FRISCO, Texas — If the coffee at the soon-to-be-completed Omni PGA Frisco Resort doesn’t give you a sufficient morning jolt, a peek at the scorecard of Gil Hanse’s Fields Ranch East Course certainly will.
The sprawling and spectacular track — part of a 660-acre complex that houses Hanse’s East Course, Beau Welling’s West Course and the PGA of America’s impressive new home — opens with what we can safely refer to as major numbers. Major as in the numerous championships that will be played there, including the 2027 and 2034 PGA Championship and the 2025 and 2031 KPMG Women’s PGA Championship.
And major in terms of sheer distance — like an opening three-hole stretch that can play to 1,699 yards, including a 633-yard first hole that often plays into a stiff breeze.
Don’t come here half-asleep, the East Course seems to be saying.
But while the complex, which sits on a rare bit of rolling land on the northern tip of the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex, will best be known for the 26 PGA of America championships scheduled over the next dozen years, there’s an interesting bit of behind-the-scenes symbiosis that’s led to the finished work.
Teamwork was the key
Gil Hanse, a golf architect who can’t squeeze enough room into his planner for major course re-designs these days, and self-described project “underdog” Beau Welling formed an interesting and complementary team to make a special piece of property into something that will change the dynamic of golf in the state of Texas.
During a recent media preview, the two sat down for a fireside chat and explained that this was the first time they’d ever worked together, but both sides were excited about the possibility of collaborating again in the future.
Welling not only created the plan for the West Course, a challenging yet playable layout that rolls through the former ranch land, but he also developed the entire site plan, meaning he accounted for details like massive crowds, TV towers and even future concession stands.
It’s all part of a property that’s expected to drive massive tourism and growth in and around the yet-to-be-finished Omni, a resort that will include a two-acre putting course; an entertainment area named The Dance Floor with a massive TV screen to be programmed by PGA of America officials; and a par-3, 10-hole short course called “The Swing.”
But as for the main attraction, Hanse’s East Course, the idea was to make this a track that could challenge the best players in the world.
Spoiler alert: It’s yet to be announced and won’t officially be for years, but the common knowledge among all the key players is that if the course gets satisfactory marks during its run hosting the 2027 PGA Championship, it’s certain to be added as the 2041 Ryder Cup site.
Prepping for a major (and a Ryder Cup)
All this left Hanse with a massive challenge, but in recent years he and managing partner Jim Wagner have been given plenty of opportunities to tackle big things. The tandem’s original design skills were on full display at the Olympic Course for the 2016 Games in Brazil, and restorations to major-championship courses have included Winged Foot, Los Angeles Country Club, Oakland Hills South, Baltusrol, Southern Hills and beyond.
But instead of reworking an existing course in advance of a major, this job called for sculpting from conception. That allowed Hanse and Wagner to put some of their routing theories into action.
“When the stage is set, we’d rather see positive outcomes determine champions as opposed to negative outcomes. We really enjoy watching golfers making birdies and eagles to win, as opposed to some guy double bogeys, another guy bogeys and barely hangs on,” Hanse said. “And so the way we’ve set up the finish is we’ve got, you know, a pretty tough stretch of holes on the back nine — the drivable 15th, 16 is a hard four, but then 17 is the shortest par-3 on the golf course and 18 is a reachable five for all those guys.
“So they’re going to have to make decisions and, hopefully, they’ll have positive outcomes determine the way that it all falls out.”
Of course, Hanse didn’t create everything from scratch. He’s openly admitted to “borrowing” design concepts from some of the biggest names before him, a practice that worked well on this project. When asked if greats like Donald Ross, Perry Maxwell and Alister MacKenzie influence his work, Hanse didn’t hesitate to answer.
“Every day. Every day they do,” he said. “We’re fortunate that we are very active in that side of the business as well. And so we’re constantly trying to explore and figure out what they did at their particular projects. And Jim and I are both very open in that we steal ideas from them. If we see something that we really like, we’ll certainly borrow literally from that, but it’s also really nice because we can talk about situational things — that we don’t want to necessarily build that green that Ross built. But that green site feels a lot like (one) at Oakland Hills. And so, then there’s a context and we can talk about those things that way as opposed to — we’re going to build exactly a replica of that.
“But we were always influenced by them, because it’s the highest art form in our profession is, is created during those times. And so we’re always inspired and certainly informed by what they did.”
Moving earth from west to east
While Hanse was working on his East behemoth, Welling was whittling away at some of the higher pieces of property on the ranch. The two realized early on that they had something the other needed.
The result was a massive movement of earth from the West Course to the East, largely to help the latter deal with Panther Creek, a tributary that winds through the region before dumping into Lewisville Lake.
Although the area is often dry, Hanse and Welling had to be ready for the occasional floods that plague the region. That led to loads of dirt being repurposed, although Welling wasn’t sure of the exact quantity.
“I’m terrible at numbers. I have no idea how much I don’t remember exactly. There was a big export of material from the west to the east,” Welling said. “So there were awesome parts of topography, like where the halfway house is, but then there’s all the stuff that was dead flat along Panther Creek and all that had to be amended in order to protect it from the floodwaters.
“And so we had to move the earth, not so much necessarily to create topography that we might have done along the way, but it really was just to elevate everything such that when the flood event does happen, it’s not inundating the investments been made in the golf courses.”
Although the area around the complex is still largely empty, a number of condominiums and mixed-use projects are either in the works or under construction. And Welling thinks that will make Fields Ranch even more important in years to come.
“I think what’s going to be really neat, long-term, is as the town and city now develops around them, this is going to be this oasis in the middle of the built-up environment that’s going to have flora and fauna and wildlife and whatnot,” he said.
More to come?
Although they’re very different creatures — for example, when Welling mentioned at dinner that he’d had someone dress up as Sasquatch to walk outside the window at his recent wedding, Hanse laughed in disbelief and asked to see pictures — the combination created magic in this bucolic Texas pasture.
“I knew innately from the original phone call, this was gonna be such a massive, special thing and we just wanted to be a part of it and to get to be able to work alongside Gil. His guys, as you know, are special. I certainly consider him friends of ours now, and we really had a great time with all this,” Welling said. “We talked about collaborating and it’s not some marketing thing we’re talking about. I think the two firms really got to appreciate each other and I think part of that is that we’re real people.
“Like we don’t just sit around and talk about golf all the time. So I remember great dinners or we talked about music, we talked about football and we talked about whatever, so it was just really a wonderful great experience.”
That’s when the question came of whether this was the first time the two had worked together.
“Yes,” Hanse said, looking over at Welling. “And hopefully not the last.”
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