Articles

15 Best Golf Courses Around Our Region
—Jaqueline M. Duda
Montgomery County InSight

If you have always wanted to play the best golf course in the Washington Metropolitan area, look no further: Our region offers some of the finest golf courses in the country. Based on the recommendations of avid golfers and by sifting through rankings, InSight Magazine has developed the following list of "15 Best Golf Courses" within an hour's (or so) drive from Rockville. These picks were based on course conditions, degree of difficulty, diversity of greens and fairways, and aesthetics. Some of these courses are public. Some are private (with memberships still available at certain clubs). Call ahead to check on club policies, greens fees and restrictions.

Blue Mash Golf Course

Ideal drivetime from Rockville: 17 min. Blue Mash, a public course, combines aesthetic design with the opportunity to strategize difficult shots. Yet, it's not too hard for bcginning players. The main reason, says managing partner, Joe Hills, is there are no forced carries, unusual for today's courses. "You can bunt the ball along without getting into too much trouble," hc says. The greens are a favorable strong point, offering fairly undulating greens with interesting cup and pin placements. Practice facility includes all-grass driving range, large putting green and separate short-game green with practice bunkers and fairway. A mix of golf holes creates both a links style and a parkland feel-water holes and ponds and some fairly long holes. Instruction includes diagnostics and 3D swing analysis.

Blue Mash: Two Men and a Dream
—Adam McCaa
Pros N' Hackers

Everything important begins with an idea. Literature is filled with stories of people who did great things as a result of a dream or vision they had. Real life sometimes is just like fiction - with a twist! This is the story of two men and a very large bureaucracy. This is a story of what persistence, patience and smart work can accomplish even in today's world. It's a story of two men and their dream.

The Story

Many golf courses in this market have had the opportunity to build and open in a short period of time. In some cases, purchase the Land, secure construction approval. design, build and open the course are all part of a process that might take as little as two years time. That would be considered the last track. Blue Mash Golf Course is on the other extreme. The entire project took over 10 years with many extraordinary obstacles along the way. The story in itself instructs many of us who dream of owning and building our very own golf course. What makes this course special are the people and their passion to achieve their dream.

The story begins at the University of Notre Dame in the late 1980's. Joe Hills and Tom Healy, both students at the time, had no idea that they would become partners in a golf business in the years ahead. Hills, from Toledo. Ohio. grew up in and around golf. His father is the noted golf course architect, Arthur Hills. Joe caddied and played golf at the local country club, through high school and for his first year at Notre Dame. Healy is from Chicago and. though also a big sports fan, played golf only sporadically growing up. While at Notre Dame. Hills and Healy met through Healy's cousin Mary, Hills' girlfriend then and now his wife. After college. Hills moved out west to work at one his father's satellite offices

and subsequently for Wadsworth Golf Construction, digging ditches, installing drainage, surveying, and learning hands-on how to build a golf course. Tom, meanwhile moved to New York and established a successful career in corporate finance. At the end of 1989, Hills convinced his dad that the Washington area was a good spot to start a new office (especially since his fiancee lived there) and, within weeks after moving there, was

stunned to discover the lack of golf courses in such a huge metropolitan area. The idea of developing his own golf facility began to lake shape. Not knowing anyone or anything about how to do it, the search for land began with a look in the yellow pages. An ad for a realtor advertising "Land assemblage" caught his eye and he made the phone call that would change his life forever. The next twelve years proceeded something like this:

A friendly gentleman answers the phone and is eager to help, showing Hills land, induding his own farm, complete with transmission lines, swamp, and an active neighboring Landfill. Hills all but dismisses any possibility of building a gall course on THAT site. Then a strange thing happens. The Landowner and he start talking about zoning and Hills recalls a conversation he had a week earlier at a Rotary meeting with another gentlemen who was building a golf course on his farm. It turns out that, just a few months earlier, a special ordinance had been approved allowing for golf courses in the Agricultural Preserve of Montgomery County. So Hills investigates the idea a little more. The Landfill, it turns out, is going to close. He consults his father on the site and his father likes it. With a few bucks in his pocket, Hills takes a chance and hires a few consultants to do the studies necessary for a "special exception" zoning application and starts working late into the night for weeks developing a comprehensive business plan. Meanwhile, three other golf courses file applications within a span of a few months and the county council, thinking all the farmland in the county will be lost to golf courses, decides to old an emergency meeting to discuss repealing the zoning allowing golf courses on farmland. Hills gets wind of this. scrambles to complete the application requirements and, at 4:00 p.m. the day before the county council hearing. the application is filed. The next day, the zoning is repealed, with all previous applications, including Hills' application. grandfathered.

Now, all of sudden, Hills is onto something big. He has proprietary zoning in a central location. What is the next step? Financing. But, how is he going to convince an investor to give millions of dollars to a philosophy major with not much more than a little construction experience and a big idea? Enter Hills' wife Mary. "What about Tom?" she says. Enter Tom Healy. Healy had been steadily climbing the ladder in the corporate finance world, living in New York and traveling abroad, knowing all along that, at some point, he was going to start his own business - something to do with sports maybe, but what?

