Great job by Jeff Shelley getting this up so quick. It’s my long form review of Ballyhack Golf Club in Roanoke, VA. We’ll have more pictures here over the next few days, after I get up to Boston to cover the Deutsche Bank.
From the article:
“In 2003 George thought his search for a truly great piece of land for his dream course was over. The 370 acre parcel – which is bisected roughly in half by Pitzer Road – tumbles down the feet of the mountain ridge and around a ravine called Saul Run on the east side, and meanders around a wetlands and through a barranca on its west side, good terrain for golf, if a little severe. But the land wasn’t for sale.
“I had my eye on the property for quite a while, but when I found out I-73 was planned to run through there, I thought I had no chance, so it was off my radar for a while.”
However, fate smiled on George. Good things happen to good people, as they say, and in one of life’s quiet little coincidences that have deafening repercussions he met the owner of the land completely by accident, through his other passion in life: classic cars.
“I thought I knew all the collectors in my area. Then one day a friend of mine invited me to go with him to see the collection of a fellow named Ed Nunnelly, who only lived 10 miles from me,” explains George. “I thought I knew all the collectors in my area, so I went. When he asked me what I did for a living and I told him I was a golf course architect, he said, ‘I have the prettiest piece of land in the Roanoke area for a golf course…’ ”
It was the same site: Twist of fate number one. The next day, it was announced that I-73 would be routed several miles away: Twist of fate number two.
Seizing the opportunity, George contacted Nunnelly immediately, telling him he’d have a contract in his hands that day. Nunnelly replied that George was too late. He had two other contracts in hand. Nunnelly told him to make him a better offer or convince him the property should be a golf course.
“That afternoon I put a contract in his hand and told him, ‘We both know that should be a golf course. Anything else would ruin it.’ Then I went fishing in New Orleans.”
A day later, Nunnelly accepted George’s offer over two more lucrative offers: Twist of fate number three. Game, set, match: Golf wins.
So with that chance meeting as his impetus, Lester George conquered the golf landscape in Virginia more convincingly than John Smith took the Commonwealth in the 1600s.”
