Beau Welling: Fascinating, by design

Miguel Ángel Jiménez, the cigar-smoking, Rioja-swilling Spaniard who wears his red-brown hair in a ponytail and engages in pre-round warm-up routines that have him gyrating like an exotic dancer, is often referred to as the most interesting man in golf. But the winner of 41 professional tournaments and member of four Ryder Cup teams has nothing on course architect Beau Welling, who has run his own firm since 2007 and also serves as the senior design consultant to Tiger Woods.

Start with Welling’s work, whether renovating an esteemed layout such as Ocean Forest on Sea Island or crafting his own course, dubbed Fields Ranch West, at Omni PGA Frisco north of Dallas while also overseeing the planning of a project that includes a hotel, a short course and lighted putting green, a Lounge by Topgolf, 13 restaurants and 10 “ranch house residences.”

Oh, and Welling helped Woods create Payne’s Valley at Big Cedar Lodge in the Ozark Mountains of southwest Missouri and Bluejack National outside Houston, among other courses, clubs and golf communities.

Then, there is Welling’s educational background. He has a physics degree from Brown University and an international business degree from the University of South Carolina. He also studied landscape architecture at the Rhode Island School of Design and Irish drama and literature at Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland.

Welling’s job history is equally intriguing, beginning with an internship at Siemens AG in Germany while at USC. Welling spent nine months in the power generation group of that corporation, conducting all of his business in German. Upon his return to the States, Welling worked as an investment and international banker in Charlotte, North Carolina. Then, in 1997, he joined Tom Fazio’s course design firm.

“Tom called me his ‘business guy,’ and I helped run the company,” Welling said. “I interacted with clients, negotiated contracts and managed the marketing of the courses we were building. And in time, I started conceptualizing some of the designs and doing actual course construction.”

“Then, I started my own firm,” he said. “And Tiger Woods was my first client.”

Born in Washington, D.C., but raised in Greenville, South Carolina, Welling is a voracious reader who counts William Faulkner and Pat Conroy among his favorite authors, as any self-respecting son of the South would. But the architect also fancies two of Ireland’s best in James Joyce and William Yeats, an affection that he nurtured while studying in Éire. Welling also happens to be a published poet and sat for a spell on the board of the Carolina Ballet Theatre. Two years ago, he became president of the World Curling Federation.

Yes, curling, the winter Olympic sport that is played on ice with stones and brooms.

Truth be told, there is no one quite like Beau Welling in golf. But he may be the only one who is unimpressed with his accomplishments, for he seems content simply to pursue his many interests and have a good time doing so.

This past winter, the 54-year-old Welling talked with Global Golf Post senior writer John Steinbreder about his early introduction to golf, the way that trips he took as a young man to Augusta National and Cypress Point kindled his interest in course architecture, his love of beer, his work with Tom Fazio and Tiger Woods, the way that Welling and his wife, Allison, reconnected at their high school reunion a decade or so ago and then married, how he came to head up the leading curling organization in the world, why he believes that the best thing about golf is how it creates community and whether he is a better golfer or curler.

What follows is the latest edition of the 19th Hole:

I was born in Washington, D.C., in the old Walter Reed Army Hospital. My dad worked in the Pentagon as an accountant, but we moved to Greenville when I was 2 years old. My mother taught school and raised me and my two younger sisters. In time, she became politically active and served on the city council.

I was a sports fanatic growing up. Basketball and golf were my big things. My father was a golfer. My mom, too. I was a bit of a country club brat during the summers as a kid. My parents belonged to the Greenville Country Club, and I’d swim and play golf there all the time.

I played some competitive junior golf and also doodled golf holes in my school notebooks. I don’t know that I was interested in becoming a course architect. I just knew that I enjoyed both the technical and creative aspects of design.

My parents had friends who were members at Augusta National and also Cypress Point, and I was lucky enough to play both those courses in my youth. They just blew me away, and after I learned that they had both been designed by Dr. Alister MacKenzie, I bought every book I could on the architect. I became fascinated by who he was and what he did.

