The Grandeur of Grandfather

By: Dave Droschak

Private golf in a five-mile radius of the northwest corner of North Carolina is as competitive as the NFL's old "Black and Blue" division. Within a 10-minute drive - and separated by the intoxicating beauty of several Blue Ridge Mountain ranges - are the "towns" of Linville and Banner Elk, and five-star courses designed by Ross, Maples, Fazio, Nicklaus and Cobb.

For years, wealthy golfers from Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina and Tennessee have been drawn to the cool summers, relative seclusion and spectacular layouts at Linville Golf Club, Linville Ridge, Banner Elk, and more recently, ultra-exclusive Diamond Creek. But the course in this "high country" that inspires a genuflection after a guard-gate entrance and hard right toward a picturesque lake, beach, the peninsula 18th green, and rustic clubhouse is Grandfather Golf & Country Club.

Few artists can paint a golfing picture this perfect, with its namesake mountain towering in the background - a rugged mass of rock and boulders that are believed to be among the oldest in the world, some 1 billion years young, and its mile-high swinging bridge sitting off in the distance at a course nestled in the "valley" below the 6,000-foot peaks.

I had golfed at Grandfather at least once a year as the privileged few invited for the yearly Atlantic Coast Conference Sports Writers gathering hosted by the late Hugh Morton, the godfather of Grandfather. That tournament was always in the first week of May, when these courses open after a normally harsh winter in which winds can howl atop the mountains at more than 100 mph. There was no foliage on the trees and, more times than not, the temperatures hovered in the 30s and 40s, with cold rain pelting us, or even snow, on occasion. We always trudged on. Heck, this was Grandfather, a course you don't get to play every day, so a few layers of clothing was a slim sacrifice.

This July, I made my way to Grandfather in peak season thanks to my longtime friend Harris Prevost, who was Morton's PR man for decades and now oversees the alpine experience. I couldn't have asked for more with temperatures topping out in the low 70s, with thousands white and pinkish rhododendrons lining the fairways on a course framed by giant hemlock trees and even larger boulders, which aren't measured in pounds in this ancient location, but by tonnage. Some even carry names, like "The Whale" that guards the left side of your approach into the fourth green.

But there was more. Prevost had arranged a stay for me in the cliff-side cabin called Anvil Rock, the one-time, two-room place of solitude for CBS newsman Charles Kuralt. Little did I know at the time that I would be getting one key to the cabin and one key to the front gate of Grandfather Mountain State Park.

I was to let myself in after Prevost and I finished a tasty prime rib dinner after 10 p.m. I made my way onto the pitch-black, narrow winding road and to the top of the mountain, where on this clear night I could see the lights of downtown Charlotte over 100 miles away and felt like I could reach up and grab the Little Dipper. At 6,000 feet, the stars really are close to your heart.

Six hours later, still alone inside the park, I had my lovely Lisa provide a wake-up call at 6 a.m. It was time for another trek to the top of the mountain, this time to stand solo on the swinging bridge and grab a piece of a glorious sunrise.

Grandfather Golf & Country Club is considered the crowning architectural achievement of Hall of Fame designer Ellis Maples. His father worked for Ross, and Maples used his minimalist brilliance here to sculpt the holes into the sloping terrain.

Maples son, Dan Maples, later tweaked his father's work at Grandfather, with one of his best adjustments hiding many of the cart paths, sneaking them between patches of rhododendrons to provide a virtual canopy at various junctures.

"This really is Ellis Maples' crown jewel," said director of golf Chip King. "He did such a beautiful job of matching the golf course to the environment. He didn't move a lot of dirt here, and of course it was very expensive to move dirt back then with all these rocks around."

"Ellis learned from Donald Ross," noted Prevost. "So, the ghost of Old Tom Morris walks around Grandfather because there is a direct line between Morris, Ross and Ellis Maples, who was a 14-year-old kid who used to help his father Frank, who worked for Ross at Pinehurst. A lot of what Ellis learned came down that line."

There are literally hundreds of boulders larger than cars throughout the layout. Their placement is simple: most if not all were too large to move so they remain in their natural state and provide a stark contrast to the green grass and forests heading to the jagged peaks above, and the sharp white-sand mined down the road in Spruce Pine, which 200 million years ago was actually located below the Equator. At one point in our planet's history Grandfather Mountain was higher than Mount Everest.

