It?s ?tee? time: Reserve brings public golf back to Warren County
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Longtime nurseryman Dwight O?Neal and his family officially opened the Reserve at Collins River on July 1, and although much work will be done before the nine-hole course is completely in the shape he hopes it will be in, O?Neal said the reactions of players who visited during the opening week have been positive.
?We?ve gotten a lot of good feedback from the golfers,? O?Neal said on Friday, when the Standard sports staff visited the course for a midday round. ?We know there is still a lot of work to be done, but it?s coming along. The fairways are filling in nicely, the greens still need to mature but they?re playing well, and we?re excited to be to the point where we?re open for business.?
So after over 30 years in the nursery business, why did Dwight, along with his wife Hannah and their two sons, decide to make the switch to the golf business?
The short answer is they had the land, and they had the plan.
?We?ve been thinking about this probably for 15 or 16 years,? Dwight explained. ?We have a lot of property up here, and it always seemed very conducive to building a course.?
Years ago, a group offering aerial topographic photos of the area provided shots of the O?Neals? property, and Dwight took those maps to a professor at the University of Tennessee, who was teaching a class in golf course design.
Along with local golf enthusiasts Mike Crain and Greg Brock, Dwight selected the best of the students? designs, but those plans remained ?on the shelf? ? literally ? for years.
But when plans to convert the former nursery fields into a course began to once again come to fruition, Dwight said the natural lay of the land, combined with the experience and knowledge of course designer Jerry Lemons, were they keys to turning a longtime plan into reality.
?Jerry has been very instrumental,? he said of Lemons, who has over 20 years of experience in course design, working with various courses around the country including Willowbrook, Riverwatch and Nashville?s Springhouse Golf Club. ?He had a lot of contacts in the golf construction business, and after looking over the property, he came up with some great design ideas.
?The terrain lends itself to a golf course, with a lot of movement and action to it naturally. We had to move less than 10,000 yards of dirt during the construction, which is a very small amount for a golf course. So the lay of the land was just about perfect.?
One of Lemons? ideas resulted in a unique aspect of the Reserve?s design. Using the surrounding backdrop of the area?s mountains, Lemons constructed the terrain around the course to mirror the mountain ranges in the background. The design might not be evident upon first glance, but once noticing how the rolling greens and fairways echo the mountains behind them, it lends a soothing aesthetic quality to the already scenic course.
With Hannah handling many of the business aspects of the course, and Dwight often found on the back of a tractor continually working somewhere on one of the holes, the Reserve is truly a ?mom-and-pop? operation, with sons Joe and Chris both working on the course while completing their respective educations.
In the not-too-distant future, the O?Neals hope to expand the Reserve to a full 18-hole course. And one day, Dwight said, the Reserve and the surrounding real estate currently being developed around it could be passed along to Joe, Chris and the next generation of the family. But for now, they?re all enjoying their new venture into the golf business, and hope players from Warren County and surrounding areas enjoy it, as well.
?We want to have a place for folks to come and have a good time,? Dwight said. ?We want somewhere they can play a round of golf, or just kick back and enjoy the day and this great countryside. And I think we?ve accomplished that.?
The Reserve is located near the foot of Harrison Ferry Mountain, at 4420 Harrison Ferry Rd. For more information, call 668-7749, or log on to www.collinsriver.com.