COURSE CORRECTION: The pandemic prompts a change in plans for a Haywood County golf development.

• Date: 01 August 2022
• Author: Solender, Michael J.

North Carolina's Haywood County holds a special allure for fuel supplier Lex West, who has enjoyed visits to the mountainous region throughout his life. In 2018, the co-owner of Hartsville, South Carolina-based West Oil bought Springdale, a golf resort 20 miles west of Asheville where he and his father have played since the mid-1990s.

The golf course was started and owned for decades by New Yorkers Fred and Eunice Tingle. They bought 550 acres, used for many years as a girls camp, at a courthouse auction in the late 1960s. The couple built 18 holes in the valley below Cold Mountain, a place made famous by Charles Frazier's novel and a film starring Nicole Kidman and Jude Law.

West's initial goals for Springdale were to "polish the gem of a property in decline" and offer locals and vacationers a great golf and mountain experience like he had enjoyed over the years.

Many years earlier, West's parents had bought about 200 acres atop Dream Mountain, about a mile away and just over the ridgeline from Springdale.

"Throughout the years, my dad and I would come down...