65º Magazine Fall 2024

Links with Nature

By Caitlin Fillmore | Photos by Sherman Chu & Manny Espinoza Forrest Arthur has two photographs of his workplace framed in his home. When you learn that he’s been COO and general manager of the pristine Santa Lucia Preserve Golf Club since 1998, then those photographs make perfect sense.

However, if you have the chance to look closer at the images, you may still be puzzled. The framed piece presents a before and after of hole three, but the two images are nearly identical. “Nothing had to be carved out or fabricated,” says Arthur, “those holes were sitting there forever.”

A sense of predestination surrounds The Preserve Golf Club, a private golf club located on 365 of the 20,000 acres of The Santa Lucia Preserve in Carmel-by-the-Sea. The Preserve Golf Club is one aspect of the lifestyle of living in The Preserve, which was established in 2000 and includes fitness and equestrian activities at the Ranch Club and a community of fewer than 300 families.

From its beginnings, The Preserve Golf Club blazed a new trail for golf course development. Legendary golf course architect Tom Fazio prioritized conservation above all else, long before sustainability concepts were commonplace. “Fazio’s goals were conservation minded, to work with the contours of the land as it existed,” says Arthur. “You can see that today when you play the golf course. It flows with the valleys, and it’s a very natural feel.”

That natural feel has nontraditional elements as well; the original design included no paths for golf carts and no sand-filled bunkers.

While the course welcomes carts today, the basic vision remains.

“It was more of a golf walk,” says Arthur. “At the end of the day, we only moved about 300,000 cubic yards of earth, which is a very