Mike Koprowski’s dream has come true within the type of Broomsedge Golf Membership, within the Sandhills of South Carolina.
Carolina Pines Golf (left); Broomsedge
In case you’ve at all times dreamed of constructing and proudly owning a golf course, right here’s a solution to lastly make it occur: earn a fortune in one other discipline, then pour a portion of these proceeds into your ardour challenge.
That method labored properly for Dick Youngscap, Herb Kohler and Mike Keiser, who gave the world Sand Hills, Whistling Straits and Bandon Dunes, respectively.
However possibly these builders don’t strike you as relatable position fashions.
On the off likelihood you belong to a decrease revenue bracket, a extra inspiring instance could be Mike Koprowski.
Koprowski, who’s 40 and married with two kids, is a jack of many trades and a longtime golf junkie. However he’s not a one-percenter, and till a number of years again, he’d by no means labored in golf.
And but he made it occur. In a mid-life pivot, he purchased a swath of land at a manageable worth, put a shovel within the floor and pulled off a feat extra generally reserved for multi-millionaires.
“Individuals with no cash don’t usually launch golf developments, so I assume you might say this can be a little bit of a special story,” Koprowski mentioned the opposite day by telephone from the Sandhills of South Carolina. He was sitting on a tractor at Broomsedge Golf Membership, the soon-to-open course that he co-owns and co-designed. “Typically I’ve to pinch myself to verify that it’s actual.”
Courtesy Broomsedge
Koprowski’s fantasy-made-true arose from childhood daydreams in South Florida, the place he discovered the sport early from his father, a former captain of the Notre Dame males’s golf group. Younger Mike obtained fairly good. He competed in highschool. However what actually captivated him was course design, an curiosity sparked by a spherical he performed on the Stadium Course at TPC Sawgrass. Amazed by Pete Dye’s work, he picked up a duplicate of “Bury Me in a Pot Bunker,” Dye’s memoir of his life in golf structure.
“I simply thought, ‘How cool is that?’” Koprowski says. “It appeared like one thing I’d actually love to do.”
As a substitute, he went to school, like his dad, at Notre Dame, although to not be a part of the golf group. He mothballed his sticks, enrolled in ROTC and studied historical past and political science. There was no golf after commencement, both, as Koprowski enlisted within the Air Power for a four-year stint that included a tour of obligation as an intelligence officer in Afghanistan. His recreation grew rusty. However he sharpened different expertise. In what comes off now as foreshadowing, Koprowski says, “I obtained fairly good at studying topographical maps.”
Again within the U.S., post-military service, Koprowski compiled a glowing CV, incomes Masters levels from each Duke and Harvard, in worldwide relations and schooling, respectively, earlier than shifting on to posts in public college and housing coverage in Tennessee, Texas and Washington D.C. By then, he’d picked up golf once more, and his curiosity in design had by no means left him. He even went as far as to construct a brief par-3 outdoors his Nashville dwelling, a front-yard challenge {that a} shiny golf journal pictured in its pages. In any other case, although, the one holes Koprowski crafted had been in his head.
“On each highway journey, I used to be the man staring off into the wilderness at a ridgeline to see the place the inexperienced would go,” he says. “What I couldn’t see was how I might ever make {that a} profession.”
Change happened in the best way one in every of Hemingway’s characters went broke: regularly, then all of the sudden. A confluence of things figured within the shift. In 2018, residing in D.C. however fed up with Beltway politics, Koprowski was prepared for one thing totally different. His spouse was on the cusp of beginning legislation college. His father, in the meantime, had retired to Pinehurst.
“The concept that we might transfer and be nearer to household made every kind of sense for lots of causes,” Koprowski says. “And the truth that it was a transfer to Pinehurst meant you didn’t need to twist my arm in any respect.”
On the time, the architect Kyle Franz, having not too long ago restored Pine Needles and Mid-Pines, was about to do the identical at one more native Donald Ross design. Southern Pines Golf Membership was going underneath the knife. That this was occurring in his new yard struck Koprowski as an indication.
“I made a decision it was now or by no means,” he says.
Courtesy Broomsedge
He emailed Franz out of the blue, asking if he might come work without cost. As in different trades, such requests are usually not unparalleled in golf structure circles. Certainly, a long time earlier than, as an keen 19-year-old, Franz had despatched an analogous message to Tom Doak as Pacific Dunes was getting underway in Oregon, and Doak had discovered a spot for him on the challenge.
“In a way, Mike type of jogged my memory of myself once I was youthful,” Franz says. “However it was additionally clear he had a bit of various background. I checked out his LinkedIn. Duke. Harvard. These coverage jobs. And I believed, nicely, dang, this can be a fairly darn sensible man.’”
Inside days of their preliminary correspondence, Koprowski was out at Southern Pines, getting his fingers soiled. At Franz’s insistence, he was additionally incomes an hourly wage. Early on, it was weekends solely, as Koprowski was nonetheless working remotely at his coverage job. However now that he’d set off in a contemporary course, there was no wanting again.
