The brothers' keep ERS: the Peyton boys tend to each other and the golf course. If they do the former, the latter will one day be theirs.

• Author: Dunn, Erin
• Position: FEATURE

The Peyton brothers share blood, a house and a place of employment. Similar intermingling has created more than a few instances of strife among siblings. As the Harvard Business Review recently lamented, "It's one of life's sad ironies that folks who love one another can end up having far more acrimonious business relations than people who are unrelated." The Peytons swear that won't be them. "We obviously have our fights here and there, but we work it out, and we work pretty well together," says Tyler, the eldest.

One question does conjure a whiff of rivalry among them: Who's the best golfer? "I've been playing the longest, and I'm the most consistent, at least. I will say that," says Tyler, sitting inside the modest member lounge of Baywood Golf Club in Fayetteville. That is about as biting as the brothers get. "Dylan can hit it longer than I can, and Kyle actually just got his first hole-in-one a couple weeks ago here. We haven't got one yet, so he has that on us." Of course, it's in these guys' best interests to get along.

In February 2012, the Peyton family bought the shuttered 160-acre golf course in suburban Fayetteville and tasked them with turning it around. Tyler, 27, is the general manager and head golf professional; Kyle, 26, is course superintendent, in charge of the grounds; and Dylan, 23, is assistant pro and runs the club grill. Their father, along with a business partner, owns it through Fayetteville-based TKD Golf Management LLC, but once the loan is paid off, he'll divide the club equally among his sons. "I think it's pretty much every kid's dream to have a golf course," Tyler says. "It's a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for us."

To make the most of it, they will have to make nice in a business that has turned nasty. Between 500 and 1,000 of the nation's roughly 15,000 courses will close by the end of 2020, the Jupiter, Fla.-based National Golf Foundation forecasts. Gene Williford, Baywood's creator, says it's difficult to be profitable once there are no surrounding lots to build houses on, and the few Baywood has left belong to him. "When you're developed out, the golf course has to stand on its own two feet to make money. I think they can if it's run right and people in there are willing to work and enjoy the business."

He should know. The owner of Williford's Seafood Inc., a Fayetteville distributor, his family has had farmland in these parts since the 1700s. In the late 1980s, he decided to develop some of it into a...