By David Rogers. GREENSBORO, N.C. — For all intents and purposes, Hurricane Helene took a “wrecking ball” to the front nine holes of the Asheville Municipal Golf Course last September. When you consider the lives lost and estimates of $59 billion in damages from the storm across all of North Carolina, it is easy to dismiss the carnage at Asheville MUNI as just one among hundreds of similar stories.

That would be a mistake.  The demonstrated community passion for the iconic recreational venue that turns 100 years old in 2027 is undeniable, as is its role as an economic engine for the Asheville region.

There is even an overlapping connection to the High Country: Boone and Blowing Rock-based, professional golf course architect Ron Cutlip was announced in late July as being awarded the restoration design contract and will collaborate with Mike Bennett, a partner with Williamsburg, Va.- based Commonwealth Golf Partners in leading the project.

“We are the operating management company for Asheville MUNI on behalf of the city,” explained Bennett in an interview with High Country Sports at The Wyndham Championship, the recent PGA Tour event, on Aug. 3 at Sedgefield Country Club.

“Two days before the storm,” Bennett recalled, “I was on the MUNI course with Brad Becken, the head of the Pinehurst-based Donald Ross Society. We were reviewing the course because they had given us grant money for some earlier planned restoration work. As we were going around the course, it started raining and there was a forecast for more precipitation in the next 24 hours. I drove back home to Williamsburg but the next day our superintendent in Asheville called and told me those rain showers were going to be a lot more than anyone thought. They were calling for mass flooding. That’s when we realized it might be pretty bad for our course.”

Collectively, we said, ‘No, we are going to rebuild it.’

Hurricane Helene arrived the night of Thursday, Sept. 26, 2024. Bennett said the flooding crested the next afternoon.

“Then I arrived on Monday to survey the damage and, frankly, it was beyond anyone’s imagination. Someone jokingly suggested the property could be used for a BMX motocross venue, but collectively we said, ‘No, we are going to rebuild it.’”

Bennett said he was on the selection committee for awarding the restoration’s design contract.

“We are super excited about hiring Ron,” said Bennett. “The MUNI golf course was the first RFQ (request for qualification) posted by the City of Asheville. That is testament to how important this was for the city, but also to all the efforts by our group to get everything ready. When you consider all the destruction of buildings and property in the area, it is quite an honor to be the first posted RFQ.

This isn’t just a design project. There is a mitigation and resiliency component, too.

“A large number of professional golf course architects responded to the RFQ,” Bennett added. “At the end of the day, what won it for the Cutlip team is their experience in Donald Ross course restoration. In their presentation, they talked about all the items that are going to be important and specific to this project. For example, Ron has a proprietary bunker drainage system that will help us reduce any future flooding. They really seemed to understand the scope, that it wasn’t just a design project. There is a mitigation and resiliency component, too.”

Representing the Asheville MUNI recovery effort at The Wyndham Championship were Cutlip; Bennett; Chris Smith, President of the Asheville Buncombe Sports Commission; Nate Smith, responsible for social media and marketing for the course; and Pat Warren, the on-site Commonwealth Golf Partners manager and golf pro at the MUNI course.

In talking with members of the Asheville team at The Wyndham Championship, that word, “resilient,” was a common descriptor of the course, the area and the people.

People pulled out their chainsaws. Complete strangers worked together. People of different political ideologies came together as neighbors.

Nate Smith articulated a broader perspective about the recovery efforts.

“Hurricane Helene is the worst thing to ever occur in western North Carolina, by far,” he said. “Personally, I lost a house and a car. I know people who lost family members in the storm. Even almost a year later, the devastation is still easy to see. There are unavoidable scenes throughout the city. You see mountainsides with hundreds of trees blown over, still. You see washed out roads. You see places where there once was a 6-inch deep creek that became a 25-feet high torrent of a river.

“But I am really proud of our community,” Smith added. “The resiliency, how we all came together to keep people’s spirits up. We didn’t have water. We didn’t have electricity. We didn’t have shelter. We certainly weren’t feeling safe. But people pulled out their chainsaws. Complete strangers worked together. People from different political ideologies came together as good neighbors. Those are things I will always remember about that storm well beyond the tragic circumstances.”

Help Arrives

Organizers of The Wyndham Championship in Greensboro — almost 170 miles away from the Asheville course — responded, generously. With a strong connection through golf and personal histories, they made Asheville MUNI’s restoration a beneficiary of fundraising efforts. Everywhere you turned during the Wyndham tournament, there was a volunteer hawking 50/50 raffle tickets. Asheville’s recovery team was given a premium sponsor tent location to tell the restoration story and receive donations.

