FRISCO — When PGA Frisco later this month hosts the first of 26 championship tournaments that will be played on its Fields Ranch East and West courses in the next 11 years, arriving fans will be funneled through the Monument Realty PGA District.
The routing is purposeful. PGA of America officials liken the district to Disney World’s Main Street, except in this case patrons will be entering a 660-acre golf-themed and family-oriented playland.
Welcome to Golf Town, U.S.A., the most magical, sensory-piquing golf hub on Earth.
A lighted two-acre putting course called The Dance Floor. A lighted 10-hole par 3 course called The Swing. Children’s play areas and golf-motif restaurants and shops.
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And the main attractions: The PGA of America headquarters, two 18-hole championship golf courses, a 30-acre practice and training facility and the luxurious 500-room Omni PGA Frisco resort.
Aerial view the new Fields Ranch East golf course with the Omni PGA Frisco Resort at PGA of America in Frisco on Tuesday, April 18, 2023. (Smiley N. Pool / Staff Photographer)
Though it’s technically part of the city of Frisco’s $10 billion Fields community, PGA Frisco’s $550 million footprint is a golf-centric destination unto itself.
“As a golfer, it’s like being a kid in the candy store,” PGA of America president John Lindert said. “If I could have a dream and build a property that had everything, not only for me as an avid golfer but as a way to introduce the game to people who don’t play, this would be it.”
Lindert spoke to The News while standing on the No. 1 tee box of the Gil Hanse-designed Fields Ranch East course, which will host the 83rd KitchenAid Senior PGA Championship May 25-28.
The East course opens for public play May 30. The Beau Welling-designed Fields Ranch West course opened for public play May 2.
The Senior PGA Championship will be a dress rehearsal of sorts for the numerous tournaments in PGA Frisco’s future, including the 2027 and 2034 PGA Championships, the 2025 and 2031 KPMG Women’s PGA Championships and the 2029 Senior PGA Championship.
North Texas hasn’t hosted a men’s major since the 1963 PGA Championship at Dallas Athletic Club. There hasn’t been a men’s major in this state since the 1969 U.S. Open at Houston’s Champions Golf Club. The influx of significant tournaments alone is Texas’ biggest golf story in decades.
But when the PGA of America on Dec. 4, 2018, committed to moving its headquarters from Palm Beach Gardens, Fla., to Frisco as the anchor of a golf mega-development, North Texas’ coup became international news.
PGA of America CEO Seth Waugh in 2018 made headlines and raised eyebrows when he predicted that PGA Frisco would become the Silicon Valley of Golf. But when the PGA’s $33.5 million, 106,621-square foot headquarters opened on Aug. 22, 2022, Waugh told The News that he might have undersold his vision.
“It’s one of those very rare instances where the reality may end up being better than the dream,” he said. “It’s so unique to anything else that exists in the game.
“What we can do with the whole campus is both exhilarating and a little daunting, you know? Now it’s that awesome responsibility of fulfilling the promise.”
At the time, construction was ongoing throughout the PGA Frisco campus. Ten months later the final product’s scope, opulence, granular details and commercial aspects make PGA Frisco unparalleled not only in golf, but perhaps all sports.
It’s much larger than the 128-year-old U.S. Golf Association’s combined bases: its headquarters and museum in Liberty Corner, N.J.; and 6-acre, under-construction secondary campus in Pinehurst, N.C.
For golf historians there’s no matching the mystique of the Royal & Ancient Golf Club of St. Andrews, founded in 1754, and its World Golf Museum. Though the PGA, founded in 1916, celebrates the sport’s past, that isn’t the association’s primary purpose.
The PGA’s stated missions are to support and elevate the careers of the nearly 29,000 PGA professionals across the country; enhance PGA members’ standing in their communities; and work daily to grow interest and inclusion in the game of golf.
As their state-of-the-art campus neared completion in the spring, officials began referring to PGA Frisco as the Home of Modern Golf.
“It’s far beyond what I think anybody in the boardroom could have expected when we made the decision to move the home of the PGA of America here,” said Lindert, who last November succeeded Jim Richerson as PGA president when Richerson’s two-year term expired.
“The collaborative effort between the Omni hotel and the city of Frisco and PGA of America has been fantastic. I can’t wait to see families come to enjoy The Dance Floor and The Swing and the retail district and watch tournament golf.”
No more than a cart ride away
Despite the campus’ expanse, all of PGA Frisco’s main features are either walkable to one another or a leisurely cart ride away.
The most striking examples of the PGA’s core mission are synergized in the campus’ northwest corner, a 4-minute walk apart.
There is the PGA headquarters, featuring a comprehensive indoor professional development center with large bunker, chipping and hitting areas, along with indoor/outdoor hitting bays that boast state-of-the-art technology to assess all elements of a player’s swing.
Just down a cart path are the headquarters and training facilities of the Northern Texas PGA, one of the PGA’s 41 nationwide geographical sections.
Adjacent to the NTPGA’s building is the Ronny Golf Park, named after Ronny Glanton, the longtime head professional at Sherrill Park in Richardson and a junior golf instructor for more than 30 years.
