grocery store point-of-sale system provider Truno where he has now been the CEO and chairman of the board for 11 years. The site for Ralston’s course, named Red Feather, was a flat, 135-acre cotton field 12 miles south of downtown Lubbock, Texas. Ralston, who has invested $5 million of his own money into the project, and his partners originally earmarked the site for a residential neighborhood, but since it was part of a floodplain, the decision to switch to a golf course was made.

Ralston certainly has played a bit of golf, but had no idea how to build a golf course or who could turn so featureless a site into a halfway decent layout. So he did his research and read all about a course called Sweetens Cove Golf Club in South Pittsburg, Tennessee, where two largely unknown designers — Rob Collins and Tad King —had taken a dreary nine-holer and turned it into a hugely popular course with a devoted following. And then he traveled nearly three states north to see a new course Collins and King were building in the remote and heaving Loess Hills of northeastern Nebraska.

Landmand Golf Club was quite unlike anything Ralston had seen before. Numerous architects would likely have said a course couldn’t be built on such massive slopes, but Collins and King saw the potential especially after discovering the soil underfoot was a soft, sandy, almost damp glacial till that didn’t crumble but would yield to Caterpillar D8 bulldozers and on which 007 creeping bentgrass (greens) and bluegrass/ryegrass (fairways) would thrive. Ralston was hugely impressed and eager for Collins and King to see his site in West Texas.

He also spoke with OCM’s (Ogilvy, Cocking & Mead) Geoff Ogilvy, the 2006 US Open champion who has family ties in the area, “I really liked the idea of working with Geoff,” says Ralston, “but ultimately found it a little difficult dealing with a company based in Australia.”

So Collins and King got the job.

“I asked them if they could design something with even a tenth the drama of Landmand,” says Ralston. “They said they could match it. I didn’t see how, but they convinced me.”

Ralston admits he has taken a big risk but, without betraying even the slightest hint of cockiness, says he is willing to bet Red Feather proves successful.

“I certainly don’t know that,” he stresses, “but I think I’m good at bringing the right people on board. And the response we’re seeing from prospective members is very encouraging.”

The third and fourth holes have been shaped at Old Barnwell, located near Aiken, South Carolina and which is on pace to open in 2023.  / Cameron Lilly

According to Ralston, the standard initiation fee to join Red Feather will be $50,000 and 40 individuals had signed up by the end of July. Five ‘Legacy members’ are each paying $250,000. There will also be social and national members. Annual revenue from the various membership categories is estimated to be around $3 million.

Word of Ralston’s plans to build a laid-back club alongside a lazy river that will feature a swim-up bar, poolside cabanas, a concierge and numerous other high-end attractions is drawing much interest. And photos of Collins and King’s extensive earth-moving — roughly 1.5 million cubic yards have been moved to create Landmand-like valleys, ridges, bowls, shelfs and abrupt fall-offs — have also got people talking. Shots of sod being laid — Ralston spent $3 million on sod rather than sprigging the course for $400K because he wants it to be in tournament condition by July 2023 — and the appointment of former PGA Tour player J.J. Killeen as general manager have likewise guaranteed Red Feather a fair amount of attention.

And what of Landmand’s own Will Andersen, a 39-year-old farmer who, like Schreiber and Ralston, professes to having little prior knowledge of building a golf course. The building of the nine-hole Old Dane on the family’s farmland was a comparatively tiny undertaking. Just a few weeks short of the course’s highly-anticipated opening, Andersen admits to being very naive in this industry and has no doubt he has done loads of things wrong. He laughs at the suggestion he’s been flying by the seat of his pants during the whole process.

“Yeah that’s probably fair,” he says. “I look back and think ‘Holy crap, how did we do all that?”

Four similarly-aged, Millennial go-getters who didn’t start out as career developers but who are using the same small-scale, design and build method are 31-year-old PGA/Korn Ferry Tour player Zac Blair, Canada’s Ben Cowan-Dewar (43) and Mike Keiser’s sons Michael Jr. (40) and Chris (34). And you can also throw into the mix Barry Ehlert, a 43-year-old Canadian whose Calgary, Alberta-based Windmill Golf currently owns and operates five courses — four through acquisitions —including Mickelson National that Ehlert developed from scratch.

Each of their introductions into golf course development may have been quite different from those of Schreiber, Ralston and Andersen, but they really have a lot in common rejecting the big corporate, big marketing formula of yesteryear.

“I’m not surprised to see so many young developers,” says Michael Keiser Jr., who has obviously benefitted from watching his father create three of the world’s most popular golf destinations — Bandon Dunes, Sand Valley and Cabot Cape Breton — with three more on the books. Michael and Chris, though, are steering a slightly different course by looking to add real estate, spa and year-round activities at the properties they oversee. “It’s an exhausting calling. In the early days at Sand Valley, I was sleeping four hours a night. Now I’m building a younger development team who can carry that day-to-day load.”

Every one of these individuals says they may not have known quite what they were getting into —Keiser Jr. probably had an inkling to be fair — but have enjoyed the process so much they would definitely do it again. And the encouragement from within the industry, indeed from many course developers, has been a pleasant surprise.

“People wouldn’t share their playbook in the software industry,” says Schreiber, adding that numerous developers, owners, club pros and industry personnel have helped him.

Keiser Jr. has likewise benefitted from this spirit of shared knowledge.

“I’m friends with many of the young developers,” he says. “While we work independently, we’re in communication somewhat regularly to share ideas, best practices, etc. We’re highly competitive but also encourage and support each other. Dick Youngscap (Sand Hills), my Dad, and others created the market we now have the privilege to work in. Without their trailblazing, we wouldn’t have the opportunities that exist today. And like Tiger [Woods] in the latter part of his career, they’re extremely generous sharing their wisdom with the next generation.”

A reliable source of funding is obviously a major factor in the success of today’s independent golf course development. Beyond that, there needs a profound love of golf and the inclination to work extremely hard, knowing this could all end badly. It takes a certain individual, but the message from each of these young adventurers is clear — “if I can do it, you probably could too.”