He had quite a bit to be taught. Having contemplated the subject for a lot of his life, Koprowski had an honest grasp on the ideas of fine design. What he didn’t have a deal with on was the mechanics. “That’s what I wanted to be taught,” Koprowski says. “How do you execute it on the bottom.”
Southern Pines was a crash course, a soup-to-nuts schooling on the whole lot from soil sampling to shaping. Koprowski proved to be a fast examine.
“He did slightly little bit of quite a lot of issues on the market,” Franz says. “And with all his different coaching, he knew Google Earth backwards and forwards. He was expert at studying maps and summarizing concepts into proposals. He was an asset throughout.”
Southern Pines gave solution to work on different Franz tasks — Cabot Citrus Farms in Florida; Eastward Ho in Massachusetts — alternative sufficient for Koprowski to go away behind his previous job. He was now employed full-time within the course design enterprise, residing his dream, with one fanciful ambition unfulfilled.
For so long as he remembered, Koprowski had been drawn to the story of George Crump, the Philadelphia hotelier and golf fanatic who, within the early 1900s, bought property in New Jersey and put in movement what would turn into Pine Valley — a challenge so quixotic that some referred to it as “Crump’s Folly.”
“I used to be at all times fascinated by that — the thought of being the proprietor and builder of a golf course,” Koprowski says. “What a enjoyable and ridiculous factor to do.”
Foolish, possibly. However it known as for severe dedication. And nothing might occur with out land. That was the unhealthy information. The excellent news was that the identical sandy soil that made the Pinehurst space a perfect canvas stretched by different elements of the Carolinas. Setting his sights on the Sandhills east of Columbia, S.C., the place nice golf, he felt, was comparatively scarce and actual property was extra inside his attain, Koprowski checked out dozens of parcels earlier than discovering one which match the invoice: 197 acres with the correct amount of motion, available on the market for the appropriate worth.
Courtesy Broomsedge
Rates of interest had been low. Koprowski’s confidence within the website was excessive. His optimism was buoyed additional when Franz noticed the land and shared in his pleasure. In brief order, Koprowski secured a mortgage, scraped collectively funds for a small down cost and picked up the property for $630,000.
“My plan was to discover a solution to cowl the month-to-month funds till we obtained issues discovered,” he says. “And if we didn’t, then I might simply flip round and promote.”
The catch, in fact, was clear. Now that he had the land, he had no cash left to do something with it. He wanted proof of idea to place earlier than buyers. Even earlier than he’d finalized the acquisition, Koprowski had sketched a possible routing. That was one thing. However he wanted to do extra. With modest angel backing, Koprowski obtained his permits and cleared some bushes. Building prices, although, had been far past his means. Caught at an deadlock, Koprowski determined that hopping on a dozer was one of the best ways to interrupt by.
“A part of me thought that if I began shaping some greens, possibly I might persuade some buyers to hitch in,” he says.
He was proper. The primary large backer to return aboard was Cody Sundberg, an achieved newbie golfer from Illinois with a background in finance and actual property. Others adopted. That was two years in the past. Broomsedge Golf Membership can be prepared for play this month. A fast development. Not that there weren’t bumps alongside the best way.
“I recall July days sitting in excavator with damaged air-conditioning, doing a little tough shaping, whereas we had about $82 within the financial institution no buyers perception,” Koprowski says. Shut mates warned him he was going to lose his shirt. “There have been some darkish moments once I didn’t assume it will work,” he says.
With every new investor, Koprowski ceded shares within the challenge and he’s now a minority proprietor. However the imaginative and prescient for Broomsedge stays his. He and Franz share design credit score of a course that cuts the profile of a country charmer, with an intimate routing stuffed with strategic choices, its fairways fringed by sandy wastes and the wispy native grass that provides the membership its identify.
“One of many many issues that stands out to me is the center it took do that,” Franz says. “This isn’t the primary time {that a} shaper or an aspiring architect has had the thought to search out some land and construct a course. The distinction is that Mike really went forward and did it. He had the abdomen for the danger.”
Although Broomsedge is non-public, Koprowski has taken a web page from Sand Hills developer Dick Youngscap, who permits outsiders to play his acclaimed Nebraska course as soon as in the event that they search approval by a letter of introduction.
“My dad and I obtained to play Sand Hills that manner, and it at all times caught with me,” Koprowski says. “I’ve an enormous affinity for the mannequin (Youngscap) arrange on the market, and the concept he provides everybody that particular alternative, even when it’s simply as soon as.“
Not that he would put himself in Youngscap’s league. Nor would he be so daring as to attract too many parallels between himself and Crump.
For one factor, Koprowski says, “Crump constructed what’s arguably the best course on the earth, and although I do assume Broomsedge is a good course in its personal proper, I don’t see it unseating Pine Valley of that title.”
After which there’s this: Crump died tragically at age 46, with just a few holes of his dream challenge accomplished.
“I assume that’s one other distinction,” Koprowski says. “To this point, it’s been a happier story for me.”