“The Ronny” is a lighted two-acre synthetic turf golf park with an 18-hole putting course; two replica putting greens of PGA Frisco’s East and West courses; a putting lab; two chipping greens with synthetic-turf bunkers; and a playground and obstacle course.
The park is the fruition of a decade-plus-old dream of Mark Harrison, an NTPGA executive for more than 25 years and now its CEO.
The Ronny Golf Park features a practice green for children at the PGA of America on Monday, April 24, 2023 in Frisco, Texas. (Elías Valverde II / Staff Photographer)
Harrison traces his vision to create an urban golf park to a February 2011 story in The News about changing demographics in Texas. He recalls emailing the article to then-NTPGA executive director Darrell Crall and expressing the need to make golf more affordable and accessible to golfers of all ages.
Through the years Harrison pitched his urban golf park plan to the city of Addison (2013), Irving (2013) and Frisco (2014) and along the way was introduced to Welling. So enamored was Welling with Harrison’s urban golf park idea that he produced schematics and declined to accept his $2,500 fee.
“I’m actually getting chills just sitting here talking about it,” Welling said last November during a visit to Ronny Park as it prepared for a soft opening. “It’s pretty awesome to see it come to true reality.”
During Harrison’s discussions with Frisco, city officials made it clear in 2014 that they had even larger ambitions, having a year earlier finalized an agreement with Cowboys owner Jerry Jones to build the team’s headquarters and training facilities there.
And by then Harrison and Frisco had a strong ally inside the PGA of America, Crall, who had become COO in 2012. The PGA was exploring relocation possibilities from its home since 1965, Palm Beach Gardens, Fla. To Harrison, Frisco was the logical choice.
“We’re a service-based organization,” he said of the PGA. “We serve the 29,000 members.
“You do it better from the middle of the country than you can from Palm Beach. And I also know how diverse and how smart the talent pool is here.”
The PGA of America, city of Frisco and Omni seized the proverbial football and ran with it, the result being PGA Frisco.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott came to Frisco for the Omni PGA’s May 2021 groundbreaking and returned for the May 2, 2023, ribbon-cutting, remarking that “this area was nothing more than a typical field of dreams” that’s now “a golfing a resort mecca that is going to grow and expand beyond anybody’s imagination.”
The NTPGA has long helped produce some of the country’s top players, including Justin Leonard, Kelli Kuehne, Scott Brooks, Angela Stanford — and current world No. 10-ranked Jordan Spieth, No. 9 Will Zalatoris and No. 2 Scottie Scheffler.
Next to the NTPGA headquarters is a walk of fame that honors those players and others, along with respected North Texas PGA instructors like Randy Smith and Cameron McCormick. The walk of fame was laid out with ample leeway, with numerous planks marked “#WHOSNEXT.”
Harrison projects that the NTPGA’s new headquarters and Ronny Park will help the organization increase its reach from 6,000 junior golfers annually to 10,000. That includes Frisco ISD students as part of a partnership with PGA Frisco.
Across Championship Drive from the NTPGA is Panther Creek High School and across PGA Parkway from PGA HQ is Wilkinson Middle School.
Welling predicts that many of the PGA professionals coming to Frisco in the future will return to their communities with plans to replicate Ronny Park in some way.
“I think the impact this entire campus is going to have on the game of golf is going to be phenomenal and unbelievable,” he said.
Growing in stature
Will PGA Frisco ultimately live up to its Home of Modern Golf moniker?
Like any new golf facility, PGA Frisco’s prestige-level largely will be shaped by the reputations of the East and West courses, particularly Hanse’s East course, which is projected to host most of PGA Frisco’s championship tournaments.
PGA of America officials said before the first shovels of dirt were turned on either course that they would like PGA Frisco to someday host a Ryder Cup.
As one of the Ryder Cup’s co-organizers, the PGA certainly can make that happen, though all of the biennial event’s venues have been awarded through 2029 and the next-available Ryder Cup on American soil is 2037.
This month’s KitchenAid Senior PGA will be the East course’s first nationally televised (NBC) glimpse, although defending Senior PGA champion Steven Alker and many of the tournament field’s 25 former major champions played the course on May 24.
Alker laughed that East “kicked my ass,” but he was generally impressed, albeit surprised by its elevation changes given North Texas’ generally flat topography.
“It’s very, very fair,” Alker said. “I think the best compliment I can give the golf course is that the more holes I played, the more I enjoyed it. And that’s a sign of a good golf course.
“Credit to the PGA and the whole team that have put this facility together. I think it’s very, very worthy of holding some major championships.”
The Senior PGA Championship trophy pictured on the first tee box of the Fields Ranch East golf course at PGA of America on Monday, April 24, 2023 in Frisco, Texas. (Elías Valverde II / Staff Photographer)
It takes years, if not decades, for golf courses to forge reputations, but on its whole PGA Frisco already is without peer.
The Home of Modern Golf? Golf’s Disney World? Actually the PGA of America aspires to something even grander: Profoundly impacting the sport by expanding opportunities for those who play it.
Twitter: @townbrad
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