THE BOOT ST O R I E S F R O M T H E T E X A S H I L L C O U N T RY
A M A ST E R D E P I C TS T H E H I L L CO U N T RY O N C A N VA S
T H E P E AC H STA N D T H AT G R E W I N TO A G LO B A L B U S I N E SS
FO R E V E R C A R S AND THREE MEN T H AT LO V E T H E M
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2021 | ISSUE 2
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The 10th hole at Boot Ranch.
Photo by Brian Walters
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A PERFECT 10 STORY BY JAMES A. FRANK
How one of “the most beautiful holes in Texas” came to be.
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here was water. He couldn’t see it—the cedars were too thick—but he knew it was there because he could hear it flowing. And the farther they walked, the louder it got. It had been about twenty minutes since they’d jumped the fence. It was impossible to walk a straight line through the tangle of trees, but he was determined to find the source of the sound. They’d entered a deep ravine and found a creek with a little cascade, but that wasn’t it. “I hear real water,” he said. They pushed on. And there it was. A waterfall, 25 feet tall, splashing into a pond. A stunning sight, it stopped them in their tracks. Hal Sutton wanted that land. He knew it would be perfect for a golf hole.
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The 10th hole from behind the tee box.
rudimentary layout, getting a feel for how it would play, while also noting trees and other features they wanted to keep. On April 12, 2004, Sutton and Lipe were walking the staked course with two engineers and Sutton’s friend and agent, Gilbert Little. Each remembers that day a little differently, but the important facts align: Everybody was happy until they reached the 9th hole. “I’ll never forget the day,” says Little. “Hal loved every hole but the 9th. It played back to the clubhouse through an open pasture. There was no character to it.” “I didn’t like how 9 came up to the clubhouse,” says Sutton. “It was wide open, flat, no trees. It didn’t fit the other eight holes. I thought, ‘there has to be another way to do this.’ ” As they were eating sandwiches, Sutton looked east, toward a fence that marked the end of the property he’d already acquired for the development. Lipe: “Hal said, ‘Do you think we could get a couple of holes over there?’” Sutton: “I looked across the fence and said, ‘We don’t own that land, but nothing says that we can’t.’” Little: “After lunch, we hopped the fence and Lipe and Hal created that hole (#10) right there on the topo map.” The land on the other side of the fence was split between two owners. Before the end of the month, Boot Ranch LLC purchased some 107 acres from one owner; by early July,
Photos by Brian Walters
Nearly twenty years later, the hole that now occupies that spot—number 10 at Boot Ranch—is no less stunning. But a lot had to happen following that day in April 2004 for Sutton to create not only the most memorable hole on the course, but the one the Dallas Morning News ranks among “the most beautiful 18 in Texas.” Along with the titles he accumulated in more than thirty years as an amateur and professional golfer—Collegiate All American, PGA Champion, Player of the Year, Ryder Cup player and captain—Sutton amassed knowledge that served him well as a future course designer and real estate developer. “One of my closest friends, Jackie Burke, told me a long time ago that while you’re playing the tour and out on the road all the time, you need to pay attention to what everybody else has done. See why things have succeeded and failed, make a mental note of that. Someday you’ll be able to use that to your benefit somewhere.” Sutton put those years of education to good use at Boot Ranch. Having played countless golf courses, he understood how important location was to their success. So when presented with the opportunity to build his own, he thought like a golfer instead of a developer and picked the land for the golf course first. He also picked Jim Lipe to help with the design. For nearly three decades, Lipe has been a senior design associate and consultant to Jack Nicklaus, working on courses around the world. He’d helped Sutton a few years earlier on a renovation project in Shreveport, Louisiana, which is both Hal’s birthplace and Lipe’s adopted hometown. Among Lipe’s tasks at Boot Ranch was the course routing—deciding where the holes would go and their general shape and length. He would draw routings and show them to Sutton, who would ask questions, make changes, and offer suggestions. According to Lipe, they went through many initial routings, including one with 36 holes. When they finally had a routing they both liked, the centerline of each hole was staked and 20- to 30-foot-wide clearings cut. These would allow the designers to walk the
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The landing area at hole 10 for more cautious hitters.
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ABOVE AND RIGHT: Gilbert Little’s snapshots from the day Hal Sutton found the waterfall. BELOW: The waterfall as it appears to golfers today.
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another 21 acres was secured from the other. Known as the Palo Alto Valley, it included the headwaters of Palo Alto Creek, which converged at the 25-foot waterfall. Even before buying the additional acreage, Sutton had a good idea how he would use it. “I knew it was going to be 10,” says Sutton. “I knew where 11 tee was going to be and where we had to get 9 in there, too. It was almost like it was in there the whole time.” “When we first looked at the property across the water, we knew it would make an incredible green site [ for 10],” recalls Little, “which then opened up 11 to be an incredible par five. And they drew a new number 9 right there in the field.”
“I knew it was going to be 10,” says Sutton. “I knew where 11 tee was going to be and where we had to get 9 in there, too. It was almost like it was in there the whole time.”
Top photos courtesty of Gilbert Little. Bottom photo by Brian Walters.
Anyone who has played the 10th hole remembers it. A short par four, the water and a ravine split it down the middle. Most of the fairway is on the left; the green is to the right of the pond and nearly abutting the falls. Just as memorable as number 10’s design are the options the golfer has for playing it. Sutton and Lipe wanted to tempt big hitters to challenge the water, daring them to try driving the green from about 350 yards away. To entice them even more, a large area of tightly mown turf fronts the putting surface; wider and easier to find than the green, landing there still demands control of distance and direction off the tee, followed by considerable short-game prowess to get up and down for birdie. And golfers who play it safe—keeping their tee shot on the left fairway—still face a challenge on the short approach. “My whole goal at Boot Ranch is to show that distance is not necessarily what makes
golf hard,” explains Sutton. “There are some very difficult wedge shots out there, and 10 is one of them, from a downhill lie to a green facing you over a deep ravine, with a lot of slope and not very deep front to back. You have to be very precise on the wedge. It doesn’t have to be a long hole to cause you to be concerned.” As Little noted, buying the land for number 10 created a domino effect, providing an ideal spot for the 11th tee and a new location for a newly designed 9th hole. (The old 9th was retained, giving golfers who only want to play nine holes a route back up the hill to the clubhouse; after the drought of 2011, what the club calls 9A was converted from a parfour to a par-three.) Those parts of the new addition that didn’t go to the course became the club’s one-acre putting green, a multisport field, and a number of homesites. In 2017, when Sutton renovated the course, “some of the most drastic changes” were made to 10. He enlarged access to the green by removing a few trees and some bunkering, and added a forward tee, at less than 300 yards, to seduce more golfers into trying to hit it across the water. “Those changes make it fun,” says Little. “I’ll go up to the front tee box and play ‘Tin Cup.’ It’s a lot of fun when you get one onto the landing area and watch it work its way onto the green.” Speaking of golf movies, number 10 had a featured role in the 2011 film Seven Days in Utopia. It stood in for the 18th hole of Utopia Golf Course, where Robert Duvall went to bury the bad thoughts that had haunted his life. “It’s one of the greatest scenes in that movie,” comments Sutton. “It has great meaning whether you’re a golfer or not. When I read the book, I said ‘Yes, we have to film that movie here.’” So the starring role went to a hole that wasn’t even in the original plans. It exists today because Hal Sutton wasn’t satisfied. “Hal never settled for anything mediocre,” says Little, who worked with him for 15 years. “No matter what we did, he always stressed one thing: If you reach for excellence, success will follow.”
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