CCNC magazine

CCNC WINTER/SPRING 2017

A Classic Reborn

Dogwood Course Remodeling Sets Club Up for Next 50 Years

2

CCNC

The Country Club of North Carolina 1600 Morganton Road Pinehurst, NC 28374 910 / 295-6565

CCNC Magazine Winter/Spring 2017 Writer/Editor Lee Pace Graphic Design Sue Pace Cover photos by Kevin Murray (front) and John Lyon (back).

Interior photos by Murray and Lyon and from club archives.

Water features are key elements of the CCNC golf experience, including (clockwise from left page) the 18th on the Dogwood, the third on the Dogwood and the 18th on the Cardinal.

3

CCNC

CONTENTS

4 Dogwood Redux

A comprehensive makeover of CCNC’s vaunted Dogwood Course sets the course up for the next half century.

14 The Spence Vision

Architect’s keen eye and historical perspective guide course reboot on structural, aesthetic and agronomic levels.

16 Something for All

All CCNC members come out winners as new Golf Venue and Tennis & Fitness Center elevate club experience.

22 In Good Taste

Chef Adam Minicucci elevates CCNC dining experience with attention to detail, creativity and a passionate kitchen staff.

26 A Rich Heritage

Founders’ vision of recreation and socializing in conveniently located Sandhills haven plays out into one of state’s special clubs.

4

CCNC

Dogwood

Redux

5

CCNC

CCNC’s crown jewel receives a complete makeover, updating the playing surfaces, opening the vistas and tweaking the strategic nuances.

The island-green third hole on the Dogwood Course is one of the most memorable and was the forerunner to the famous seventeenth at TPC Sawgrass.

6

The new zoysia fairways provide nice contrast to the bermuda rough on the second (top) and fourth holes (opposite), and the viewing angle on the fourth hole clearly shows the right side is the preferable mode of approach to the new green.

K

CCNC

ris Spence stands on the first tee of the Dogwood Course at The Country Club of North Carolina and gazes down the fairway on a bright October morning. In the woods to either side he sees openness where before there was clutter. To the left of the fairway he sees a bunker creeping across at an angle, daring the aggressive and long player to cut off the slight bend in the fairway. He sees the subtle delineation between the lush bermudagrass rough and the taut fairways of Zeon zoysia grass.

“This is a very graceful golf course,” Spence says. “I love the movement and flow of the holes. Before, that bunker on the left ran parallel to the hole. We’ve turned it and now it bites into the hole. Before, you couldn’t see around the corner. It had a disjointed look.

Now the hole tells the player the best angle is the left side, but you have to challenge the bunker.

“Now it fits. It flows. As you go through the golf course, the openness and angles and flow of the fairways becomes more and more striking. I’m delighted with what we’ve accomplished here. I think we’ve hit a grand slam.”

Spence, a Greensboro-based golf architect, has been working with CCNC since 2014 on planning and executing a major renovation and remodeling of the 1963 Dogwood Course, the crown jewel in the club’s cap. The course closed in November 2015 and reopened on Labor Day weekend nine months later.

“Anyone who comes here has an expectation,” Spence says. “It’s a lofty one.

The expectation level is very high. The expectation was of excellence here. When I came here to walk the course before the interview, it was anything but that. Time had just taken a toll on this golf course.”

That high level of expectation was established from the beginning when the Ellis Maples/Willard Byrd-designed course

7

CCNC

opened as the centerpiece of new private club created to draw the business and professional leaders of North Carolina to a central location for recreation and relaxation. The Dogwood was one of the original members of Golf Digest’s “100 Greatest Golf Courses” and was the venue for the 1971 and 1972 Liggett & Myers Match Play Championship on the PGA Tour (won by Jack Nicklaus and DeWitt Weaver) and the 1980 U.S. Amateur (won by Hal Sutton).

“Our concept for this course is that when great golf courses are discussed, The Country Club of North Carolina will be mentioned early,” club co-founder and long-time president Dick Urquhart said in December 1963. “We have spared no costs to make it so. We went all out to make it the best golf course possible.”

Evidence of that commitment came from the routing of the back nine around Watson’s Lake and the juxtaposition of homesites and golf holes. The golf won out over the residences, with seven of nine holes playing to some degree alongside or over appendages of the lake and building lots positioned on the opposite sides of the fairways.

“The No. 1 thing we’ve heard over the

years is the beauty of the course, particularly the back nine,” says Jeff Dotson, the director of golf since 1991. “And it’s not just beautiful, it’s nine really good holes of golf.”

Golf courses are living, evolving entities and need constant maintenance and tweaking and at major junctures require significant overhauls. The greens and bunkers were rebuilt in 1999, and over 15 years the bunkers gradually lost some of their shape, and the bentgrass greens became increasingly difficult to maintain during the hottest months of the year in late summer. In 2012, the club transitioned the greens on its Cardinal Course to the hybrid bermudagrass that has become increasingly popular in the South.

Club officials and members liked the results and put that option into play as it considered a significant upfitting to the Dogwood.

“We knew for five or six years we had a significant project ahead of us,” says Dotson.

“The irrigation system was antiquated. The bunkers had reached the end of their useful life. It was a struggle every summer to keep the bent greens healthy, and the bermuda greens on Cardinal were thriving.

