TTA Award W inners
Congratulations to TTA’s 2013 Public Golf Course of the Year…
Stonehenge Golf Course
By Liz Nutter, Managing Editor, Leading Edge Communications (publisher of Tennessee Turfgrass)
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amed by Golf Digest as the Best New Golf Course in 1985 and the Best Public Course in Tennessee in 1995, and currently ranked by Golfweek in the top five courses in the state, Stonehenge Golf Course in Fairfield Glade also garnered TTA’s 2013 Public Golf Course of the Year. As one of five golf courses in the Fairfield Glade Resort in Crossville, TN, the course is one of the most popular for golfers in Cumberland County. Punctuated with hills, valleys, rock outcroppings, tree-lined fairways and many water hazards, Stonehenge is both scenic and demanding. It’s also one of the few courses in the state with creeping bentgrass from tees to greens (the roughs
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are a bluegrass/fescue blend). The par72, 6,549-yard course hosts the Tennessee Golf Association (TGA) Father Son Tournament, TGA Women’s Open, Tennessee PGA Senior State Open and the TGA/ TPGA Tennessee Cup matches. Superintendent Sean VanHoose, CGCS, is understandably proud of Stonehenge’s numerous accolades over the years, especially considering the course’s many management challenges. For one, its design is tough on equipment. “Most golf courses are in somewhat of a block design; Stonehenge is more like a meandering stream, with two big nine-hole loops,” VanHoose comments. “We wear out a lot of equipment, just traveling from one hole to the next.”
TENNESSEE TURFGRASS October/November 2014 Email TTA at: tnturfgrassassn@aol.com
The course also has very shallow soil on top of rock in many places, which made installing the new irrigation system in 2010 quite difficult. “We spent a tremendous amount of money having rock crushed to put in the system,” he recalls. “We had to work closely with the contractor to maximize our budget to cover the entire course.” VanHoose has been a member of TTA since 2003 and has served on the board of directors since 2009. “I am blessed to be married to a beautiful wife, Vickie, who is very understanding of the demands of my job,” he says. “She and my step-daughter, Haley, age 9, often come to the course to spend time with me, which makes my job that much more enjoyable.” T