As farmland turned ‘fancy new golf course,’ Quail Hollow poised for more big events
When construction began on the Quail Hollow Club in 1959, reports described the facility as “an exclusive type of club, patterned after Augusta National.” The club would be on about 225 acres of farmland owned by James Harris, the father of current club president Johnny Harris.
And “a major tournament may be played upon the course sometime in the future,” according to an Observer article from August 1959 with the headline “Fancy new golf course being built.”
Nearly 60 years later, the club’s 38th professional golf tournament — the Wells Fargo Championship — is underway. But Johnny Harris is already thinking about what’s next.
This week, Wells Fargo and the PGA Tour announced a five-year extension of their partnership, meaning the Wells Fargo Championship will remain at Quail Hollow through at least 2024. The tournament will move to the TPC Potomac at Avenel Farm in suburban Washington, D.C., in 2021 when the Presidents Cup comes to Quail Hollow in the fall. After that, Harris is hoping to once again land the coveted PGA Championship, which Charlotte hosted in 2017.
City boosters estimate the economic impact of the weeklong PGA Championship to be roughly $100 million. Harris said the Presidents Cup is comparable to that. (By comparison, the Wells Fargo Championship’s economic impact is estimated to be $40-$60 million per year.)
“We’re going to always pursue doing special events to bring the greatest players in the world to Charlotte and to our region,” Harris, a longtime Charlotte real estate developer, told the Observer Friday.
“My father was a visionary in many ways. He wanted to see something like this (landing major golf tournaments) happen. I don’t think anybody thought we could have the success we’ve had.”
Presidents Cup
Charlotte won the coveted Presidents Cup in February 2015.
First played in 1994, the Presidents Cup is a match-play event held every other year between the United States and a team of non-European international players. In match play, teams earn a point for each hole where they beat the other team. This contrasts with stroke play, which is the kind played at the Wells Fargo Championship, where the total number of strokes is counted over each of four 18-hole rounds.
Adam Sperling, executive director of the Presidents Cup, moved to Charlotte last year to begin preparing. He said that while the course won’t undergo any construction for the event, it will be played much differently than a typical Quail Hollow tournament. The course was renovated after the 2013 Wells Fargo tournament.
A typical match play event finishes somewhere between holes 16-17, Sperling said, but organizers wanted to still use the 16th, 17th and 18th, the popular viewing stretch known as the Green Mile.
“So we’ll play the first eight holes just the same as they do this week, and then rather than go to 9, we’ll walk from the 8th green to the (nearby) 12th tee. And 12 will become our 9. What that does is, instead of 12-18 it becomes 9-15,” Sperling said.
“There aren’t a lot of ways in which this isn’t going to feel like a completely different event,” he added.
Sperling said fans can expect a variety of new food and drink options throughout the course. This week, he has been out mingling with fans to get a sense for what they want.
“I talk to everybody. I want to know ‘How’s your burger? What’d you get at the merchandise shop? Are you having a good time?’” he said. “It’s a failure for everyone involved if you don’t elevate the experience every year.”
Sperling said Quail Hollow has helped put Charlotte on the map as a golf destination. The club, he said, has qualities that set it apart from other golf courses.
“To be in an area that has all of it — the quality inside the ropes, outside the ropes, club leadership, (the support of the) city and state — there’s a really small group (of U.S. golf courses) where that occurs,” Sperling said.
Beyond 2021, Harris is looking to land another PGA Championship. Future sites for the championship have been determined through 2024, so 2025 is the next possible year for Charlotte.
“We expect it back. We’re talking,” Harris said of the PGA Championship.
Speaking to reporters before the PGA Championship teed off in Charlotte in 2017, PGA of America CEO Pete Bevacqua indicated that the championship would likely return some day.
“I would say that we can’t wait to get back here,” Bevacqua said. “It’s 100 percent in our plans to bring the PGA Championship back to Quail Hollow.”
This story was originally published May 3, 2019 at 5:11 PM.