“Dogwood had been one of the top courses in the Southeast for half a century.

“Dogwood had been one of the top courses in the Southeast for half a century.

We needed to set it up for the next 50 years.”

8

CCNC

We needed to set it up for the next 50 years.”

T

he club interviewed several architects to supervise the work and hired Spence, who knew and respected the course from his first visit in the mid-1980s while working as course superintendent at Greensboro Country Club.

Spence has made a specialty over two decades as an architect of taking classic courses designed by the likes of Donald Ross, A.W. Tillinghast, Seth Raynor and Ellis Maples and blending their original design genius to fit modern equipment and agronomic standards.

“From the beginning, Kris brought a style that spoke to integrity and straightforwardness,” says club president Robert “Ziggy” Zalzneck. “Some architects we talked to tried to tell us what we wanted. Kris listened first. He tried to talk us out of some things, but he listened. He had ears. And he knew Ellis Maples’ work and style and had a track record with it. He was the right man for this job.”

The project consisted of the following major components: • Resurface all greens with Champion bermudagrass.

• Redesign greens four, 10, 15, 16 and 18

with tweaks to others to improve location, contours and drainage.

• Install a new drainage and irrigation system that replaces an antiquated system that often left random spots overly dry or overly wet.

• Rebuild and/or tweak the location of every bunker on the course using the Better Billy Bunker system; the course now has bunkers that drain better, are more easily maintained and provide easier access and egress for golfers.

• Expand teeing areas in width and/or length to better accommodate longer drives and provide more interesting approach angles.

• Remove trees to open up vistas and improve air flow and sunlight to areas that had become too dark and cramped and to restore some lost hole locations

because shade from trees had encroached on the perimeters of greens.

• Remove some four inches of soil that had compacted into organic material over half a century and replace it with native sand that can be more easily sculpted and has resulted in firmer, fast-running fairways.

• And sod all the tees and fairways with

9

Zeon zoysia grass, a heat tolerant strain that doesn’t need over-seeding in the winter and gives golfers an outstanding surface from which to clip iron shots and fairway woods.

Spence and Zalzneck were in the first foursome to play the remodeled course when it reopened on Sept. 2.

“Kris was like a proud papa playing the course,” Zalzneck says. “And it was very rewarding for those of us who have worked on this project over three to four years. The changes reposition CCNC for a long time to come.”

“The structural issues have certainly been fixed,” Spence says. “Aesthetically and strategically, I think it reflects and respects Mr. Maples’ work. I wanted to respect his work but still adjust things to better suit the modern game. If you look through old photos of this course and others he designed, this still has that look and character of what I think he would approve of.”

Club members have heralded the “new Dogwood,” listing its improved playability for average to high-handicap players, the clearing of tree clutter and the quality playing surfaces among their favorite elements of the remodeling.

CCNC

Parker Hall has been a member for more than 50 years, and he and his wife Bert play the CCNC courses frequently.

“The Dogwood is a real treat,” Parker says. “Especially the back nine, where they opened it up and you have all these beautiful vistas. The back nine to me has always been the prettiest nine in Pinehurst.”

“The course is much more player-friendly for the average golfer,” adds Bert. “The fourth is a big help, that one gives you the opportunity to hit an old bump-and-run shot like you did on Donald Ross courses. The last revision made it more difficult for women.

This revision brings it back.”

P

aul Broughton travels to Pinehurst frequently from his home in Durham and has brought a variety of guests to the club the last three months. He has particular appreciation for the job Spence did of thinning out trees on and around the course, knowing from experience on the board at Hope Valley Country Club what a lightning rod tree-removal can be.

“What Kris has done is absolutely spectacular,” says Broughton. “Every guest I have brought to play it has agreed. Whether they’ve played it before or not, they’ve said,

Spence dotted the Dogwood landscape with hardpan sand and native wire grass (like that between four green and five tee at left) while clearing the woods of many trees that tended to suffocate the grass and the playing experience (like those on the 10th hole below).

10

CCNC

The view from the new 15th green, across Watson’s Lake and looking at the crook in the dogleg of the par-five 18th hole.Â

11

CCNC

12

Spence found additional yardage on holes like the parfour 15th, moving the green some 30 yards further down the fairway and adjusting the perimeter of the lake just to the left.

CCNC

‘This is just amazing, it’s great.’

“To me, one of the most significant things is the tree removal. I remember talking to architect Brian Silva when he worked on our course at Hope Valley. He said, ‘Paul, you can have good trees, or good grass–but not both.’

That has stuck with me. Kris has removed trees and opened the course up so much. I love standing on 15 green and being able to see four holes ahead.”

O

ne of the elements that will help the middling handicap player is the revamped approach areas.

The slopes from the 1999 renovation have been softened and the ground planted with Latitude 36 bermuda, a winter-hearty strain that allows for closer mowing than the zoysia.

“The playability for the members has been greatly improved,” Spence says. “A lot of the things you hear about architecture are all about the good player. I was hired to take this golf course and really listen to the membership, analyze and come up with a solution that meets their needs. I think softening the approaches going into the greens will help significantly in

allowing golfers to run their approach shots onto the green.”

