North Carolina's best golf courses.

• Author: Brafford, Kevin
• Position: SPECIAL SECTION

Golf is a difficult game to play well, so why should anyone think that ranking golf courses is easy? Well, to sum it up: It's not.

Just as the way you like your steak grilled is a personal preference, so is one's taste in golf courses. That's why, when I'm reviewing the annual ballots submitted by members of the North Carolina Golf Panel, I don't blink when one panelist ranks a particular course, say, fourth in the state while another judges it 44th. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

When the Golf Panel was founded in 1995 by public-relations executive Bill Hensley, the intent was to garner worthy attention for the best courses in a state chock-full of them. What is now a list of the top 100 courses in the state began as the top 50. If we expanded the rankings again, no one would object.

There are more than 500 golf courses in North Carolina, and I believe half of them would be worthy of ranking in the top 100 in all but a handful of states. Golfers in North Carolina are that blessed. And those of us who rank courses are that cursed. Course construction, after peaking nearly a decade ago, has leveled, but the new designs typically are outstanding.

That brings consequences, of course, for the other courses on the ranking. The top-25 polls in college football and basketball can change dramatically each year because the teams change--either players turn pro or exhaust their eligibility. That's not true of golf courses. They're going to stick around, often in much the same condition as the year before. New courses--or major renovations to old layouts--generate the changes.

In 2007, panelists played two new courses (Bright's Creek and Leopard's Chase), two that had undergone extensive renovations (Cape Fear Country Club and Cardinal Golf & Country Club) and three where the group previously had limited exposure (the North Course at Forest Creek Golf Club, the Cliffs at Walnut Cove and Willow Creek Country Club). Panelists left all with favorable impressions.

Ours is not an exact science and never will be. There are a handful of golf-course ratings panels worldwide, and each uses rankings criteria. Since the North Carolina Golf Panel's inception, our top 100 has been determined by averaging vote totals, with one stipulation: Our approximately 150 panelists statewide could vote only for courses they had played. While we won't change that requirement, we are evaluating how we rank courses, and we hope to have a new system in place later this year.

In the meantime, I hope you enjoy the stories and course rankings on the pages that follow. And if you have a steak to toss on the grill for me, I'd like it medium rare.

Kevin Brafford is president of the North Carolina Golf Panel.

Drive to Succeed

The image from last May is everlasting. After holing his final putt to win the fifth Wachovia Championship, Tiger Woods pulled his golf ball from the cup, turned and flung it into the crowd along the 18th fairway at Quail Hollow Club.

The moment said many things. It was a glimpse into the emotional intensity of the world's best golfer, who had seemed in command of the tournament midway through the final round but faltered, giving his opponents a chance to win. Woods' relief after wrestling with the closing holes at Quail Hollow reinforced the idea that few PGA Tour events are set on a stage as compelling as that of the Wachovia Championship, which will tee off for the sixth time May 1.

Woods triumphed against a playing field that included 28 of the world's top 30 players--the strongest to play a so-called "regular" tour event since the world golf rankings began two decades earlier. After his two-shot victory over tour veteran Steve Stricker, Woods said, "Over the course of my career, I've won a few tournaments here and there, and it's been nice. This one, considering the field and the golf course and the conditions, I am ecstatic to have won."

How did the Wachovia Championship come so far so fast? In large part it was because the people behind the tournament made it happen. The creators of the Wachovia Championship--including Wachovia Corp. CEO Ken Thompson, Quail Hollow Club President Johnny Harris and retired Wachovia executive Mac Everett were intent on creating a tournament that transcended most PGA Tour events. They wanted the look and feel of a major championship in Charlotte each May.

That's what they've created. "This tournament is a really important event on our tour because we use this as our model when we talk to other tournament directors and other sponsors about what to do to improve the quality of tournaments," Phil Mickelson said last year. "Everything they've done is the right way."

There was no secret formula. Instead, the success of the Wachovia Championship can be found in themes familiar to other successful enterprises--a commitment to quality, an emphasis on details, exceptional leadership, a willingness to listen and spend money and a sense of purpose. The result is a must-play tournament for the top players on the PGA Tour and a big week on the Carolinas sports calendar. "It has become an event, not just a golf tournament," Wachovia Championship Executive Director Kym Hougham says.

