By John Whisler
San Antonio Express-News

Web Posted : 10/09/2001 12:00 AM

Gil Hodge carefully maneuvers his SUV down muddy pathways, past groaning excavation equipment and construction workers laying huge rolls of sod as if it were living room carpet.

 

Former PGA pro and co-owner of the Briggs Ranch Golf Club development Bill Rogers (left) and Tom Fazio, designer of the golf course, inspect the Zeon Zoysia grass used to cover the fairways. Photo by Bob Owen/Express-News

Outside of Hodge and the other partners conducting the tour of the Briggs Ranch Golf Club, few if any of the men shaping this 7,206-yard slice of heaven will ever set foot on it again once it is complete.

But a sense of anticipation fills the air, nonetheless, like that felt by artists at an art gallery.

"This course is for the hard-core golfer who enjoys the game and wants the very best," Hodge said proudly.

The $10 million golf club, the first private course to be built in San Antonio since 1985, is not a country club but a golf-only facility, the only one of its kind in the city.

Designed by world-renowned architect Tom Fazio, Briggs Ranch caters to an upscale clientele that is seeking not just a round of golf but a true "golf experience."

"We're shooting for that 'wow' factor," said Fazio, whose list of projects includes Dallas National and 20 of the top 100 Modern Courses in America as revealed in Golfweek magazine. "We want golfers to be able to come here and say 'I've never seen anything like this before.'"

With an initiation fee of $50,000 and monthly dues of $450, area golfers likely haven't seen its prices before, either.

But this clearly is no ordinary golf course.

Located west of San Antonio at U.S. 90 West and Texas Research Parkway, the 300-acre golf club will include an 18-acre practice facility, which will allow golfers to practice all areas of the game: long and short; bunker and sand play; pitching, chipping and putting.

Membership will be limited to 300 men and women at the club, which is part of a 2,500-acre golf course community.

"I promise, just as sure as I'm sitting here, that this will be as special a golf course as you'll ever see," said Bill Rogers, a San Antonio resident and former PGA Tour pro who is another of the principals in the project, along with Buddy Cook, a longtime member of the local golf community.

But the biggest name at the new exclusive club that opens to limited play next month — and the name that people such as Rogers, Cook and Fazio are most excited about — is Zeon Zoysia.

Tall and blade-thin, he moved here from Poteet recently. He doesn't play golf, but his presence will be vital to the success of the club.

Zeon Zoysia is the grass that covers fairways of the Briggs Ranch Golf Club's 18-hole layout. It was developed at Bladerunner Farms in Poteet by company owner David Douget.

Briggs Ranch will feature bentgrass greens, complete with a sub-air underground system that allows cool air to be blown into the subsurface root system and, when necessary, to pull moisture from the soil under the greens.

But Zeon Zoysia is clearly the star.

"What makes this grass great for golf," Doguet said, "is its texture. It's a great surface to hit a golf ball off of. It holds the ball up, like a natural tee."

Its other properties — heat- and drought-resistant and low maintenance — made it an ideal choice for Briggs Ranch developers.

But instead of planting grass sprigs with the hope of it blossoming into a thick carpet of green, they sodded the entire course — 110 acres at $12,000-$15,000 per acre — making it one of the few solid-sodded courses in the country.

And the only one solid-sodded with Zeon Zoysia.

"We're part of the 'Now Generation,'" Fazio said. "That's why we went with sod. We want a course that will compare to the best courses in the world — now."

jwhisler@express-news.net

10/10/2001