The Sandhills area was pounded with two heavy rainfalls in late-September and early October, the latter event when the remnants of Hurricane Matthew dumped some seven inches of rain on the area. Photos were circulating via email and social media on the second Saturday of October showing the 11th fairway of the Dogwood Course resembling a lake. But by Wednesday, golfers were back on the course and superintendent Ron Kelly and his staff had to spend minimal time rebuilding any washed-out bunkers.

“The best part of this project was going with the Better Billy Bunker method,” Kelly says. “That rain the week before Matthew was comparable to the rain we got from Matthew.

It was amazing—we had 15 inches of rain over two weeks and no damage at all to the bunkers.”

Kelly has heard numerous comments from members who love the new zoysia fairways and are getting an extra 20 to 30 yards of roll-out on the taut surfaces.

“The zoysia will get better over time,” he

13

says. “The seams are really good and it’s sitting on a nice sand base. The drainage is so much better than we had before, and it drains consistently well. We won’t have those soggy spots like we had.”

A

member with a particularly salient perspective on the Dogwood remodeling is Buck Adams Jr., son of long-time CCNC golf grofessional Buck Adams. Adams is a Pinehurst attorney and was co-chairman along with Pete Green of a Restoration Committee charged with supervising the project (other members were Steve Coman, Tom Beddow, John May and Zalzneck).

“The Dogwood now reminds me of the course I knew growing up,” Adams says.

“Getting some of the trees out of the way helps so much. It’s opened the course up and it’s running firm and fast, just like it did in the old days.”

Speaking on October 4, which would have been the senior Adams’ 85th birthday,

CCNC

Adams Jr. says, “I think my Dad would be really pleased with what’s happened here.”

Echoing those thoughts is another second-generation member, Richard Urquhart Jr., son of the club’s co-founder and long-time president. Urquhart Jr. was 16 years old when the Dogwood Course was being built and worked on the construction crew clearing the woods of timber, building the lakes and sculpting the fairways and greens. He remembers his father and the club’s other founding members examining two potential course layouts submitted by land-planner Willard Byrd and picking the one that put the four finishing holes along Watson’s Lake.

“They were proud that they dedicated prime land to golf over the profit of real estate,” Urquhart Jr. says. “It was such a vital decision in the early success of the Dogwood Course. It was beautiful then, and what Kris Spence has done now just enhances that beauty. I think my Dad would love it.”

The new far-right hole location on the green of the par-five fifth hole will give golfers pause, a shot too short finding the water and one too long the bunker.

The Spence Vision

T

14

CCNC

Two moments, two impressions, two influencing junctures in the life of Kris Spence, the golf course architect who recently directed the remodeling of CCNC’s Dogwood Course.

One day in the mid-1980s, Spence is playing Pinehurst No. 2 for the first time. So far, Spence’s life in golf has been as a player, an agronomist and a green superintendent.

“The greens were the old 328 bermuda, they were as firm as any I’d ever seen,” Spence remembers. “They impacted the way I played the game. You couldn’t fly the ball at the flag. That caught my attention. I started studying Donald Ross and his designs. That one round of golf set me off in a totally new direction.”

Several years later, Spence as the superintendent at Greensboro Country Club is making his first visit to CCNC as a part of a planning retreat for club leadership and key staff members.

“I’ll never forget coming onto the property the first time,” Spence says. “It was so impressive and set a standard you noticed quickly. It was a standard above even the best private clubs in the state.”

Spence’s interest in golf design as sparked by that round on one of Donald Ross’s most esteemed layouts eventually led him to take the initiative to direct the restoration of Greensboro’s original Ross design.

He devoured books on classic designers and studied the plans and actual courses from architects like Seth Raynor, A.W. Tillinghast and William Flynn. He enjoyed the work and the challenge, the membership applauded the job and that prompted Spence to leave the course maintenance business in 1998 and hang his own golf design shingle. In nearly two decades, he’s specialized in restoring and remodeling vintage courses by Golden Age architects like Ross, Raynor, Tillinghast and then, from the next generation, Ellis Maples.

Those perspectives were important to Spence and CCNC when he returned to the club in 2014 to the study the Maples-designed Dogwood Course and offer his thoughts on remodeling the course from agronomic, maintenance, aesthetic and strategic views. Spence submitted a proposal for the job, was hired and began work in November 2015 when the course closed for a major overhaul.

“Anyone who comes here has an expectation,” he says. “It’s a lofty one. We couldn’t hit a triple here, we had to hit a grand slam.

The expectation level is very high. The expectation was of excellence here. When I came here to walk the course before the interview, it was anything but that. Time had just taken a toll on this golf course.”

The club hired Spence after reviewing his work at such venerable North Carolina clubs such as Sedgefield, Cape Fear, Roaring Gap and Mimosa Hills and listening to Spence’s thoughts on marrying the styles of architects like Ross and Maples with modern tastes and demands.

Maples was the son of Frank Maples, who was Ross’s right-hand man during the first half of the 1900s as the green superintendent and construction chief at Pinehurst Country Club.

“The structural issues have certainly been fixed,” says Spence.

