Tag: Mike Davis

When Mike Davis announced in September 2020 his plan to retire as CEO of the U.S. Golf Association, he said he intended to launch a second career as a golf course architect and partner with Tom Fazio II. A little more than a year after he officially stepped down, those plans are coming to fruition with an ambitious project.

Davis and Fazio – who often goes by Tommy and whose uncle is famed architect Tom Fazio – are set to embark on building the private Apogee Club, which will consist of three 18-hole courses in Hobe Sound in southeast Florida.

“I’ll give you the Reader’s Digest version. It’s 1,200 acres. It’s three 18-hole golf courses, it’s two short courses, it’s cottages. There’s no housing to it, so there’s not a real estate play. There’s one big practice range, almost 360 (degrees), and a performance center and another smaller practice range,” Davis said in a recent phone interview. “One of the courses is going to be designed by Gil Hanse, one designed by Kyle Phillips, and then Tommy Fazio and I are doing the third. But we’re overseeing the in-house construction, and I’ve been very involved with the permitting process.”

Davis said he’s been doodling golf courses since he was a kid and that during his tenure with the USGA he was a student of architecture, benefiting from staging championships and playing at most of the best courses around the planet. After the 2019 Presidents Cup, for instance, he toured New Zealand and played many of its esteemed layouts. Davis said he had a few different architects approach him about partnering, but the logistics seemed to work well with Fazio, who is based in nearby Jupiter, Florida, where Davis owns a home. (He and his wife rebuilt it since his retirement.)

“I knew Tom had skill sets that not only I don’t have, but I’ll probably never have, where he’s just spent his life building golf courses,” Davis said. “It’s just been fun coming up with the vision and then turning a vision into a master plan and then going from a master plan to literally finding the site, negotiating it, buying it, and just the whole thing, the permitting process. It’s been so much fun where even to retain Gil Hanse, to retain Kyle Phillips, to kind of master plan the property and say, OK, Gil’s course is going to be over here, Kyle’s is going to be here, ours is going to be here, how will we make them different from one another?

“But at the same time the vision is to make it a very golfer-friendly facility that’s fun to play, that doesn’t beat you up, that you’re not losing a bunch of golf balls. It’s very walking friendly; they’ll have caddies. And as much golf as there is in the greater Jupiter area, it’s underserved right now. You can’t get into clubs. You can’t get on golf courses. It’s a hotbed for golf, but even before COVID it was underserved.”

Such a huge undertaking requires deep pockets, and Davis and Fazio found not one but two principals who fit the bill. As they began quietly looking for land, Davis approached Mike Pascucci, who made his fortune in the car-leasing business and founded Sebonack Golf Club in Southampton, N.Y., and asked if he’d be interested in a project of this magnitude.

“He jumped in immediately and said, ‘I’d love to do it.’ As this thing grew and we knew what kind of capital it would take, and not just capital but how much time it was going to take, he kind of said, ‘Listen, I’m not sure we don’t need a partner here just to help with the enormity of this project,’ ” Davis recalled.

Steve Ross, the largest private real-estate developer in the country and owner of the Miami Dolphins, stepped in.

“You couldn’t pull this off without people like Mike Pascucci and Steve Ross. You couldn’t do it,” Davis said. “What’s really cool about it is they’re doing it more as a legacy project. They don’t need to do this. But they just want to leave something behind that they and their families can look at and say, hey, this is something we created from scratch. It’s just fun to be around people that successful who aren’t resting on their laurels.”

Besides the financing, Pascucci and Ross are responsible for the name, Apogee Club.

“I’m not sure I’d heard the word before, but its meaning really is the pinnacle of something. They wanted something unique, and obviously the name is unique,” Davis said.

Following a public hearing Sept. 27, clearing and grubbing began on a piece of land featuring live oaks, pine trees and very sandy soil.

“Gil is going to do the first golf course that will start construction (this) month, and if everything goes according to time frame, we should have a golf course hopefully at least in part ready to play by the end of 2023,” Davis said. “Tommy and I will start the second golf course basically a year later, so it will open and be ready to play by the end of ’24. Kyle Phillips will do the third course, which will be open for the end of ’25. That’s what’s so neat about Steve Ross and Mike Pascucci is they want to see this thing done. They’re not doing one of these things where let’s see how many members we get before we build the next golf course. They’re saying, let’s do it and we’ll get members in due course, and if it takes a while, if we have a recession, so be it. We want to do this thing right.”

It’s got the potential to be quite the second act for Davis and a special place to celebrate the game he has enjoyed since his youth in Chambersburg, Pennsylvania.

“It’s going to be kind of this oasis for great golf,” he said. “The amount of work is staggering, but I’m just loving it. It’s fun.”