Howard Sherwood has built many top golf courses in the region.
Howard Sherwood
If he builds them, golfers will come By Mal Elliott A quarter of a century ago, Wichita’s Sherwood Construction took on a project of installing a sprinkler system at two municipal golf courses – Sim Park and Clapp Park. It was a small beginning of something big in the golf world. Howard Sherwood, chairman emeritus of the board of Sherwood Construction, is a low-key, second-generation construction executive with a high-profile reputation. He is also a partner in Wildcat Construction, an affiliated company that has built four of the finest golf courses in Kansas in the past 10-plus years. His two best are Flint Hills National Golf Club near Andover and the Colbert Hills course, located in those same Flint Hills farther north near Manhattan. The course was created by Jim Colbert, the former Senior PGA Tour money champion, to enhance the golf program at his alma mater, Kansas State. That is also where the name of Sherwood’s Wildcat Construction firm came from. He has long been associated with KState. The Colbert Hills course is the basis for a foundation that is turning the Kansas State campus into one of the PGA’s official training grounds for golf-course managers and superintendents. Sherwood is chairman of the board for that program. Flint Hills National has been ranked
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among the top 50 courses in the country while Auburn Hills is Wichita’s deluxe municipal layout. Colbert Hills, carved out of the rocky hills north of Manhattan, is considered a severe test of shot-making, stretching out to 7,525 yards from the back tees and carrying a par of 72 and a course rating of 77.4. Colbert Hills has already been the host for one NCAA regional tournament and hopes to land another in 2011. How did Sherwood’s Wildcat Construction get the job of building these courses? Sherwood is a close friend of Tom Devlin, who built a fortune with rent-to-own franchises and hired Tom Fazio, a superstar among golf architects, to create Flint Hills. Sherwood said he is grateful to Devlin for convincing Fazio that Sherwood could do the job. “After all, Fazio’s name was on the line,” said Sherwood. Devlin was right. The course has had nothing but rave reviews. It is Devlin’s dream come true. Fazio was skeptical but gradually accepted the arrangement. “Fazio is a guarded personality,” said Sherwood. “I can’t say he ever patted us on the back, but he was proud of what we did. I know he was.” Sherwood Construction also did some of the construction work on Oklahoma’s newest private course, The Patriot in Owasso, a Robert Trent Jones II design. The first course that Sherwood built from start to finish was The Heritage, in Johnson County near Kansas City. The architect on that one was the late Don Sechrest, who designed Terradyne Resort and Country Club east of Wichita. Sherwood did not land the Terradyne job but last year completed a Terradyne renovation that included a threehole practice facility and driving range. Sherwood also built The Heritage, another Sechrest design, an upscale course in the Kansas City area. Wildcat Construction was low bidder on the contract to build Auburn Hills west of Wichita in 2000. But Sherwood said his firm does not aggressively go after such jobs. Golf-course building is not a high-dollar venture but is a “niche” business for Wildcat construction. Most of the business Sherwood Construction does out of its offices in Wichita, Tulsa and Oklahoma City is street and highway construction, which can run in the hundreds of millions of dollars, compared with tens of millions for golf courses. Golf courses can be built for $10 million to $25 million, according to a posting at the Golf Course Builders’ Association website. “You can build them cheaper than that,” said Sherwood. “Auburn Hills cost about seven and a half million.”
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