So Joe and Tom start talking, and, on one of Tom's business trips to Washington, Joe and Mary visit with him in his hotel, agreeing to partnership, commemorated with a signed golf ball, dated 4-22-93 (Healy had one in his hotel somehow). Tom continues working full time while helping Joe refine the business plan. Six months later, Tom moves to Montgomery County, thinking plans to build and open Blue Mash are well underway, and it's time lor financing.

During the next several years, however, Blue Mash runs into every single obstacle imaginable. Approvals are required from the Board of Appeals, then the Planning Board, then Preliminary Plan approval, then Stormwater Management and Sediment Control approval. Meanwhile, the State of Maryland and the Army Corps of Engineers have their shot. The project gets bogged down for two years with a surprise requirement for archaeological investigations. Other courses are being built and opened while Blue Mash's predevelopment costs go through the roof. Relations with the landowner get contentious and legal costs skyrocket. Environmental constraints create the need for more land. More money, more studies, more consultants. Negotiations with neighboring landowners are difficult but finally come to fruition, with the lawyers for the project, a large Maryland firm with extensive experience in land deals, remarking it to be "the most complicated land deal we've ever been involved in."

Meanwhile, Tom learns the business from the inside, working maintenance and operations at local golf courses, and the pair finance, build and operate their critically acclaimed Waverly Woods Golf Club in Howard County, MO. The success of this facility sustains their efforts at Blue Mash. Yet, at every turn is another obstacle. Rights to cross transmission line property run into inexplicable and ludicrous delays by the utility company, holding up financing and the grading permit. State Senators are called upon to intervene in what has become a bizarre bureaucratic mess. It seems it will never end...

The Course: Yes, Joe and Tom finally got all their approvals and permits and easements and land acquisitions and financing and bonds and plans AND, skipping through years of construction and grow-in pain and turmoil, somehow, you and I can go out to Blue Mash today and play a wonderful golf course. There is no way Hills and Healy would go through what they did and let the course be anything less than that. Our staff is a big fan of Arthur Hills, as you probably know, and his son made sure Blue Mash had a little extra pizzazz. Arthur Hills makes you think by giving you more than one option. Many of his design elements make sure you play all of your game. And the attention to detail carried out by his son in shaping and framing the golf holes is in a class by itself. When Blue Mash first debuted in 2001, it opened to great reviews. With its convenient location in the heart of Montgomery County, MD, everyone knew it would be popular. This Arthur Hills design truly offers a variety of challenging golf holes with awesome greens and an affordable price. Blue Mash has generous fairways and rather short rough, which won't penalize you as much as some others. In its second year, Blue Mash was affected by the drought and some of their fairways took a pretty good hit during the middle of the season. This year, they are doing everything to keep the conditions as pristine as possible.  If Mother Nature cooperates, you can expect them to achieve those goals.

The clubhouse just opened a short time ago and management has made a commitment to exceed your expectations. Tom Healy says, "Our goal is to have the course in excellent playing condition and we are willing 10 do whatever it takes to make that happen." Blue Mash will test you and your

game in a good way. It's a challenging golf course but it is also very fair. It requires you 10 think, so avoid a one track thought process like "Grip it and Rip it." If you play Blue Mash often. you will use more of the clubs in your bag and become a beller player because of it. Blue Mash is a marvelous course with a wonderful story, albeit a story that has not yet ended because Hills vows to make the facility better and better each year. "This place will get better each year and we will work each day to make it that way," says Hills. "If you come back a month from now, you will see an improvement. Next month, the same thing, and next year and the year after that and so on, That is the way it is. "'Life is all in the journey, each day, each moment So each day, we'll try to do better". What I admire so much about Joe and Tom is how they reflect on the entire experience. You won't hear a great deal of complaining or even finger pointing at the county but, rather, only a positive attitude. To them, it was a great learning experience and, for every obstacle the county threw at them, their desire to succeed and open Blue Mash only grew stronger. If you knew all the details of what they went through to build this course for us, the public player, you would play it all the time. While I have heard many stories of people building golf courses, this one tops the charts. It is wonderful testimony to the invincible power of perseverance. And you'll see it when you play Blue Mash.

MAY 2003 www.prosnhackers.com

The 18-Act Play (With an Encore)
—Mark Nelson
GolfStyles

So, you think you'd like to own a golf course? It's the golfer's ultimate dream, right! Hire an architect, tell him you want a pot bunker here and a waterfall there, build the clubhouse of your dreams, then wait for your own creation of green carpeted amusement to wow your paying customers. With the money flowing in every day you can basically retire after that, play anytime you want (for free of course), entertain your friends - heck, maybe even get that 6 handicap game into shape and try to qualify for the local PGA tour stop.

Well, after you wake from that dream you might want to talk to Tom Healy and Joe Hills. The two partners, who own Maryland courses Waverly Woods near Columbia and Blue Mash in Laytonsville, can tell you some stories that might make your 9-to-5 job look a little more comfortable. They have a cart-full about layers and layers of government bureaucracy, delays, archeological digs, more delays, crazy land deals, rising costs, washouts, draughts, more rains, over-building, 9/11, a tanking economy and a sniper.

