It Takes A Village

by Brad King

 Aug 11, 2017 at 1:30 PM

Who feeds the players, caddies, families, and media during the Wyndham Championship? The McConnell Golf culinary team comes together to make it happen.

For Professional Golfers "Moving Day" typically falls on Saturday, after the tournament cut has been established and the field’s hottest players see how much ground they can gain heading into Sunday’s final round.

But for Sedgefield Country Club Executive Chef James Patterson (“JP” as he is known) and his culinary team, moving day during the Wyndham Championship occurs on Saturday before the tournament week even begins. That’s the day they move all the day-to-day items out of the kitchen — right down to emptying the walk-in freezers — to make room for the stampede of supplies they’ll be needing during the club’s biggest week of the year.

Unlike almost all other events on the PGA Tour, for the Wyndham Championship nearly every single item of food consumed on site comes from the Sedgefield kitchen. Patterson estimates his staff feeds approximately 5,000 people a day — players, caddies, families, hospitality suites, media — and this doesn’t even include spectators.

To pull it off, club staff swells from 12 employees to 60 during the tournament. Each executive chef from every McConnell Golf property comes to Sedgefield for the week to help, in addition to club managers such as Phillip Loney of Brook Valley Country Club.

“I like to see the comradery between all the properties”, says Loney, a four-year Wyndham veteran. “It’s good to see people are excited about it.”

Each chef is in charge of their own territory. For instance, Treyburn Country Club Executive Chef Pedro Villasana makes 3,000 sandwiches every day out of the Sedgefield Dye clubhouse. Culinary operations run nearly 24 hours each day, starting with the first group of the day arriving at 3:30am to prepare breakfast.

“I can’t be everywhere at once,” says Patterson. “These McConnell chefs are away from their home clubs. I’m so grateful for what they do. We haven’t found another PGA event that handles the volume of food that we do. It’s an amazing endeavor.”

Numerous players have told Patterson that the food during the Wyndham Championship is the best they enjoy on tour all year. Tracy Cottrell, a sauté cook at Sedgefield, returns to helm the omelet station for her seventh consecutive year. She’s become a familiar face over the years — having grown famous for her omelets, and the players, caddies, and families know her pretty well, too.

“Super fluffy,” says McConnell Golf Founder and CEO John McConnell. “You have to try one of her omelets.”

 

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A Conversation with Kris Spence

by John Maginnes

 Apr 25, 2017 at 4:32 PM

Kris Spence is known as a “Donald Ross Restoration Specialist,” a title to which he smiles and is eager to point out that there are “a few of us.” And that is just how Kris is, ready to deflect attention away from himself. His efforts in that regard have been in vain. He has been praised and awarded for his work on some of Donald Ross’ great golf courses. Kris has been at the helm of the renovations and restorations at Greensboro CC, Forsyth CC, Cape Fear CC in Wilmington, and Sedgefield CC, host of the Wyndham Championship, to name a few. 

When you meet with Kris at his office in a nondescript office park near the airport in Greensboro, you may be in for a bit of a surprise. “We’ve been here for a couple of years. Maybe we ought to hang some pictures,” Kris says to me as we are walking out the door for lunch. 

There are two things interesting about that statement. The first is that Kris can be forgiven for his lack of interior decorating talents. His exterior decorating more than makes up for it. And second, Kris begins every story with the word “we,” even though when we left the office there wasn’t another soul there. 

Kris is a natural born storyteller and his story is unique at least in the context of the present day. He didn’t study landscape engineering in college like so many of his colleagues; he came from the golf course superintendent side of things. He started in the early 80s at Atlantic Athletic Club before he was hired by the owners of Forest Oaks CC, which was then host to the GGO (now the Wyndham Championship). “We hosted a PGA Tour event when I was only 23, which was cool. Later on we needed to rebuild some bunkers and a couple of greens and we kept it in-house and it turned out okay,” Kris says of his start in golf course architecture. 

That is when Kris says he “got the bug” for golf course design and construction and went to work with Jack Nicklaus’s group building and opening the Governor’s Club outside of Raleigh. From there he was hired by Greensboro CC, which at the time had 36 holes in need of renovation. At the Irving Park Course, a Donald Ross design, Kris said, “We started dabbling, moving a bunker here, taking out a bunker there that they didn’t like, and it just snowballed into a full-blown renovation.”