“Aesthetically, I think it reflects and respects Ellis Maples’ work. I wanted to respect his work but still move things around because of the modern game. If you look through old photos of this course and others he

15

CCNC

designed, this still has that look and character of what I think he would have done.”

Spence uses many tools in his design process. Certainly he looks at original plans when available. He uses Google Maps to find aerial imagery of courses at various time periods; he showed CCNC officials how trees bordering greens had crept onto greens perimeters over the years and hindered healthy grass growth on the putting surfaces.

And most of all he walks the property—he looks with his eyes and feels with his feet.

“I get in tune with the piece of property,” he says. “I almost ignore what’s out there and I look at that piece of property. I look at the folds of the land, I look at where the water’s going, I look at the high spots.

Most of the time, the routing is still intact. I’ve always found when I do restorations—whether it’s Tillinghast or Raynor or Ross or Maples—I stay in tune with that land.

“It makes no sense to restore an old relic that has no relevance to the ball flight and the clubs and things we use today. We need to restore the golf as much as restore the golf course. That’s really what I’m doing. I’m restoring the strategic value of the golf course.”

Kris Spence (L) ready to tee off on opening day of Dogwood reopening Sept. 3, 2016, with board member Buck Adams Jr., president Ziggy Zalzneck and director of golf Jeff Dotson.

16

CCNC

T Something for

Everyone

17

CCNC

T

An artist’s rendering shows the new Golf Venue beside the 18th green of The Cardinal Course. The new building will house the golf shop as well as a restaurant and bar, among other features.

All CCNC members come out winners as new Golf Venue and Tennis & Fitness Center elevate club experience.

he Country Club of North Carolina has 850 members.

“Counting spouses, that means you have 1,700 opinions at any given time,” says Ziggy Zalzneck, the club president. “Our goal with this recent round of club enhancements is to make everyone a winner—whether you’re a golfer, a tennis player, like to work out, or just use the club for dining and social activities. I think we’ve addressed everyone.”

The club is in the midst of a $9.5 million capital improvement program that includes not only the remodeling of the Dogwood Course but the construction of a new 5,800-square foot Golf Venue on the site of the old structure between the first tee and 18th green of the Cardinal Course and a new 5,400-square foot Tennis and Fitness Center on the site of the original tennis shop to the south of the swimming pool. Another $500,000 has been set aside for clubhouse improvements once the new buildings are completed—with new furniture and interiors and a new casual dining facility in the offing.

“People don’t join clubs because they were once great, or promise to be great sometime in the future,” says Saeed Assadzandi, the club’s general manager. “They join because they are great now. It was time to invest in ourselves. This project was long overdue.

We’ve done little things here and there, but nothing of this magnitude to show how serious we are about the future of this club.”

Both new buildings are expected to open in early 2017, and the Golf Venue will certainly make the biggest first impression on members and guests arriving at the club. The single-story building will house the offices of Director of Golf Jeff Dotson and his staff and provide one stop for bag-drop and check-in.

The golf operation has been across the entry road in the lower level of the clubhouse since the 1970s, and golf shop staffers could barely see the first tee of the Dogwood Course from the counter. But they had no idea who was arriving to play golf or completing either of the finishing holes on Dogwood or Cardinal courses.

“When you approached the club, what you saw was a bunch of pine trees and a place

18

CCNC

to park your car,” says Zalzneck. “There was no ‘wow factor.’ Now we’ll have a handsome new building standing there when you arrive.

The pro shop can see who’s arriving, when they’re arriving. They’ll be in a much better position to serve our members.

“It was important to improve the golf service by putting the operation in the heart of the action,” Assadzandi adds.

The new building will have a food and beverage operation and a terrace area overlooking the lake between the start and finish of the golf course. Golfers finishing their rounds or members looking for a good sandwich at lunch can pop into the restaurant for a quick bite just as they could with the modest but ever-popular halfway

house of yore.

“We had the world’s best short-order cook in the Halfway House,” says Zalzneck.

“We had the best cheeseburgers in town. No one wanted to change that, including me. The architects and food and beverage people said, ‘We can duplicate that.’”

nother busy area of the club campus in recent months has been the tennis and pool complex area, which includes eight tennis courts (three built in the mid-1960s and five more coming a decade later during the height of the 1970s tennis boom), and a swimming pool, deck and cabana rebuilt in 2004. Next up was to improve the tennis shop and build a new fitness center.

Research and club use trends that Zalzneck, Assadzandi and the club’s board studied show that one in five Americans utilize fitness centers and average slightly over 100 visits a year. Health club visits have increased by 25 percent since 2009.

“Fitness is here to stay, it’s a trend, not a fad,” says Assadzandi, who’s been the club GM since June 2012. “It’s not going anywhere.

When I first came here for my interview, I asked, ‘Where is the fitness center?’ There was

A

19

none. At my previous club, we’d renovated and enlarged the fitness center three times.”

The new building on the top floor and the entry floor will have a reception area, racket-stringing area, offices for staff, a media room and a covered terrace area overlooking Watson’s Lake for drinks and light snacks and a kitchen to service that area.

The bottom floor will have men’s and women’s locker rooms and a 1,900-square foot fitness center with a studio room for yoga and other classes. A bank of Precor cardio machines will look over the lake, and the room will be equipped with Hoist strength training equipment, assorted dumbbells and various types of functional fitness equipment.

