North Carolina State University Athletics
Palmer brings passion for design to NC State
7/9/2007 12:00:00 AM | Pack Athletics
BY TIM PEELER
RALEIGH, N.C - Arnold Palmer knew he wanted to become a golf-course designer almost as early as he knew he wanted to be a golfer.The son of a Latrobe, Pa., greenkeeper, Palmer grew up cutting grass with manual push mowers and learned to drive on a Fordson tractor like the one he still has in his garage in Pennsylvania.
"From the day I could walk, I was in my father's lap on his tractor," Palmer said recently at the Carolina Hotel in Pinehurst. "When there was a job to be done, when I was old enough to do it, I did it. It was natural for me to want to know all about and be a part of what my father spent his entire life doing."
Today, Palmer will tee off on his latest project, NC State's 7,025-yard, par-71 public golf course. Palmer and an invitation-only group of golf course patrons and university dignitaries will celebrate the start of construction on the Lonnie Poole Golf Course at mid-day, on the crest of a hill overlooking downtown Raleigh and NC State's innovative Centennial Campus. Palmer and Poole, the founder and chairman of Raleigh-based Waste Industries USA who donated $3 million to the $11.8 million project, will take the inaugural shots on the 200-acre site.
Over the next 18 months, the undeveloped land will be turned into the home course for the Wolfpack men's and women's golf teams, a living laboratory for the students in the NC State's nationally prominent turfgrass program and a permanent home for the PGA-sanctioned Professional Golf Management program. The course, slated to open in the spring of 2009, will also be a gathering place for alumni and one of only two public golf courses inside the Raleigh Beltline.For Palmer, who has had his hand in more than 300 course-design projects world-wide since he began the Palmer Course Design Company in 1971, this is a special project, not only because of his close ties to North Carolina but because two of his top project managers, Erik Larsen and Brandon Johnson, are NC State graduates who will work closely on the development of the long-awaited project.
The course begins as Palmer celebrates the 60th anniversary of his arrival in North Carolina. He came south from Pennsylvania to play golf for coach Jim Weaver at Wake Forest College in the fall of 1947, just one year after another legendary sports figure, NC State's Hall of Fame basketball coach Everett Case, arrived on the scene.Palmer was a student and All-America golfer at Wake Forest College when it was still located in northern Wake County, winning both the 1949 and '50 Southern Conference championships. He returned to the school in 1954 after a three-year stint in the United States Coast Guard to win the inaugural ACC Championship.
He fondly remembers his college years and the intense rivalries shared by the 'Big Four': NC State, Wake Forest, North Carolina and Duke. Especially the winter days he spent watching all four of them compete in the Dixie Classic at Reynolds Coliseum."The Big Four has probably been dismantled a little bit these days, but it was intense back then," Palmer said two weeks ago, on the night he was inducted into the Carolinas Golf Hall of Fame. "But I have always been very proud to be part of the Big Four, which are four outstanding schools in an age when it's tough to be outstanding."
He will relive some of those memories today with friends he still has in the Triangle, including long-time Raleigh-resident Art Hoch, a former NC State physical education professor and the long-time coordinator of intramural sports. "Arnold is a real fine person," said Hoch, the father of PGA Tour professional Scott Hoch. He'll do a good job getting that golf course started for NC State."
Palmer always thought he would settle back in North Carolina, until he became the president and sole owner of Latrobe Country Club, where his father worked for 55 years as a greenkeeper, superintendent and eventually head golf pro. But he also bought Bay Hill Country Club near Orlando in 1974 and set up his winter residence there.He has been content to return to North Carolina to design more than a dozen golf courses, from the mountains to the ocean to the Sandhills surrounding Pinehurst. The Lonnie Poole Golf Club will be his second course in Wake County. Brier Creek Country Club, a private club located near the Raleigh-Durham International Airport, opened in 2000.
"I liked it here so much and had so much good fortune here," Palmer said. "North Carolina is one of the greatest states anyone could ever live in, with its climate and the four seasons. I certainly enjoy building golf courses here."
