HAPPY 45^TH!

Brookhaven Country Club’s birthday also marks ClubCorp’s launch.

By Russ Pate

Would that we all look — or looked — as good at 45 as Brookhaven Country Club in the Dallas suburb of Farmers Branch. With her greens re-grassed, fairways re-grown, tee boxes re-shaped, bunkers re-edged, and cart paths re-paved, Brookhaven has been spiffed up in time for her 45th birthday celebration this fall.

“There’s a new sparkle to this old jewel,” beams director of golf Bob Thomas, who answers to B.T. and who has had Brookhaven’s staff in overdrive preparing for the November fete.

Gala activities culminate on Nov. 11 with the club’s annual charity golf tournament featuring the “Boys of Brookhaven” — PGA Tour pros Andrew Magee, Scott Verplank, and Brian Watts, distinguished graduates of the club’s acclaimed junior golf program — competing in a pro-am that raises funds for the nearby Magee-Verplank-Watts Family Health Center.

Incorporated in late 1957 along with the founding of parent corporation ClubCorp, Brookhaven blazed a trail in the realm of private country clubs. Built in what were then the boondocks northwest of Dallas, Brookhaven saw its membership ranks soar as city dwellers began searching for greener pastures. Upwardly mobile suburban families, baby boomers in tow, elected to become first-time club members. And the obvious choice, sans either a waiting list or stiff initiation fee, was Brookhaven.

From its inception, Brookhaven became a proving ground for ClubCorp philosophy. “There’s an old saying,” founder Robert H. Dedman remarked in an interview earlier this year. “People will forget what you say, and they will forget what you did, but they will never forget how you made them feel.”

With its 54 holes of golf, massive tennis complex, Olympic-size swimming pool, and a child-care program fully four decades ahead of its time, Brookhaven, with a $280 initiation fee ($1,000 for a life membership) and monthly dues of $12.80, was more than a bargain.

The ’57 concept behind this country club — built with the grand scale of a Cecil B. DeMille epic — centered on “Cadillac service at a Chevrolet price.” A cost structure based on one clubhouse and staff supporting the membership and amenities of three-clubs-in-one made such a concept viable.

Brookhaven, then and now, consists of the Masters, Championship, and Presidents courses. The original concept — now long since changed — called for a men’s course (Masters), a mixed course (Championship), and a ladies’ course (Presidents). The respective layouts were analogous to ski runs: The Masters represented the black or most challenging; the Championship, the blue or intermediate; and the Presidents, the green or bunny slopes.

Sharing the same topography, winding creeks, and elm and mesquite groves of what had once been the R.B. George estate, and later developer Fritz Hawn’s ranch, Brookhaven’s three courses carved out their own identities.

The Masters course ranks as the toughest. More than 7,100 yards at its inception (now shortened to just under 6,900), the course features tree-lined fairways with doglegs left and right, as well as greens with enough undulation to give good putters pause. (The Masters closed for 10 weeks this summer to replace fragile bentgrass greens with a sturdier Tiff-Eagle Bermuda.)

“It’s a good overall test,” seven-time men’s club champion Harry Todd Jr. says about the Masters course. “You have to be able to drive the ball straight and hit just about every kind of shot. There are some strategic bunkers and the greens can be slicked up to become fast and extremely difficult.”

The Championship course (6,535 yards, par-72 for men, 73 for women) is more forgiving and plays a stroke or two easier, in part because the par-5s are more accessible and also because the putting surfaces are flatter and easier to negotiate. The par-72 Presidents course, meanwhile, measures 5,527 yards and has several reachable par-4s. It caters to seniors, juniors, beginners of both genders, and members of the pull-cart army. But a few advanced players, seeking to sharpen their short-game skills, like to tackle the Presidents’ smallish greens. On this user-friendly layout, a teen-age Brian Watts shot 59 and ClubCorp founder Dedman shot his age at 65.

“There’s something for everybody here,” observes pro Thomas, pointing out that of the club’s roughly 100,000 rounds in 2001, no one course had fewer than 30,000 or more than 40,000.

Oklahoma native Press Maxwell, who followed in the footsteps of his father, Perry, designed the Brookhaven golf complex. Maxwell the elder had a major hand in creating what’s often referred to as the trinity of heartland golf: Colonial Country Club in Fort Worth, Texas; Southern Hills Country Club in Tulsa, Oklahoma; and Prairie Dunes in Hutchinson, Kansas. The younger Maxwell, who died in 1999, spent his later years in Colorado, where he combined building courses with breeding Arabian horses.

THE STUFF OF LEGENDS
Byron Nelson, at the behest of Dedman, assisted with modifying Brookhaven’s original greens. “That was my first job working on a golf course,” the Texas legend recalls, “and that club was Bob’s first job in golf. I saw him last year at a dedication ceremony at Timarron Country Club [in nearby Southlake], a course I helped build. I told him, ‘Bob, you’ve been much more successful than I have. Here you have over 200 clubs and I have only this one.’ ” (Nelson was joking, of course. He’s lent his expertise to numerous projects.)

Among the unforgettable figures during the club’s near half-century is Joe Black, head golf professional from 1964 to 1984. A former touring professional and later the PGA Tour’s tournament director, Black knew the intrinsic value of competition. He created a full schedule of events for Brookhaven members. Another of Black’s priorities was junior golf.