The newly expanded tennis and fitness operation will be directed by Al Van Vliet, CCNC’s head tennis professional since 1986 and a self-avowed fitness advocate. He was working in the fall of 2016 to complete a training program in Optimum Performance Training, a model for clients of all ages, abilities and fitness levels to safely and efficiently develop stabilization, strength and power. Van Vliet will turn 62 in April 2017 and says fitness is an important part of his life and increasingly in the lives of others his generation.

“I play tennis, play golf, run, bike, I want to ski again,” he says. “To be able to continue to do all these things, I have to maintain my

CCNC

body, I have to stay in shape. As I get older, I appreciate it more. It behooves me and the entire membership in terms of health and well-being to maintain our fitness levels.

“The average age of our members is around 62,” he continues. “Those are the ones who need the work for balance, bone density, overall well-being. I look forward to helping raise awareness of these things and helping our members improve their health and fitness levels.”

V

an Vliet has seen the ebb and flow of trends and lifestyles over three decades and the cycling of generations through the membership.

“When I came here, everyone was 20 years older than I was, now those people are no longer here or they’re not playing tennis,” he says. “Now they’re all 20 years younger and they have kids. They’re very family-oriented.

Kids come hang out and do homework while their parents play tennis. Dads will drop the kids off for a tennis lesson and go work out.

“We have a younger clientele today, they’re very fitness oriented,” Van Vliet says.

“I think fitness is going to be one of our mostused amenities.”

“We’ve tried to reposition the club for the next 50 years,” Zalzneck adds. “As the world changes, you cannot stand still.”

The club’s eight tennis courts and Watson’s Lake add to the recreational component.

The Cardinal Holds Its Own

20

I

CCNC

In the beginning, it was called the “Wilderness Nine.”

These nine new holes designed by Robert Trent Jones at CCNC and opened in 1981 joined the nine holes of the “Cardinal Nine,” which were designed by Willard Byrd and opened in 1970. Together they formed a second 18-hole course at the club and eventually came to be known as the “Cardinal Course” to compliment the original “Dogwood Course,” which opened in 1963.

The new course was comprised of holes one through five of the Byrd course, then picked up six through 14 of the Trent Jones, then reconnected with the last four holes from the Byrd nine.

“You walked off the fifth green, crossed the road and came to a brutally difficult, dogleg left hole with a narrow fairway,” says Lew Ferguson, an assistant pro at the time.

“The new nine was noticeably tighter and more penal.”

The “Wilderness Nine” appellation fit because, since the course didn’t return to the clubhouse after nine and there

21

CCNC

In the beginning, it was called the“Wilderness Nine.” was not yet any home construction in that back area of the club, there was a feeling of seclusion.

“The greens on the Trent Jones nine were much more severe than the Byrd nine,” says Jeff Dotson, CCNC’s director of golf. “There was also a different look and feel to the width of the holes—the Byrd nine was more wide open, the Trent Jones nine much narrower. That the Trent Jones nine was tighter was ironic because the lots they drew along the fairways were larger than any other in the community at the time—they averaged about five acres.

“There was a different look to the bunkers as well. The Trent Jones nine had more shape and flare to the bunkers, and on several holes, there was a pine tree standing in the middle of a bunker.”

The club in 2001 hired Arthur Hills to redesign the Cardinal Course. Hills, a Toledo-based golf architect with nearly 40 years of experience worldwide creating new courses and renovating older ones, was charged with unifying the two nines and rebuilding the greens with Penn A-1, at the time the best grass for putting surfaces in the “transition” zone between the bermuda-oriented South and bent-oriented Northeast. Those greens were later converted to Champion bermuda.

“We did some much needed tree clearing, rebuilt all the greens, tees and bunkers to create a more cohesive, integrated course, consistent in character from beginning to end,” says Drew Rogers, a designer on Hills’ staff at the time.

“That was a major overhaul,” adds Dotson. “The Cardinal essentially became an Arthur Hills course. It has a look and feel to it now that runs from one through 18.”

CCNC has hosted a number of CGA, Southern Golf Association and USGA events, and Dotson notes that the Cardinal is absolutely good enough to be a companion course to the Dogwood for qualifying rounds, but it’s rarely used simply because the nines don’t return to the clubhouse, making it a logistical challenge.

“Between the Art Hills project on the Cardinal and now the Kris Spence work on the Dogwood, I’ll put our 36 holes up against any similar club or resort anywhere,” Dotson says. “Design, challenge, playability, beauty—we have a really strong pair of golf courses.”

The fairway of the second hole slopes down to a green bordered to the rear by a lake that also comes into play on the third (above left); the ninth hole (L) is part of the nine holes Robert Trent Jones designed in 1981.

22

CCNC

23

CCNC

In Good

Taste

Chef Minicucci elevates CCNC dining experience with attention to detail, creativity and a passionate kitchen staff.

O

melet at 7 p.m. on a Sunday?

Check. Marinara sauce made from scratch and simmered for hours before serving? Check.

Hollandaise sauce and Caesar dressing whipped up with fresh ingredients, not a can nor bottle of pre-made goo desecrating the premises? Absolutely.