"It's been drama leading up to opening and drama since we opened, and we are looking forward to a normal year," Healy says. "But I guess we've done pretty well with the hand we've been dealt."

Healy is a native of Chicago. Hills is from Toledo. You may have heard of his father, golf course architect Arthur Hills, who designed both Waverly Woods and Blue Mash. Healy and Hills both attended college at Notre Dame and were introduced to each other by Healy's cousin, Mary, who also attended Notre Dame and whom later became Hills' wife. After graduation, Healy moved to New York where he set off successfully on a career in corporate finance.

Hills, meanwhile, had moved to Arizona to learn golf course design and construction, and then moved to Maryland in 1990, ostensibly to build his father's presence in the Washington area. In reality. his plans were always a bit larger.

"I'll always remember the day I arrived in Phoenix in June of 1988," says Hills. "That's the day my career in golf really started. I was on a site visit with my dad, his associate in Arizona, the developer and the golf course contractor. I was in awe of the whole thing, but was much more attracted to the development side of the business than anything else. I had no idea if I could ever do it or how I could do it, but developing is what my heart desired."

And so it happened. One of Hills' first contacts after moving to Maryland was with the developers of the Waverly Woods community who were in the midst of a major rezoning battle. Hills landed the golf course design contract for his father's firm and then subsequently started negotiations with the developer to develop the golf course for them.

"I was in the right place at the right time," says Hills. "They knew nothing about golf but they needed this golf course to get their rezoning. From their standpoint, I was taking it off their hands, and it was a perfect first project because they were handling most of the up-front costs. It worked out great for both sides."

As negotiations were proceeding on Waverly, Hills had already gotten himself in the thick of things on Blue Mash, and had contacted Healy about joining him to help develop both projects. build the project. Construction proceeded under budget and on time, and the course opened in the summer of 1998 in fantastic condition and to rave reviews. Both men are quick to point out that Waverly was filled wim uncertainty and its own struggles at the time, "but compared to Blue Mash," says Healy, "it was a breeze." Waverly's success brought much needed support to the pair's efforts in Montgomery County, but Blue Mash would not open for another three years, following a brutal construction process that forced the two to use their weekends to hop on excavation equipment, lay sod, run irrigation lines, frame parts of the clubhouse, or do whatever else was necessary to keep the project on schedule and under budget. When the  course did open in August of 2001 (sans the clubhouse), it blew past revenue projections in its first month and a half.

Then the disaster of 9/11 was followed by national economic woes. The next year brought the worst drought in recent history and the still tender course suffered. "We lost about a third of our fairways and a lot of rough, and play dropped off the table, says Hills. "The place looked terrible. I was embarrassed and frankly, surprised and grateful that anybody came to play that year. That is true testimony to the quality of the layout."

That fall, as the sniper gave their tee sheets some more eraser marks, and a county plan review error kept the clubhouse from being occupied for six months, the pair got up, knocked the dust of their clothes (literally that year) and began overseeding Blue Mash entirely, adding massive amounts of organics along with aeration, new irrigation and other improvements to get Blue Mash back as soon as possible. But the worst drought in recorded history was followed by the second wettest year in recorded history, with snow hanging around through April and 25 days of rain in May and the first half of June. The precipitation brought yet another surprise—springs.

"We had water in places we nevet saw water before," Healy says. "The water table was so high that we had springs popping up all over. So now we are draining the springs this winter, and then will tackle whatever else gets thrown at us."

Like a good hitter, the pair has managed to foul off the opposition's best pitches, and the prospects look great for 2004. Though it kept people away, the rain did help get Blue Mash in great shape, and everybody who squeezed in rounds between the rain last year could not believe how it had turned around.

Hills says he has received unanimous praise for Blue Mash from everyone he talked to last year, and Waverly continued to thrive as the economy came back to life.

Healy and Hills believe they have positioned Waverly Woods and Blue Mash nicely by offering competitive greens fees and permitting golfers to walk.

"We understand that we are not cheap, but we strive to give people their money's worth when they come out here," Healy says. Waverly charges $74 for 18 holes on weekends, including cart. Walkers save $8 on greens fees. Weekend greens fees at Blue Mash are $72, including cart and $62 for walkers. Both courses have lower weekday rates as well as daily and weekend twilight rates and annual memberships.

Both golf courses have won acclaim and have been named Maryland Golf Course of the Year by the state association of course owners. But neither Healy nor Hills is resting on his laurels, especially in the highly competitive Middle Atlantic golf market.

"We have to prove that we are worthy of the customers' business," Healy says.  "We are still focusing on the customer and trying to get better all the time."

Both partners view their golf courses as works in progress. "There is still so much to do in terms of beautifying the golf courses," Hills says. It will be a lifetime project to keep making them better and better."

So you think these two are living your dream of owning golf courses! Maybe you should ask them how often do they get to play their own courses - or any others for that matter. Healy says that in the past he has only allowed about a dozen rounds a year, his goal continues to be to play about once a week. Hills? "I'll probably stick to the once a month deal."

So they do get to play a little golf after all. Seems like they've earned it.