I went to J.L. Mann High School in Greenville.  I loved to read and had such a passion for learning. I ended up going to Brown University, which at the time took a much different approach to education. Grades were optional, and most classes really had no curriculum.

Though I wanted to be graded and asked my professors to do so, I found Brown to be the perfect place for me academically. It was very challenging, with a very independent-minded student body. But it took me a while to adjust socially, for I had been quite protected back home. Eventually, I found my way.

I played on the golf team my first two years there. I was a 2- or 3-handicap at the time. But then I went to Trinity College in Dublin as a visiting student when I was a junior. The plan was for me to continue my studies on theoretical physics, which was what I was majoring in at Brown. But I ended up studying other things at Trinity as well. Drama. History. Literature.

Dublin was great. Back then, it was the world’s largest village. You’d see the same characters in the same places around town. It was very clannish and very charming. I played hard. I studied hard. And I learned to love Guinness.

I returned to Brown for my senior year. Another way in which they empowered students there was allowing us to develop our own courses of study. I was somewhat split between wanting to continue with physics and science and getting more into art and writing. Then, I had an epiphany: golf course architecture combined science with the creative. So, I took some courses in landscaping architecture at the Rhode Island School of Design.

By that time, I had some practical experience in that area, for I had held a job for two summers with Tom Fazio while in college. My father was helping develop a new course in the Greenville area, called Thornblade. Tom was designing it, and I started calling him about getting in the course design business.

Beau Welling working with a former associate on the job site in Frisco

I graduated from Brown in 1992. My thesis was: “The Klein Paradox and Other Simple Solutions to the Dirac Equation.”

Tom offered me a job after I graduated. I went to see him, but the timing was not great. It was right after the first Gulf War, and he did not have a lot of projects on the docket. That created some doubt, so I decided instead to go to business school. In time, I received a master’s in international business studies from the University of South Carolina. That was the program that took me to Germany.

After USC, I spent two years working as an investment banker in Charlotte. I did a lot of mergers and acquisitions and traveled a bunch because I had helped my firm start an international banking department.

Then, Tom called and said he wanted to talk again about my coming to work for him. I had no intention of getting back to course architecture. But after chatting with him for a few minutes, I decided to make a change. So, in 1997, I joined his firm. I stayed there for a decade.

In addition to enjoying golf as a player and as part of Tom’s design company, I also came to appreciate how the game created communities.

Earl (Woods) said he could not wait to get Tiger designing golf courses, like he was going to put us out of business. And I would give it right back to Earl. He was great.

That first year with Tom, I went to the Masters with him. And at a party one night, I met Greg McLaughlin, who had just been appointed to run the Tiger Woods Foundation. Greg and I had a nice talk, and we ran into each other at a similar sort of affair the following evening. We kept in touch, and maybe five years later, he called me about building a Tiger Woods Learning Center, which we ended up doing in Anaheim, California. It included a driving range and putting course, with the grand opening in 2006.

I got to know Tiger’s father, Earl, through that process. He talked trash to me all the time. Earl said he could not wait to get Tiger designing golf courses, like he was going to put us out of business. And I would give it right back to Earl. He was great.

Not long after the Anaheim project, Greg called again. He said Tiger was thinking about doing a golf course project and wanted to talk about that.

As this started to happen, I began thinking of doing my own version of a golf design company. Not just golf, but things about and having to do with golf. Like land planning and building communities through the game.

So, in 2007, I started my own company, with Tiger Woods as my first client.

Our first course was in Dubai, but we never finished it due to the recession that took hold a year later. But we have done some good ones since then, like Bluejack National and Payne’s Valley.

It has been really great working with Tiger. And easy. When I first sat down to talk with him about his design ideas, I was blown away by how astute his knowledge was about course architecture and how his mind worked like a computer calculating risks and rewards. He told me he knew how to build a really hard course but would rather create something that everyone could play, and enjoy. I liked the sound of that.

