GOLF GOLF HISTORY
November 19, 2022
The ORIGINS: FOREST HIGHLANDS’ PUTTING COURSE By William Godfrey
THE SECOND ITERATION A few years later Bailey and Bartlett brought the concept to Forest Highlands. “In the late 1980s there was a block of lots on the west side of the Canyon. There were a dozen or more lots we were unable to sell,” explained Bartlett. “They were standard interior lots without views. They were sort of ‘lots-in-the-forest.’ However, they were larger than many of the lots sold early in the Canyon. We brought Ron Todd, our in-house land planner into the conversation. Ron created an easement on the back of the lots with enough square footage to build the putting course. We sold the lots out in months,” Bartlett shared. “And Dick Bailey designed the course and Mike Kosak built it.” FIRST COURSE SUPERINTENDENT – MIKE KOSAK The first golf course superintendent at Forest Highlands was Mike Kosak, a native of Coleraine, Minnesota. In a phone call in October 2022 from his home in Salem, South Carolina,Kosak shared his journey to Forest Highlands and his contribution to the putting course. “It was the mid -1980s, I was working on a Tom Weiskopf / Jay Morrish project called The Grandote Peaks Golf Club, near Pueblo, Colorado. I got to know both Tom and Jay,” Kosak said. “And when the project finished up, Jay arranged a call for me with Dick Bailey.” “Dick flew to Colorado to interview me, but they didn’t have the financing yet at Forest Highlands, so I went to Scottsdale. I laid irrigation pipe for two months at Desert Mountain’s Renegade Course working for Wadsworth Golf Construction. In the spring of 1986, the financing was in place and my family and I moved to Flagstaff,” shared Kosak.
The genesis of Forest Highlands’ 18-hole Putting Course began appropriately…in the cradle of golf. In the early-1980s, the principals of the Bailey-Bartlett Group participated in an international amateur golf event in Scotland. The four-ball, four-round tournament took place at Gleneagles, St. Andrews and Carnoustie, three iconic Scottish venues. Jim Bartlett, the managing partner, shared the discovery he and his partner made across the Atlantic. “St. Andrews and Carnoustie both had these super huge putting greens near the first holes. Dick Bailey and I were fascinated by the size of them. Neither of us had seen anything like it.” Bailey and Bartlett returned to the states with the notion that a putting course would create entertainment for multiple generations. However, it would take a few years before they found the venue to create their own version. “The opportunity first presented itself at Desert Highlands,” shared Bartlett.“I was managing partner. There was a piece of ground connecting the first, second and ninth holes of the development.” “Lyle Anderson, the developer, took Dick Bailey and me to view the site. Lyle asked us what we would do with the undeveloped lots with the great western view,” recalled Bartlett. “Dick replied, ‘Here is what we would do. One option is to take the 13 or 14 lots and zone them for two units. The smaller of the units could be for a family guest house. The other option is to annex the outbound side of the lots for home sites. They would maintain the western view from holes: 1, 2 and 9. The inbound side would form a triangle, where you could build a large putting course.’” “Lyle liked the idea of the creating a putting course. So we teamed up with Gary Panks to build it and we marketed the new parcels as ‘fairway lots.’ We sold all of them right away at twice the estimated value,” Bartlett explained.“It was the first ever putting course in the modern era of golf in the United States and it still exists today.”
VOICE IN THE PINES | DECEMBER 2022 14
Powered by FlippingBook