“A fellow by the name of Mark Brazil is the reason we are here at The Wyndham Championship,” said Chris Smith, the Asheville Sports Commission president. “Mark is Chief Executive Officer of The Wyndham. He is a native of Asheville and grew up in Biltmore Forest. Obviously, Mark knew what happened to his former hometown with Hurricane Helene. He is the one who presented us with this opportunity. We receive proceeds from the 5K, from the concert the other night and a portion of the 50/50 raffle, as well as anything we can raise here at the booth. And it has proven to be a terrific opportunity. We have had an abundance of dumb luck, establishing contact with some of the professional golfers and their families, many looking to help through their foundations.

“While Mark Brazil gets the lion’s share of credit for us being here, a guy by the name of Rob Goodman has also been instrumental in our success this week,” added Smith. “Rob is an Asheville native and The Wyndham Championship media director. The last few days, he kept me busy doing interviews with radio and TV stations.”

Getting The Job

These are heady times for Boone and Blowing Rock’s Cutlip, who last year was inducted into the prestigious American Society of Golf Course Architects. Donald Ross was one of the 14 founding fathers of ASGCA, so having a chance to work on one of Ross’ courses like Asheville MUNI is special, exciting and humbling, he admitted.

“This is such an honor,” acknowledged Cutlip. “The course we are standing on, Sedgefield, is a Donald Ross designed course, just like Asheville MUNI. Both were built in the mid-1920s. Keep in mind I will not be designing the course because that was done by Ross a hundred years ago. Working from preserved copies of his original plans, we will be restoring the front nine to its original greens, fairways and tee boxes. I am part of a team, including Biohabitats and Forse Design.”

Hurricane Helene came in like a lion…

Chris Smith grew up playing golf at MUNI and has vivid memories of the course where he learned to play the game.

“Asheville MUNI is an historic course, beloved by people all across the state but especially those who grew up in or are now living in western North Carolina,” explained Smith. “Now the front nine is unrecognizable. A lot of rain over two days before the storm saturated the ground. Then the 10-20 inches of rain the storm brought to the region was not just what fell on the course but the water from the surrounding higher areas flowed down to and through the lower areas, too, and then you had the overflowing banks of the Swannanoa River. It was a flash flood of gigantic proportions, uprooting trees, sweeping away structures and even dislodging concrete and pavement. What were once pure, smooth greens and lush fairways are now disaster areas.”

Smith estimated that the restoration will cost about $12 million.

“FEMA has taken an interest in the project and we are told will contribute a good part of the restoration costs,” said Smith. “But the entire community has gotten behind the fundraising efforts, too, including the city and so many individuals for whom the course is special. This weekend, we’ve had a steady stream of Wyndham Championship patrons stopping by and giving whatever they can spare, from $1 to $100. Every dollar helps and we appreciate the support.”

The better job we do and the faster we can get it done, the better off we will all be.

Cutlip estimated the restoration project will require about 18 months to finish, assuming all goes well and, of course, the weather cooperates. He said it may be six months before any actual work can get started as they obtain the necessary state and local permits, he said.

For a course that sees some 41,000 rounds of golf played on it, annually, to have the front nine sitting idle for an extended period could be catastrophic, financially. The estimated six months to wait for the permitting process to run its course complicates the matter, too — but with opportunity.

“Hurricane Helene came in like a lion,” said Pat Warren, Asheville MUNI’s head golf pro. “It was quite catastrophic, ripping up greens and fairways, as well as bringing a lot of debris onto the course. We have set up a disc golf course on that part of the property, to monetize it during the permitting process. The disc golf baskets cost about $18,000, and once we obtain all of the permits to begin the restoration, those baskets can easily be moved and used at another location.”

In talking with the group, one thing became clear: the people restoring Asheville MUNI are here to stay.

“When a natural disaster like this happens, it is not uncommon for those affected or even literally uprooted to move away,” said Nate Smith. “I get it. But I am a native of Asheville. I grew up here. I am now a realtor in Asheville. My family is in Asheville and Asheville is my home, the place where I want to raise my kids. We are super plugged into the community. As long as I live in America, I will live in Asheville.

“Specific to this project, I think part of the appeal is the rise in interest among golfers to bring back Donald Ross designs in golf courses. It is a super cool phenomenon,” Smith added. “For the Asheville MUNI golf course, it is an absolutely amazing thing to do because people are hungry for it. The better job we can do and the faster we can get it done, we are all going to be better off. How can you beat a classic Donald Ross golf course that is five minutes from downtown Asheville and with long-range mountain views? It has an incredible history, not just as North Carolina’s first public golf course, but as the first golf course to integrate in the South. It has the longest-running, African American-run golf tournament in the world with the Skyview event every year.”

Waxing philosophical, Smith said, “The MUNI course is such a community center. What makes America really wonderful is the coming together of different groups of people for a common goal. That happens at Asheville MUNI every day. All sorts of different folks are there, playing, meeting one another and having a good time playing golf.”