 From there, Kris left Greensboro CC and embarked on a career as a builder, designer, and golf course architect. His company can do everything from the master plan to the simplest renovation, and he says that is what has sustained them. It has also given him the opportunity to work with some of the biggest names in the business. 

When the subject of Sedgefield comes up, Kris gets a gleam in his eye. “Originally, we had two sets of plans that contradicted each other,” he says. He recalls a meeting at which the general manager just happened to mention that they had come across some old papers. Kris asked the manager to retrieve them. These documents turned out to be the final and definitive plans that Ross used to design Sedgefield. 

“Sedgefield was going to be a 36- hole facility with an equestrian area. Later they decided to scrap the second 18 and make it a neighborhood. For example the 11th hole was originally routed on top of the hill to the right where the houses are. When Ross moved the fairway down on the side of the hill, he created a fairway that leans one way and a shot that has to go the other way.” 

Kris recently finished a renovation of the Dogwood Course at Country Club of North Carolina in Pinehurst, and he continues to work throughout the country. When you look at the work that Kris Spence and his team have done over the past two decades, you have to be impressed. Not bad for a greenskeeper who started dabbling. Then again, Donald Ross got his start as a greenskeeper— and so did Old Tom Morris. That puts Kris in pretty good company — and maybe that’s the “we” he’s referring to.

John Maginnes is a former PGA player and host the popular Katrek & Maginess on Tap broadcast on the PGA Tour Satellite Radio Network

 

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Off Course Play

by Jessie Ammons

 Dec 05, 2016 at 2:36 PM

With short days and cold weather wintertime usually means retiring your clubs and hunkering down, but it can be a time of opportunity.

Time to Focus

“Winter is a great time to focus on certain changes that you postpone all spring and summer,” says Sedgefield Country Club Director of Fitness Sherri Tallant. “It does not have to be very time consuming, you don’t need hours in the gym or a lot of heavy weight lifting in order to get huge benefits.”

Tallant is not just a personal trainer but is TPI certified, which means she’s gained a deep understanding of how the body’s strengths and weaknesses affect a golfer’s swing. “In the spring and the summer, most of our members’ time should be spent playing golf,” she acknowledges. “But in the winter, don’t just put your clubs away and forget about your golf game until spring.” Tallant recommends going to the fitness center or any space outfitted with mirrors. “Just watch your golf swing,” she advises.

Tallant adds that cooler months are the best time to start working on your short game. “Putting and chipping tend to be the two things that get rusty the fastest,” she says. “Stick to practicing in the mirror and you’ll stay tee-time ready come spring.”

Be Flexible

Less time on the course also means more time to spend on stretching and strengthening. “In the off season, golfers should spend more time in the gym doing things like yoga classes,” Tallant says. Sedgefield offers a six-week yoga program that meets for an hour once weekly, and most of her members sign up for two back-to-back six-week sessions.

“Through yoga, you’re not necessarily making your muscles longer, but you’re keeping them from getting shorter, which they would do if you don’t use them,” Tallant explains. “Strength training and stretching lengthens that muscle right back out and helps with rotation, which speeds up your clubhead speed. It’s absolutely awesome for golfers to do in the off season.”

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Where Are They Now?

by Shayla Martin

 Nov 01, 2016 at 9:51 PM

At McConnell Golf, the sport of golf is more than just a leisure activity. Members across all 12 clubs train competitively in the hope of one day playing among their idols. Three McConnell Golf members have progressed to amateur and professional levels, and we’re proud to share an update on Sedgefield Country Club's Scott Harvey.

At the end of 2015, Harvey represented the U.S. in Manchester, England on the Walker Cup team, one of the most prestigious tournaments for an amateur golfer. In April he won the Carolinas Mid- Amateur Championship at Dataw Island Golf Club in South Carolina, then two days later represented the U.S. in the Concession Cup in Bradenton, Florida, an international amateur tournament with teams from Great Britain and Ireland.

Most recently he played the U.S. Mid-Amateur in September and was a fourth-time medalist in the stroke play, setting a record. Next up he will represent North Carolina in the U.S. Men’s State Team Championship in Birmingham, Alabama. At the end of the year, he’ll again be considered for the Carolina’s Men’s Player of the Year by the Carolina Golf Association, an honor he’s received six consecutive years.

