Creating The Florida Golf Course At Sawgrass Was No Easy Task
Vernon Kelly, in semi-retirement, gets close to alligators these days only when he watches his beloved University of Florida Gators. Thirty years ago, alligators and snakes were a part of his daily work. So were spiders and mosquitoes.
"I am to snakes what Colonel Sanders is to chickens," Kelly says.
He didn't kill 'em, batter 'em and fry 'em with 11 herbs and spices, but Kelly killed more snakes than he could count when he was the project engineer overseeing the construction of the Tournament Players Club at Sawgrass, a Florida golf club and PGA Tour headquarters that only Deane Beman, then the Tour commissioner, and Pete Dye, the respected architect, seemed to understand.
"There were days when I'd tell Pete, 'I don't know if we'll ever finish this project,' " Kelly said last week.
"Pete always said, 'Every golf course is that way.' "
Florida golf course construction is a challenge in any terrain, but this property was a man-made bog, created when the building of Highway A1A blocked the natural drainage of the land. It left an area owned by a local developer, who sold 415 acres to Beman for $1 in 1978.
The developer thought he'd make his profit when communities sprang up around the golf course. Beman says he knew exactly what he was doing when he bought the property, but Kelly isn't so sure.
"It was the most awful construction project I've ever been involved with," says Kelly, an engineer by training. "It wasn't a swamp, but the land was wet. It had a huge amount of trees and grass. For years the vegetation had fallen into the water and rotted, forming a tremendous amount of organic matter."
Dye brought in David Postlethwait to be the foreman of the construction crew.
Postlethwait had worked with Dye before but says he has never had a job like the TPC.
"The trees were so thick and the grass was so high you couldn't tell where you were on the property," Postlethwait says. "I got lost in there one day. All I had was a radio. I called Vernon and told him I didn't want to talk long because I didn't want the radio to go dead. He just said, 'Look for the moss on the trees.' I don't know how I got out of there."
Postlethwait had more than 100 men working 80 hours a week in deplorable conditions. They wore snake boots and carried machetes, more to kill the rattlers and the cottonmouths than to cut the vegetation.
"David came in the construction trailer one day, and a snake's head was stuck in his boot," Kelly says. "It had struck the boot, and David had just cut it off behind the head and walked on."
Postlethwait doesn't remember that incident, but he says he got accustomed to seeing snakes, most of them diamondback rattlers of about 6 feet in length.
"They were always waving at me," he says.
Waving?
"Coiled up with their tail in the air shaking it at me," he says, particularly on the day Kelly fell into a gator pit while pushing through high grass.
"The gator was gone," he says. "It was a terrible stinking place."
The job would have been difficult enough, even had there not been snakes and gators to endanger the workers.
They had to cut a ditch around the property to drain the water off the land. Then they had to clear the muck off the land and cover it with sand.
"It was like New Orleans but on a smaller scale," Postlethwait says. "Nothing about the Florida golf course job was easy."
It was compounded by storms and a hurricane that flooded the property after they already had drained it and began construction.
As Dye had predicted, they finished the project — now among the best Florida golf courses in the world — but a year past schedule and who knows how much over budget.
"It wasn't cheap," Kelly says, "but today you'd consider it a bargain."
This is one of the best Florida golf courses ever designed.
"I am to snakes what Colonel Sanders is to chickens," Kelly says.
He didn't kill 'em, batter 'em and fry 'em with 11 herbs and spices, but Kelly killed more snakes than he could count when he was the project engineer overseeing the construction of the Tournament Players Club at Sawgrass, a Florida golf club and PGA Tour headquarters that only Deane Beman, then the Tour commissioner, and Pete Dye, the respected architect, seemed to understand.
"There were days when I'd tell Pete, 'I don't know if we'll ever finish this project,' " Kelly said last week.
"Pete always said, 'Every golf course is that way.' "
Florida golf course construction is a challenge in any terrain, but this property was a man-made bog, created when the building of Highway A1A blocked the natural drainage of the land. It left an area owned by a local developer, who sold 415 acres to Beman for $1 in 1978.
The developer thought he'd make his profit when communities sprang up around the golf course. Beman says he knew exactly what he was doing when he bought the property, but Kelly isn't so sure.
"It was the most awful construction project I've ever been involved with," says Kelly, an engineer by training. "It wasn't a swamp, but the land was wet. It had a huge amount of trees and grass. For years the vegetation had fallen into the water and rotted, forming a tremendous amount of organic matter."
Dye brought in David Postlethwait to be the foreman of the construction crew.
Postlethwait had worked with Dye before but says he has never had a job like the TPC.
"The trees were so thick and the grass was so high you couldn't tell where you were on the property," Postlethwait says. "I got lost in there one day. All I had was a radio. I called Vernon and told him I didn't want to talk long because I didn't want the radio to go dead. He just said, 'Look for the moss on the trees.' I don't know how I got out of there."
Postlethwait had more than 100 men working 80 hours a week in deplorable conditions. They wore snake boots and carried machetes, more to kill the rattlers and the cottonmouths than to cut the vegetation.
"David came in the construction trailer one day, and a snake's head was stuck in his boot," Kelly says. "It had struck the boot, and David had just cut it off behind the head and walked on."
Postlethwait doesn't remember that incident, but he says he got accustomed to seeing snakes, most of them diamondback rattlers of about 6 feet in length.
"They were always waving at me," he says.
Waving?
"Coiled up with their tail in the air shaking it at me," he says, particularly on the day Kelly fell into a gator pit while pushing through high grass.
"The gator was gone," he says. "It was a terrible stinking place."
The job would have been difficult enough, even had there not been snakes and gators to endanger the workers.
They had to cut a ditch around the property to drain the water off the land. Then they had to clear the muck off the land and cover it with sand.
"It was like New Orleans but on a smaller scale," Postlethwait says. "Nothing about the Florida golf course job was easy."
It was compounded by storms and a hurricane that flooded the property after they already had drained it and began construction.
As Dye had predicted, they finished the project — now among the best Florida golf courses in the world — but a year past schedule and who knows how much over budget.
"It wasn't cheap," Kelly says, "but today you'd consider it a bargain."
This is one of the best Florida golf courses ever designed.
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