The fine sugar-white sand of Spruce Pine and Augusta National are linked by the first pro at Grandfather, Bob Kletche, who doubled as the pro at both the Masters' site and Grandfather.

"A lot of times I pinch myself to see if I'm awake," said the 75-year-old Kletche, who worked at Grandfather from 1968-81. "The thing that inspired me about Grandfather was the entrance. The view of the lake and of Grandfather Mountain is just unbelievable. And it was a challenging golf course, but fun to play."

It was an honor to sit down and chat with Kletche, one of the best golf instructors of his generation who I met for the first time. Little did I know that Kletche holds the record at Grandfather with a 62 and also the nine-hole record on the par-3 course at Augusta at 19. That's correct - an 8-under-par 19.

"People used to come up here from Augusta and say, 'Where did you get all these rocks from,' " Kletche said. "I told them, 'They didn't haul these babies in, they are too big to move.' "

One little-known fact is that there is water on all 18 holes, a rarity for mountain golf. Most of it comes in the form of the Linville River crossing the course, or along the side of several fairways. A few miles away the cascading river ends at scenic Linville Gorge.

Aggie Morton invested her inheritance in what is now the golf club and surrounding property, enlisting Maples to design the course. One of her few non-negotiable demands (not requests) were her design principles requiring golfers to be engrossed in each hole, and for each hole to be different.

"So each hole has its own separate identity," King said. "If you think about it now, with most residential communities you minimize the golf course so you can maximize the development. But it's exactly the opposite here. The golf course was placed here beautifully and then the homes placed beside it."

"You won't be hitting another ball into another hole, that's for sure," Prevost added.

From the tips, Grandfather plays to 7,101 yards with a Slope of 142. The course was laid out just once, with no further changes made. "Aggie and Ellis were in total agreement on everything," Prevost said. "This course really has all the ingredients."

The fairways are generous, but if you hit a bad shot you're not going to be recovering from another fairway. "That ball is history and will never be found again, so there is pressure. But the more you play this course the more it's like a little teddy bear, but even teddy bears can bite once in a while," Prevost remarked when asked about the course's perceived difficulty.

Regarded as one of the top-100 courses in America, Grandfather has stood the test of time, and remains royalty among North Carolinians.

"My dad was here many times, and we were sitting one day on my deck in the cool breeze and in the tranquility and beauty of everything, and he turned to me and said, 'How the hell did you ever find this place?' " Kletche said.

"I never take this grandeur for granted and I never want to," added King. "It doesn't get any better than this. Nothing really matches our view. It's such a special place."

For more information about Grandfather Golf & Country Club, visit http://www.grandfatherclubnc.com.

David Droschak has covered golf in the Carolinas for three decades, mostly with The Associated Press, where he worked for 20 years as AP sports editor in North Carolina prior to launching Droschak Communications, a full-service marketing and PR firm based in Apex, N.C.

Dave, 53, has covered numerous major golf tournaments, including the 1999 and 2005 U.S. Opens at Pinehurst Resort, and is a longtime member of the Golf Writers Association of America. Dave will represent Cybergolf to provide coverage of the historic back-to-back 2014 U.S. Men's and Women's Opens at Pinehurst No. 2 in North Carolina's Sandhills.

Dave was honored with the Sports Writer of the Year award in North Carolina in 2005, and is currently editor of Triangle Golf Today (www.trianglegolf.com), a print and online publication regarded as the "No. 1 Source for Golf News in North Carolina." He is also golf editor for Pinehurst Magazine, an award-winning glossy publication.

Dave grew up in Penn Hills, Pa., about five minutes from famed Oakmont Country Club and was introduced to the game of golf as a caddie at Green Oaks Country Club in nearby Verona, Pa. Dave was the co-captain of the 1978 Penn Hills state championship baseball team, was a pitcher for the 1982 Atlantic Coast Conference champion University of North Carolina Tar Heels, and pitched professionally for two years in the St. Louis Cardinals organization. He is a member of the Penn Hills High School Sports Hall of Fame, which also includes NBA coach George Karl and former four-time Pro Bowl offensive lineman Bill Fralic.

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