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Experience of a Lifetime

by Jessie Ammons

 Jul 05, 2016 at 9:36 PM

Members recount their most memorable Wyndham Championship moments

"At the Wyndham practice round last year, Tiger was on [Sedgefield Country Club] property but it was raining all afternoon. Word was spreading around the grounds that he was going to play a quick nine with Davis Love. My son heard that they were going out at 6 p.m. I raced over from my house and caught up with them on the first green. We watched the nine holes and then Tiger signed autographs until it got dark. It was great to see him be so appreciative towards the fans, especially the kids.

I was standing up by the Pro Shop when my son and a couple of his buddies went screaming by us... they said they were going to get a picture with Tiger Woods. I said good luck while thinking to myself, "Yeah right." Anyway, they got a picture that Tuesday night around 9 p.m. That’s Jack Boyer, Jace Harriss, and Jay Stiefel with Tiger Woods. It’s a moment they will remember forever.”

- David Boyer, Sedgefield Country Club

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The Fabled Finish

by Irwin Smallwood

 Jul 02, 2016 at 9:27 PM

A reflection on the 2013 Wyndham Championship playoff

As the August twilight was about to descend on the lush fairways of Sedgefield Country Club on a soggy Sunday afternoon in 2013, little did the faithful who had remained for the Wyndham Championship playoff realize: They were about to witness the writing of the first draft of history.

That Sunday conjured snapshots from the first four years of the golf tournament’s forebear, the Greater Greensboro Open, when then-fledgling professionals Sam Snead, Ben Hogan, and Byron Nelson jump-started their illustrious careers on the very same soil.

No one then dreamed that the trio would later rule the PGA Tour and wind up as hall-of- famers, just as precious few in the late summer of 2013 realized that they were seeing authentic stardom in the making.

One of the contenders in the 2013 sudden-death playoff was still a teenager; the other had just turned 23. Both had been two-time participants in Greensboro’s American Junior Golf Association tournament, recently renamed the Haas Family Invitational.

But what they produced was a finish that is bound to earn legendary status as the years speed by. Barely three years later, the then-teenager, Jordan Spieth, has been ranked No. 1 in the world and has won both the Masters and the U.S. Open. The man who beat him, Patrick Reed, is closing in on a top-10 world ranking. So what else was so great about that playoff? The shot. The shot.

Looking Back

But that’s getting a little ahead of the story of the Wyndham Championship playoffs.

Most of the 15 earlier ones had their moments to remember. Two of Snead’s eight GGO victories came in playoffs, and he let another slip away when Earl Stewart beat him and Art Wall; and Doug Ford did the same in one that lasted 19 holes.

In 1972, George Archer had already packed his clubs in his car for the trip to the Masters when Arnold Palmer triple-bogeyed away a two-shot lead with three holes to play, plopping Archer and Tommy Aaron into an unexpected overtime that Archer won with a par.

Along the way there were also such notable playoff winners as Julius Boros, Gene Littler, Sandy Lyle, Ryan Moore, and Rocco Mediate, and such not-so-notable winners as Bud Allin, Trevor Dodd, and Frank Nobilo, the latter now a Golf Channel analyst. But the shot is what they will still be writing about when the tournament turns 100 or so — that and the two young lions who appear destined to become hall-of-famers. Turns out there was more than a little drama before Reed and Spieth got to the decisive second hole of the playoff in 2013. The final round of regulation had pretty much belonged to them as Spieth bested Reed by a stroke, 65 to 66, in the wake of overnight rains and an early morning storm that delayed play for three hours. And then came the real stuff.

Play-By-Play

On the first extra hole, Sedgefield’s par- four 18th, Spieth drove into the woods on the left and had to play a safety shot back into the fairway. Meantime, Reed split the middle with a textbook tee ball, and after Spieth put his third on the green, a good 26 feet from the pin, Reed hit another perfect one, leaving him maybe seven feet for a possible winning birdie.

But not so fast. Spieth, whose heroics with the putter have since become legendary around the world, curled in the putt with a good two-foot break. Par. Reed, perhaps a bit shaken, missed his birdie try and off they went to the 10th tee.