Chicken seasoned and fried by a 30-year veteran, peanut butter cheese cake crafted by a second-generation pastry cook? Believe it.

“We’re not like an Italian restaurant where you just have to be good at one thing,” says Adam Minicucci, CCNC’s executive chef.

“We have to be a steakhouse, a delicatessen, make omelets on Sunday nights for a special order. We have to make everyone happy.

“We don’t have to make marinara sauce seven days a week—but when we do make it, it’s as good as it can be. Then the next night it’s on to an Asian stir-fry. No one here ever gets bored or complacent. It’s fun to open ourselves up and be creative.”

Minicucci has directed CCNC’s dining operation since October 2013 and has elevated it to new levels of satisfaction and culinary delight among the club’s 850 members.

“Adam brought a visionary aspect to our jobs the first day he walked in here,” says Heather Fluck, the pastry cook. “He made us

all interested in our jobs, all over again.”

“He has by far raised the level of satisfaction,” says club general manager Saeed Assadzandi. “He has great culinary skills and great people skills.”

Minicucci grew up in New Jersey and learned cooking from his grandmother and the restaurant business and chef profession from a close family friend. He washed dishes after school as a teenager and progressed to line cook and then decided to study culinary arts in college. Early career posts included the Sailfish Club in Palm Beach, the Rolling Rock Club outside Pittsburgh and the Genesee Valley Club in Rochester. He fielded a call from a head-hunter in 2013 about the opening at CCNC, and the North Carolina location appealed to him and his wife Ronnie because of family connections in the area.

“The clubs I’d worked at before were great before I got there,” he says. “I was honored to carry those traditions on. In looking at this job, I thought this is my opportunity to come to a place that has all the tools to become one of those places one day. If I can play a small role for future chefs to carry on after me as others did for me, I’d like that opportunity.”

Minicucci prides himself from his early days as a chef taking an attitude of inclusion and teamwork to the stove and grill rather than an imperialistic and egotistical mindset.

There are no pre-made or pre-cooked dishes, sauces and condiments coming out of the CCNC kitchen. It’s all fresh ingredients chopped and mixed and simmered by hand.

24

CCNC

“You can put passion into grabbing a whole bunch of ingredients and creating a dish from nothing.

Its sounds cliche, but that’s the love. People say, ‘What’s your secret ingredient?’ The love.”

He remembers making a beans-and-rice dish for a Cinco de Mayo dinner in Rochester and a dishwasher ambling up, asking what he was doing and tsk-tsking his efforts.

Instead of being offended, Minicucci asked the man what he was doing wrong and was promptly given some ideas from the man’s grandmother’s recipe.

“I’ve never made beans-and-rice since then the old way,” he says. “You learn something every day. That’s one thing I love about this business.”

One of the first changes Minicucci made was to empty the pantries of pre-made and pre-cooked dishes, sauces and condiments and in their place substitute fresh ingredients chopped and mixed and simmered by hand.

It helped the taste and eventually the bottom line—the better something tastes, the more members and guests will eat it.

“There is nothing fun or creative or challenging about opening a jar or a can of tomato sauce,” he says. “There is nothing that matches taking tomatoes and garlic and letting them simmer for twelve hours. You cannot put passion into opening a jar. But you can put passion into grabbing a whole bunch of ingredients and creating a dish from nothing. Its sounds cliché, but that’s the love.

People say, ‘What ‘s your secret ingredient?’

The love.”

Minicucci delighted in igniting that passion in his staff. One day he brought out a recipe for Caesar salad dressing he had used in three previous jobs and gave it to one cook who’s now comically territorial about “owning” that process.

“He went from opening jars of dressing

25

CCNC

Whether it’s a cake customized with the CCNC Cardinal or an exquisitely prepared dinner, the offerings in the club’s dining rooms help elevate the CCNC experience to best in class.

to now, he won’t let me make it because he’s afraid I’ll screw it up,” Minicucci says with a laugh. “If he has a day off, he makes a doublebatch. That’s how much passion he has.”

he deliciousness is definitely in the details. The fried chicken served on Wednesdays and Fridays is dryrubbed and sits for 24 hours before being fried. The meatloaf is mixed with Gruyere cheese and bacon. The bordelaise sauce is reduced from stock simmering for a day or more. The line cooks are liable to mix truffle oil and tapioca and turn it into a dust to sprinkle over entrees as a garnish or offer up vanilla ice cream with orange-infused olive oil.

“We don’t have to be 3-Star Michelin,” Minicucci says. “We don’t have to have every molecule on the plate perfect. But we’re going to have the best fried chicken and the best meatloaf in three counties because our people are so passionate about what they are doing.”

Charles “C.J.” Johnson has been at CCNC for more than three decades and is known as “The Rock” because of his regimen of putting in an eight-hour shift at the club from 6 a.m. to 2 p.m. and then a second shift at Ironwood Café on Midland Road between Pinehurst and Southern Pines. Johnson taught Minicucci how to make collard greens when the New Jersey native moved south. He’s deft with the fried chicken and his signature chili.