“One of the things that set us apart was that Brookhaven was a breeding ground for junior players,” Black said from his home in Dripping Springs, Texas, outside Austin. “We always made it a priority to develop junior players and create facilities and tournaments especially for them. I think it was unique for a club with 3,000 members at that time not to preclude juniors from playing on the weekends. We had a rule that juniors could play with their parents at any time. That promoted parents and children playing together and the family benefits that come along with it.”

Black also arranged for the prestigious national girls and boys junior championships to be played at Brookhaven, as well as the Texas State Amateur. And the LPGA Tour’s Dallas Civitan Open had a memorable six-year run at Brookhaven from 1972 to 1977, its winners including Kathy Whitworth, Carol Mann (twice), JoAnne Carner, and Jane Blalock (twice).

Black’s counterpart was Bill Bos, who directed Brookhaven’s racquet sports program from 1977 to 1990 and oversaw the expansion of the tennis facility to today’s complex of 41 courts, eight of them climate-controlled. Personally recruited from Dallas Country Club by founder Dedman, Bos exuded passion for tennis and possessed a world-class Rolodex.

A roommate at Kalamazoo College of legendary tennis instructor Vic Braden, and later head coach at the U.S. Naval Academy, Bos was on a first-name basis with virtually everyone in international tennis. He befriended the great Aussie contingent of the 1950s and 1960s (Rod Laver, Ken Rosewall, John Newcombe, et al) and used his vast connections to bring the sport’s top stars, including names like Martina Navratilova, Chris Evert, and Billie Jean King, to Brookhaven for charity fund-raisers.

When entertainers such as Tony Bennett and Ben Vereen headlined shows at the Fairmont Hotel in Dallas, they spent their afternoons on the Brookhaven courts. Club members still remember when British rocker “mod” Rod Stewart pulled up in a limousine and got in a couple of sets with Bos.

Billy Freer, Brookhaven’s director of racquet sports since 1993 and at one time the top-ranked singles player in Texas, has created such an efficient machine that Brookhaven was named ClubCorp’s top-performing tennis club for an unprecedented four consecutive years (1997-2000). And in 1997, on the occasion of Tennis Industry’s 25th anniversary, the magazine cited Brookhaven as America’s finest private tennis club. No small praise, indeed.

So popular is tennis at Brookhaven that the club employs 22 teaching professionals (15 full time). Freer projects that in 2002, for the first time, Brookhaven will generate more than $1 million from tennis lessons alone.

On Freer’s watch, Brookhaven also has gained a reputation for its junior program. Freer estimates that “at least 50” of the club’s juniors are currently state-ranked and, he adds, “We have some who are already winning national tournaments.”

Among Brookhaven’s standouts is Bucky Mink, who plays for the University of Colorado and who possesses, Freer says, “the talent and the game to make it to the professional tour.” A rising star to watch is Kayvon Karimi, already an age-group (12 and under) national champion.

STARS COME OUT
Brookhaven regulars through the years have included Dallas Cowboys icons such as head coach Tom Landry, Lee Roy Jordan, Craig Morton, and Ed “Too Tall” Jones. One of the most revered and best-selling recording artists in country music, Charley Pride, remains a fixture on the Brookhaven golf course and driving range. And Tony Lema, British Open champion in 1964 and one of golf’s premier performers before his career was cut short by a tragic plane crash in 1966, held an honorary membership at Brookhaven. Lema frequented the club when he wasn’t competing on tour and was the quintessential club member — paying full retail in the pro shop and generously tipping waitstaff and attendants.

In the mid-1960s, Brookhaven even received a drop-in visit from Arnold Palmer, who flew a Learjet to Dallas — buzzing the Brookhaven clubhouse before landing — to pick up an award as “Flying Athlete of the Year.”

Brookhaven also served as home for David “Spec” Goldman, whose prowess in golf earned him induction into the Texas Sports Hall of Fame. Goldman’s remarkable career included wins in more than 200 amateur tournaments. Bill Otstott, a lifetime Brookhaven member and Goldman family friend, recalls that during the silver boom of the late 1970s, when the precious metal soared to more than $30 an ounce, Goldman gathered up boxes and boxes of trophies and sold them at the market price. “Those trophies must have weighed half a ton,” Otstott observes.

Brookhaven also attracted top-shelf entertainment. Count Basie brought his orchestra to perform. So did Duke Ellington. Doc Severinsen entertained a full house at a New Year’s Eve celebration. Bob Hope headlined a show. So did Arthur Godfrey. A who’s who of celebrity paraded through the doors, though not The Doors.

From the club’s inception, Brookhaven employee partners have put into practice the three basic tenets of ClubCorp’s STAR Service — a warm welcome, magic moments, and a fond farewell. The firstborn for the ClubCorp family has been making memories ever since. Forty-five years’ worth.

Dallas-based golf writer Russ Pate interviewed the “Boys of Brookhaven” — Andrew Magee, Scott Verplank, and Brian Watts — for the January/February 1999 issue of Private Clubs.

BROOKHAVEN COUNTRY CLUB
Location: 3333 Golfing Green Drive, Dallas.
Club manager: Ross Thornbrugh.
Executive chef: Bill Cunningham.
Director of golf: Bob Thomas.
Director of racquet sports: Billy Freer.
Amenities: Three 18-hole golf courses; 41 tennis courts, 8 climate-controlled; six racquetball courts; Olympic-size pool, plus four additional pools; fitness center; formal dining room; club grill; courtside café; videoconferencing services; member forums.
Web site: www.brookhavenclub.com

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