close

Another nine holes to Dye for

By Mike Dudurich for The 5 min read

Trees are being cut down on the mountain.

Red and green-topped metal poles, 18 of them in number, have been stuck in the ground.

That can only mean one thing: Pete Dye is about to create more magic at Nemacolin Woodlands Resort.

The legendary golf course architect, who will turn 89 tomorrow, will be the force behind a new nine holes scheduled to open July 4, 2016.

The reason for another nine at Joe Hardy’s playground in Farmington?

“There has been just so much demand on Mystic Rock. We’re almost full every day out there,” said resort general manager Chris Plummer.

“By August and September, it looks like Mystic Rock has gone through a cheese grater,” said Brian Anderson, Director of Resort Operations at Nemacolin Woodlands. “It just wasn’t designed for 23,000 or 24,000 rounds a year.”

The new nine will be known as the Mystic Rock Addition because owners Joe and Maggie Hardy weren’t interested in a separate golf course. They just wanted an extension of Mystic Rock.

“It will look a lot like the front nine on Mystic,” Anderson side. “Wide fairways, big bunkers. It won’t be long and will be very walkable. And there won’t be any waterfalls, just a good nine golf holes. And one of the cool things about it? The entire course will be sodded.”

The Addition is part of a multi-dimensional development that will be taking place at the resort. A $30 million across-the-board renovation at the resort is in its final stages and with the new nine holes will come new housing opportunities.

“These nine holes are being built for real estate development,” Plummer said. “The possibility exists for 650 homes and luxury villas around the golf course. The idea behind this is that there will always be nine holes available to resort guests and homeowners. These homes will be not so much primary homes as second- and third-home settings.”

Plummer and Anderson both said there have been times when resort guests, paying top price for their accommodations, weren’t able to get onto Mystic Rock.

The new nine will start just to the right and down over the hill from the practice range near Falling Rock. It will finish behind Horizon Point, not far from Falling Rock. That was no accident.

“We want to make it so that homeowners can just hop on a golf course, come over to the clubhouse and go out and play golf,” Plummer said.

“This will enable folks to access the facilities at the resort easier,” Anderson said. “And it will impact the resort more with the setup as it will be.”

And when homeowners make their purchases, they become members of the entire resort, including everything from golf to casino to spa to zip line.

There was consideration given to building 18 holes, but to do that, the closeness factor would have had to be sacrificed. And Hardy has insisted the new nine be referred to as holes 19-27.

Plans are for luxury villas to be built on the fourth, fifth and six holes, locations that will provide great views of the Addition. Homes are also planned on the fifth through eighth holes on Mystic Rock.

“One thing is for sure, the homes that are built won’t jeopardize any of the golf course experience,” Plummer said. “And that’s one of the things behind the re-focus we’re doing here at the resort. Our goal is to make sure the experience for our guests is the best it can be.”

On the golf course, that will include limiting the number of rounds on Mystic Rock to about 18,000, bringing caddies back for 2015 and having mandatory forecaddies.

“If you’re out there for 5½ hours, that’s not a great experience,” Anderson said. “By making these changes, we feel we can make it much better.”

There will also be some restructuring in how events are handled at Mystic Rock.

“We’re going to get away from how event-driven that course had become,” Anderson said. “We heard about it from our guests and they didn’t like it. We loved the events and still do. They helped us a lot when things were slow, but we’re going to get those to Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday instead of toward the end of the week.”

“We’ve had instances where guests would check in on Friday afternoon and want to go out and play but couldn’t because an event had the course tied up,” Plummer said. “Because we’re very bad at saying no here, events can still get in on Friday, but it will be at the $225 greens fee. Those days earlier in the week would be at a lesser fee.”

The Tri-State Section PGA has held one of its bigger events, the Falling Rock Classic, at Mystic Rock for 10 years. But as part of the resort’s new focus that relationship came to an end after the 2014 edition.

“It won’t be held in 2015, but that doesn’t mean it won’t ever happen again,” Anderson said.

As 2014 ends, Plummer said Nemacolin Woodlands had its best year since 2007 and is poised to have even a better year in 2015.

“Our luxury market has stormed back,” he said. “It’s been very satisfying to watch and we see it elsewhere, too. People are spending their money on the high-end, upper-level courses. For us, we’ve raised our service levels and we’re going to be set up for the future. We’ll be set up for the next 15 years.

CUSTOMER LOGIN

If you have an account and are registered for online access, sign in with your email address and password below.

NEW CUSTOMERS/UNREGISTERED ACCOUNTS

Never been a subscriber and want to subscribe, click the Subscribe button below.

Starting at $4.79/week.

Subscribe Today