Tiger gives us direction when we work. He wants the ground to be a golfer’s friend, as do I. He likes to open approaches to greens, so players can run up shots. And he likes giving them recovery shots that can be hit on the ground as well.

Tiger has also been very helpful in explaining to me how to cater to elite-level players and how they think about and approach golf.

I married for the first time two years ago. My wife’s name is Allison, and she has three children, ages 23, 20 and 17. We went to high school together. I had asked her out on a date one time back then, and she laughed at me. Then we reconnected at our 25th high school reunion. She walked right up to me and said: “I have two questions for you.” First, Allison wanted to know if I was married, and I said no. Then, she asked if I had any children. ‘Not that I know of,’ I responded. We started talking, and at the end of the night, she kissed me on the cheek. We have been together ever since.”

I introduced myself, he heard my accent and said, ‘Oh, my God, you’re Beau Welling, and you’re here. We’ve all been waiting for you to arrive.’

I still live in Greenville, but Allison and I also have a second home in Cashiers, North Carolina. It is in the Blue Ridge Mountains. As a result, the temperature is about 20 degrees cooler in the summer. I am a member of Mountaintop Golf & Lake Club, which our property abuts and is a Tom Fazio design. The golf is quite good, and there’s great hiking there. The colors are just spectacular in the fall.

My fascination with curling goes back to watching it as a demonstration sport in the 1988 Winter Olympics in Calgary. Fourteen years later, during the Winter Games in Salt Lake City, I found myself drawn to it again. The strategies; the science of the angles and trajectories; the frictions. It also seemed a very collegial sport, with lots of camaraderie.

Apparently, I was not the only one to fall in love with curling, because NBC put on some 80 hours of it during the 2006 Olympics in Turin, Italy.

Eventually, my obsession with the sport prompted me to travel to the hotbed of curling in America, the town of Bemidji in northern Minnesota, which is also famous for having those much-photographed statues of the folk hero Paul Bunyan and his blue ox Babe in town. It was hosting the U.S. National Championships in curling two weeks after the Turin Olympics. I had a break in my work schedule and decided I had to go there.

I got in touch with the people in Bemidji, sent in money to get a seat for the competition, and then flew up, landing in a blinding snowstorm. I walked into the lobby of my hotel that night, and the only person there was the captain of the U.S. Olympic curling team who had just won the bronze medal. I introduced myself, he heard my accent and said, ‘Oh, my God, you’re Beau Welling, and you’re here. We’ve all been waiting for you to arrive.’ Apparently, they could not believe this crazy Southerner was actually going to show up for the national championships.

Well, I ended up staying in Bemidji for nine days. My reserved seat for the competition was a bar stool with my name pasted on the back. People were buying me drinks constantly. Some took me ice fishing. One night, the whole town threw me a birthday party. Another day, I walked in a parade for U.S. curlers, with the people lining the streets holding up brooms as we ambled by.

I had no plans ever to get involved in the sport, but I received a call the next year from U.S. Curling, saying they wanted someone on their board who was not a curler and thought I might be a good candidate. Apparently, I had given my opinion on a few things involving curling when I was drinking up in Bemidji. So, I ended up on the board. And somehow all these years later, I am president of the World Curling Federation.

It’s extra work, but I get it done. The organization is based in Perth, Scotland, and the IOC is in Lausanne, Switzerland. So, I wake up at 5 a.m. most days and do what I have to do for curling in the mornings. Then, I transition into golf. It takes up a lot of time, especially during the winter, and I have to make one trip a month related to curling. But I really enjoy it.

My golf game is not very good any more. I do not play very much and maybe posted 15 scores last year. I guess my handicap is 9.

As for curling, I am probably the equivalent of about an 18-handicapper in that game. I am just good enough not to embarrass myself.

Photos: Courtesy Beau Welling

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