T

“I can make chili, but I can’t make C.J.’s chili,” Minicucci says. “If I make it, the guys at the Halfway House say, ‘Oh, C.J.’s off today, huh?’ I have been threatened that nothing ever happen to C.J.” C.J. has his areas of expertise as do executive sous chef Mike Hepfner, sous chef Aaron Hepfner (Mike’s nephew), lead line cook Roberto Lopez and Fluck, the pastry cook.

“These guys have brought the passion back for me,” Minicucci says. “I’d made Hollandaise 10,000 times and it can get mundane. But you teach it to them, and they get excited and it gets you excited all over again.”

He revels in the challenge of managing a kitchen staff and devising menus that hit so many levels.

“This club is about golf, there’s no denying that,” Minicucci says. “But food in this country in changing. When I was starting, you’d never dare tell someone in a bar you were a chef. Today, chefs are rock stars. They’re writing books and on TV. Food is a draw. We want to be good enough to be 12 different things to 12 different people.

“If you walk into a steak house on Sunday night and ask for an omelet, they’ll point you to the door. Here, we’ll get the spinach and mushrooms out and cook one to order. And it will be the best omelet we’ve ever cooked— even if we’ve cooked 10,000 of them.”

26

CCNC

A Rich

Heritage Founders’ vision of recreation and socializing in conveniently located Sandhills haven plays out into one of state’s special clubs.

27

CCNC

T

hree young men—an accountant, an attorney, a home builder—each visited The Country Club of North Carolina during their formative, twenty-something years. The rolling and wooden terrain, the golf course routed through the pines and around the lakes, the soothing ambiance—all made a lasting first impression.

Robert “Ziggy” Zalzneck was a young accounting intern in Raleigh a long way from his Pennsylvania home during the holidays and was given access to CCNC on Christmas Day 1967 by his boss, club co-founder Dick Urquhart. He had the place to himself.

“I played 36 holes and it was 70 degrees,” Zalzneck says. “It was the prettiest place I’d ever been my whole life. I’ve loved the place ever since.”

John May was one year out of law school on Easter Monday in 1973 when he was invited to play the Dogwood Course, which teemed with the dogwood’s flowers, the lake anchoring the back nine and the feeling of total seclusion from the real world.

“This was so far above anything I’d ever been exposed to,” May says. “I went to Wake Forest and had played Old Town. But Pinehurst was such a special place. Then you get around the back nine of the Dogwood course—you don’t see that kind of beauty combined with an outstanding golf course very often.

And Alex Bowness, a young homebuilder in Southern Pines, was invited to play the Ellis Maples-designed course in 1977 and knew immediately that he wanted to become a member.

“I’ll never forget playing the 15th hole the first time,” he says of the par-four that kisses against the shore of Watson’s Lake—one of seven holes on the back nine accented by water. “It was April, the dogwoods were in bloom, and some dog ran across the fairway.

It was a spellbinding vision. It took my breath away. I can see it today as if it were yesterday.”

Thirty-nine years later, Bowness is sitting in an Adirondack chair nestled in the pine forest between the fourth hole of the

Dick Urquhart had the vision of turning a parcel of land anchored by Watson’s Lake into a retreat for business and professional leaders from across the state of North Carolina.

“I played 36 holes and it was 70 degrees.

It was the prettiest place I’d ever been my whole life. I’ve loved the place ever since.”

Dogwood golf course and his Williamsburgstyle home. His Cavalier King Spaniel, O. Max, cavorts through the pine straw.

It’s been home for Bowness and wife Susan since 2000.

“When we drive through the gate, our shoulders fall down,” he says. “It’s very relaxing to drive through the gate. We live 2.4 miles from the gate, and it’s a nice, soft ride. From here we see golfers go by, we see little boats go by with fishermen. There’s even a bald eagle who lives near here, sometimes late in the day you’ll see him swoop through the trees. It’s almost like coming into a park.”

That was certainly the idea back in 1963 when four North Carolina businessmen hatched the idea of creating a private

28

CCNC

29

club on this piece of land tucked between Pinehurst, Southern Pines and Aberdeen.

While the Sandhills golf community had been built since the turn of the 20th century on resort golf and semi-private courses, these visionaries believed the state needed a private club centrally located that could draw members from Raleigh to Charlotte and beyond.

Raleigh accountant Dick Urquhart, Greensboro investment banker Hargrove “Skipper” Bowles, Greensboro developer and builder Griswold Smith and Raleigh attorney James Poyner were the four founding members and soon enticed three dozen “charter members” to join the club. They represented a Who’s Who of North Carolina business and philanthropy, among them C.C. Cameron of Raleigh, George Watts Carr of Durham, Frank Kenan of Durham, James Harris of Charlotte, Richardson Preyer of Greensboro, Calder Womble of WinstonSalem and Karl Hudson of Raleigh.

“What could be better than a good club centrally located for nearly all of us, ideally suited for golf, horses, hunting or just plain socializing?” Urquhart asked in a 1962 letter to charter members.

W

illard Byrd studied landscape architecture at N.C. State in the late-1940s with an emphasis on land planning and had opened a shop in the land-planning business in Atlanta in 1956.