This time it was Spieth who hit the perfect tee shot, right down the middle of the uphill par four, and Reed found the trouble. Big trouble, it first appeared. Out of bounds in the trees to the right, someone signaled. As Reed later recounted, he was in shock. “My heart sank,” he says, but then came a turn of events that in the end saved the day. “All of a sudden,” he says, “three or four other people started running out on the fairway and gave me the safe signal.” 

Cut to the chase. Though just 150 yards or so from the green and inbounds, his ball was, as they often say, in jail. There was no way he could reach the green, right? Wrong. With Spieth already on the green in two and within good (10 feet) birdie range, Reed smacked a three-quarter 7-iron under an overhanging tree limb, straight as a string, and it stopped seven feet below the hole.

The shot. Of a lifetime for Reed, as it turned out. Spieth was the one a bit spooked this time, and his birdie attempt lipped out. Reed’s was dead center for a shot that earned him his first PGA Tour victory, and a certain place for him and Spieth in the storied history of the venerable old tournament a hearty band of young businessmen dreamed up eight decades ago.

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Behind The Scenes

by Jessie Ammons

 Jul 01, 2016 at 9:13 PM

Getting Wyndham-ready takes all hands on deck

As the days get longer and winter gets the last few frosts out of her system, Michael Shoun can be found scribbling strategies into a notebook, envisioning summer. He’s not wistfully daydreaming, though: McConnell Golf’s director of agronomy is preparing for the Wyndham Championship, an undertaking that begins in February.

Alongside routine tournament maintenance - which is thorough, constant, and extensive - an event of Wyndham’s caliber includes a few extra steps, too.

Ahead of the Game

“Planning is tremendous,” Shoun says of preparing for the annual tournament held at Sedgefield Country Club, this year August 15-21. The late winter and early spring months are spent considering procedural agronomic needs so that Shoun and his colleagues can order the appropriate fertilizers and properly prepare Sedgefield’s soils.

Come March and April, meetings with the Wyndham organizers begin. It’s then that the championship’s layout is set - where private boxes will go, what course fences will be removed to make room for crowds. “The infrastructure is incredible,” says Shoun, “and getting all of that on-property without damaging the golf course is very much a challenge.” Luckily, Shoun says there’s a team of experts more than up to the task. “We work with so many other entities to get it done.”

And by tournament time, the logistics are a well-oiled machine. Shoun brings two maintenance employees from every property with him to Greensboro, alongside a troupe of volunteers. (All in total, a group of 60 workers goes out at both morning and night time shifts; Shoun reserves a block of 25 hotel rooms to house the entire team.) They arrive a day or two before the tournament begins to undergo training and for an extensive tour of Sedgefield’s grounds. An extensive tour may seem like an unnecessary task, until Shoun explains: “Our morning shift starts early. A golf course looks a lot different at two in the afternoon than at three-thirty in the morning.” It’s all in the name of the game.

Maintenance Magic

The Wyndham is a big deal, and Shoun and his team take the event seriously. Extra flower beds are planted. An 8-10-person crew keeps parking lots clean, pine straw refreshed, and flower beds weeded at all times. Annuals are watered by hand. Since it’s a televised PGA tour, a bit of maintenance magic happens: “We dye the pond black to reflect blimps that fly overhead,” Shoun explains. “We begin dyeing on Monday, add dye throughout the week, and CBS starts broadcasting on Thursday.”

For the maintenance crew, it’s a week of little sleep and a lot of attention to detail. “It’s challenging on day four or five, when you’ve slept maybe three hours a night,” Shoun says. To thank them, volunteers and industry partners provide home-cooked midday feasts: ribs, fried chicken, and other hearty fare. Early morning shifts begin with coffee and donuts, and then a full Southern breakfast is served a few hours later. “They eat good when they’re here,” Shoun says.

For afternoon pick-me-ups, there’s a crew tent stocked with coffee, energy drinks, ice cream bars - and cots. “In the maintenance facility at about 12 noon, you’ll see 15 or 20 guys trying to get a nap in,” Shoun says with a chuckle. “It’s good to get a power nap, as long as you keep your radio next to you.”

The net result of this well-coordinated effort is that if the crew does its job well, all of the intensive detail work is part of the perfect presentation for the Wyndham event. It’s quietly gratifying work. “I think it’s well worth it, and I know any of the guys who do it think so, too. You’re proud of what you accomplished. It all looks great.”

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