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 option to lastly make it occur: earn a fortune in one other discipline, then pour a portion of these proceeds into your ardour undertaking.
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 may be Mike Koprowski.
Koprowski, who’s 40 and married with two youngsters, is a jack of many trades and a longtime golf junkie. However he’s not a one-percenter, and till a couple 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.
“Folks with no cash don’t usually launch golf developments, so I suppose you might say this can be a little bit of a distinct story,” Koprowski stated the opposite day by cellphone 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 substantiate that it’s actual.”
Courtesy Broomsedge
Koprowski’s fantasy-made-true arose from childhood daydreams in South Florida, the place he realized the sport early from his father, a former captain of the Notre Dame males’s golf workforce. Younger Mike acquired 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 an alternative, he went to school, like his dad, at Notre Dame, although to not be a part of the golf workforce. 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 Pressure for a four-year stint that included a tour of responsibility as an intelligence officer in Afghanistan. His sport grew rusty. However he sharpened different expertise. In what comes off now as foreshadowing, Koprowski says, “I acquired 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 faculty 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 exterior his Nashville dwelling, a front-yard undertaking {that a} shiny golf journal pictured in its pages. In any other case, although, the one holes Koprowski crafted have been in his head.
“On each street 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 may ever make {that a} profession.”
Change happened in the way in which considered one of Hemingway’s characters went broke: steadily, then immediately. A confluence of things figured within the shift. In 2018, dwelling in D.C. however fed up with Beltway politics, Koprowski was prepared for one thing completely different. His spouse was on the cusp of beginning regulation faculty. His father, in the meantime, had retired to Pinehurst.
“The concept we may 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 should 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 yet one more native Donald Ross design. Southern Pines Golf Membership was going beneath 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 may come work without spending a dime. As in different trades, such requests should not exceptional in golf structure circles. Certainly, many years earlier than, as an keen 19-year-old, Franz had despatched an identical message to Tom Doak as Pacific Dunes was getting underway in Oregon, and Doak had discovered a spot for him on the undertaking.
“In a way, Mike form of jogged my memory of myself after 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 assumed, properly, dang, this can be a fairly darn good man.’”
Inside days of their preliminary correspondence, Koprowski was out at Southern Pines, getting his palms 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 route, there was no wanting again.
He had rather a lot to study. Having contemplated the subject for a lot of his life, Koprowski had an honest grasp on the rules of fine design. What he didn’t have a deal with on was the mechanics. “That’s what I wanted to study,” Koprowski says. “How do you execute it on the bottom.”
Southern Pines was a crash course, a soup-to-nuts schooling on every little thing from soil sampling to shaping. Koprowski proved to be a fast research.
“He did a bit little bit of lots 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 option to work on different Franz tasks — Cabot Citrus Farms in Florida; Eastward Ho in Massachusetts — alternative sufficient for Koprowski to depart behind his outdated job. He was now employed full-time within the course design enterprise, dwelling 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 change into Pine Valley — a undertaking so quixotic that some referred to it as “Crump’s Folly.”
“I used to be at all times fascinated by that — the concept 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 may occur with out land. That was the dangerous information. The excellent news was that the identical sandy soil that made the Pinehurst space a perfect canvas stretched by way of 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 quantity of motion, available on the market for the suitable worth.
Courtesy Broomsedge
Rates of interest have been low. Koprowski’s confidence within the web site was excessive. His optimism was buoyed additional when Franz noticed the land and shared in his pleasure. Briefly 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 option to cowl the month-to-month funds till we acquired issues found out,” he says. “And if we didn’t, then I may simply flip round and promote.”
The catch, after all, 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 acquired his permits and cleared some timber. Development prices, although, have 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 way of.
“A part of me thought that if I began shaping some greens, possibly I may persuade some buyers to affix in,” he says.
He was proper. The primary massive backer to come back aboard was Cody Sundberg, an achieved novice golfer from Illinois with a background in finance and actual property. Others adopted. That was two years in the past. Broomsedge Golf Membership will likely be prepared for play this month. A fast development. Not that there weren’t bumps alongside the way in which.
“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 buddies warned him he was going to lose his shirt. “There have been some darkish moments after I didn’t assume it could work,” he says.
With every new investor, Koprowski ceded shares within the undertaking 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 concept 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 personal, 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 way of a letter of introduction.
“My dad and I acquired to play Sand Hills that means, 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 that 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 this planet, 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 only some holes of his dream undertaking accomplished.
“I suppose that’s one other distinction,” Koprowski says. “Up to now, it’s been a happier story for me.”
