Leader of the club: Tom Fazio creates great golf courses and great programs for children

Golf Digest, May, 2001 by Nick Seitz

Then there are the growing challenges to the design process itself, from tour pros playing a power-and-putting game that renders scoring records obsolete, and from strict environmental standards.

"I'm surprised we aren't seeing even lower scores, 60 to 62, week in and week out," Fazio says. "Course condition has as much to do with it as equipment. I like to see low scores by good players on my new courses--it says the courses aren't too hard."

Fazio agrees with Nicklaus and others about the ball going too far and straight, especially when mated with new high-tech clubs. "Good young pros view the par 5s as par 4s. I'm glad I don't play for a living."

As for environmental constraints, "They're a new wrinkle. Today you couldn't build famous holes like the l3th at Augusta National or the 11th at Merion, where Bobby Jones clinched the Grand Slam, because the proximity of a stream to a green is an issue in many parts of the country. Designers will solve problems like this and produce great courses, but we'll have to be more creative. You might see more par 3s, to traverse wetlands, for example.

"What fits the land is what works best. I remember doing a plan for Barton Creek in Texas, and John Connally, the politician who turned developer, asked me if it could be a quality course with the ninth hole a par 3. I told him three courses in Golf Digest's top 10 had par-3 ninth holes: Oakland Hills, Pinehurst No. 2 and Merion.

"I make lists of quirks. The last par 5 at Merion is the fourth hole. Baltusrol finishes with two par 5s. There are no rules for making a great course. When everybody wanted a 7,200-yard championship course in the '60s and '70s, I'd ask people for fun to write down 18 numbers and get to 7,200--without making all the par 4s longer than 400 yards and the par 3s monsters. Usually people will be short." [Try it--I came up 480 yards short.]

"The future is undefined," Fazio says. "Can you imagine a Tillinghast or Mackenzie going to a practice tee and seeing a Tiger Woods? Will the ruling bodies control equipment? Would the manufacturers ever accept a tour ball? Will we see artificial turf? Probably not, but possibly. Everything keeps getting better--why shouldn't course design? We have a deep pool of gifted young talent. Because I got an early start, I plan to be around a long time yet."

When every day is Christmas

The myopic visionary is eating, for the fifth day in a row, a Greek salad at a quaint, cramped little restaurant near his office in Hendersonville's historic district. He goes on food jags, ordering the same lunch for a week. He figures he's 12 pounds overweight at 5-foot-11 and 190.

"Once in a while I allow myself a Philly cheesesteak, which they call French dip down here," he says. "But the real appeal in this place is the popcorn."

Fazio relishes the small-town atmosphere of Hendersonville, population about 10,000. He and his wife discovered the area when he was working on Wade Hampton, an award-winning mountain course, in the mid-'80s. She soon decided it was a better place to raise a family than Florida, and he soon decided he could operate just as well from out of the mainstream if he bought his own plane.