When the Kemper Open left Quail Hollow in 1979, the PGA Tour disappeared from Charlotte. Arnold Palmer, a Quail Hollow member, attempted to fill the void by creating a seniors event that predated the creation of the Champions Tour. It was fun, popular and allowed the city to stay in touch with many of the players who had been so popular at the Kemper. But it wasn't the big tour. It didn't have sizzle.

To get big-time golf back, two problems had to be overcome. The PGA Tour didn't have a spot on its schedule for Charlotte, and the Queen City didn't have a title sponsor. "We always thought Charlotte deserved to have the best players coming here," Harris says.

He refused to surrender the dream of bringing the PGA Tour back to the club his father founded. Over the course of several years, Harris and Quail Hollow hired renowned course designer Tom Fazio of Hendersonville to rework the layout. It was transformed from a nice course for members into 18 holes capable of hosting--and challenging--the game's best players.

That was a critical piece of the puzzle. Without a suitable venue, there was no reason for Charlotte to petition the PGA Tour for a tournament. When Fazio turned his attention to Quail Hollow, the result was dynamic. "Tom always felt strongly he could create something the members would like and also create a course that went from one the pros didn't like to one they loved," Harris says.

When Thompson approached PGA Tour commissioner Tim Finchem about creating an event in Charlotte with Wachovia as the sponsor, the time was right. The Tour was looking for another high-profile sponsor, it liked the idea of returning to Charlotte, and Quail Hollow was the ideal venue. The deal was made and, in the process, the Charlotte sports scene and the PGA Tour were transformed. "We had no interest in being anything other than the best stop on the tour," Harris says.

Nevertheless, both Thompson and Harris have said the event's stature and overall success surprised them. They both had big dreams but hadn't anticipated everything happening so quickly.

In all the talk about the success of the Wachovia Championship, one important element often has been overlooked--the date. During negotiations with the tour, organizers insisted they didn't want the event to immediately follow the Masters, even by two weeks. Greensboro's tour stop had struggled mightily in that spot, so it was important that the Wachovia Championship avoid it.

It got a date in early May, but that was no guarantee of success. When the Wachovia Championship was born, the early part of May was considered a dead zone on the tour schedule, a time when many of the top players took a break. "When we got the date, it wasn't a great date," Hougham says. But the Wachovia Championship made it into a great date, so great in fact that with The Players Championship following immediately after the Charlotte stop, many consider it the strongest one-two punch on the Tour schedule.

Initially, the success of the Wachovia Championship was attributed to the sparkle that came with it. Each player was given a new Mercedes to drive during tournament week. Wives were treated to trips to Biltmore Estate in Asheville and Charleston, S.C. Lowe's Motor Speedway in Concord was made available to players who might be interested in driving a race car. It was meant to enhance the experience, but as the tournament has grown, the focus has shifted away from amenities.

There are no more wives' trips or stock-car afternoons. As Hougham likes to point out, he doesn't have a trip to Fenway Park or dinner in the French Quarter to offer but hasn't needed it. "Our experience is more about what happens on the grounds than off the grounds."

One often-overlooked bit of brilliance was the creation of a two-man Wednesday pro-am. Many tournaments put four amateurs with a pro and create rounds that routinely run close to 5 1/2 hours, draining some of the fun and making them a chore for players faced with getting prepared for their real business. At the Wachovia, Wednesdays are popular among the players. Tournament Chairman Everett summarizes the approach by suggesting that the Wachovia Championship wants to say yes to everything until it's forced to say no.

Perhaps the greatest attribute of the tournament is the people who have brought it to life. The marriage of Wachovia, Quail Hollow and the PGA Tour has worked well, with the groups enhancing each other. Thompson and Wachovia Senior Vice President Dan Fleischman, along with many others, found a good vehicle to market the bank. The tournament came along just as First Union was completing its acquisition of Wachovia and taking its name. The bank needed a way to push the new brand. What was an unknown name in much of the country is now familiar to millions...