He was hired to draw the master plan for CCNC, which would include approximately 300 residential lots averaging two acres in size apiece. The golf course was routed at the outset, with the lots to be arranged around the best land for golf. Much discussion ensued at the beginning over the issue of wrapping nine holes of golf around Watson’s Lake, thus eliminating some premier lakefront building lots.

At the time, Byrd was not officially a golf architect, so Maples was retained to collaborate on the creation of the golf course, to be named after the preponderance of dogwood trees on the property. The original plans have both the names of Byrd and Maples on the blueprint for each hole. Byrd

CCNC

created the routing and Maples designed the features—the green shapes and undulations, bunkers and placement of hazards.

“The course should be second to none from the very start,” said Urquhart, whose views that the golf course should get the premier lakefront exposure won out in that discussion. Later he added, “The fact that we didn’t let lot sales overrule the golf course is a major reason our Dogwood Course is so great and so beautiful.”

Urquhart would serve as president of the club for three decades and blended an array of business and leadership skills with a steadfast vision of what the club should be.

“He wanted everyone to think he was ‘country,’” says Zalzneck, the incumbent president and only the sixth individual to hold that position in half a century. “But he was smart like a fox. He was Phi Beta Kappa at Chapel Hill. He’d sit in a meeting with guys in pinstripe suits and say, ‘Guys, I hope you’re having a good time but I don’t understand a damn thing you’re talking about. Put it in English.’ He was fantastic, smart, clever, and he loved this place. He had brains and personality and a style about him no one can duplicate.”

Urquhart tapped John May as recording secretary in 1974 at the age of 26 and later May succeeded Urquhart as president beginning in 1994 when Urquhart stepped down.

“Dick was an accountant by profession, but as he told me one time, ‘I’m a salesman,’” May says. “He had that type personality. He was a magnet for people. He was humble enough, no matter his accomplishments.

I never knew of anyone who met him and didn’t feel like he was a life-long friend.”

May and other younger members took careful note of the guiding philosophy that Urquhart and other founders operated by.

“The club founders were not opposed to being profitable, but that was far down the list of reasons for doing it,” he says. “They truly believed it would be a great place to socialize and play golf with people from across the state. The real estate was almost incidental, it helped pay for things. It was a labor of love.”

The course opened in 1963 and was one the original members of Golf Digest’s 100

Ellis Maples (above) learned course maintenance and construction from his father Frank, a long-time employee at Pinehurst Country Club.

Left: Among golfers who’ve made their mark at CCNC (clockwise from top left): Jack Nicklaus, DeWitt Weaver, Webb Simpson and Hal Sutton.

30

Far Right: Buck Adams (L), the club’s original golf pro, poses with Max Forrest and Dick Urquhart outside the trailer that served as the golf shop until a permanent building was opened.

CCNC

Greatest Golf Courses and was site of the 1971 and 1972 Liggett & Myers Match Play Championship on the PGA Tour (won by Dewitt Weaver and Jack Nicklaus) and the 1980 U.S. Amateur (won by Hal Sutton).

It has hosted six Southern Amateurs (with Ben Crenshaw and Webb Simpson among the winners), and the 110-year-old championship will return in 2017. It has been the venue for the 2010 U.S. Girls Junior Championship as well as multiple Carolinas Golf Association championships, including three Carolinas Amateurs and seven North Carolina Amateurs.

The original course was so popular the club retained Byrd to build nine more holes in 1970. Then in the late-1970s, Urquhart acquired some land from Robert Trent Jones and hired Jones to build nine new holes and work them into the first nine and

create a new course, this one dubbed “The Cardinal” in keeping with the State of North Carolina theme.

onnell “Buck” Adams was hired in 1963 as the club’s first golf professional, a post he’d hold for three decades, and his friendship with a number of touring pros and the quality of the Dogwood course made CCNC a popular destination when the PGA Tour swung through North Carolina. Son Buck Adams Jr. was born in 1962, one year before the course opened, and remembers all the golfers who visited in the 1970s—Dave Marr, Dave Stockton, Miller Barber, Peter Oosterhuis, Chi Chi Rodriquez, Frank Beard among them.

“I can’t tell you how many times I’d be on the range and see Dad walk up with a tour pro,” Adams says. “The tour came to

D

31

CCNC

North Carolina for the GGO, the Kemper in Charlotte, the World Open and Hall of Fame Classic at Pinehurst. Whenever those guys were near Pinehurst, they’d come play the Dogwood.

“It was a lot of golf course back then. A 7,000-yard course in the 1960s and ’70s was a lot of golf course. It was long and open. That’s one of the things Dad loved about it so much.”

The golf course was one thing. The club’s membership roll that included the best and brightest of North Carolina’s business and professional community was another. The younger Adams could hardly have grasped as a teenager the immense reach of CCNC’s membership on the state’s overall vibrancy.

“I didn’t appreciate it then,” Adams says.

“But I do now when I’m driving down the highway and see the road named for one of our early members or see a building with their name on it. It’s quite impressive.”

The outline of the state of North Carolina has been a key component of the CCNC story for more than 50 years. The club was founded by and remains a bastion of business, professional and social leaders from across the state.

The skies, the shadows, the towering pines, the reflection in the lake— all meld to create an idyllic setting looking at the new fifteenth green on the Dogwood Course at The Country Club of North Carolina.