Legendary designer Tom Fazio is known for building amazing golf courses in communities around the world. But Champion Hills is the course that, according to him, “just became home.”
A few years after settling in Hendersonville, Tom was approached by a small investment group with a big dream: building Champion Hills. “They had an idea of creating a family golf course community; a great destination, year-round kind of place, but also in the mountains with views and all the things that you want,” Tom says.
The design chipped away at the mountain to create a course where the majority of the holes play downhill and the fairways are contoured to be challenging for low handicapped golfers while offering newer players the benefit of a better bounce.
Champion Hills is a member-owned community with a range of membership options to fit your lifestyle. Memberships can include full access to Fazio's mountain Masterpiece, fresh new dining options, a state-of-the-art wellness center, our robust social calendar, access to nearly 500 clubs around the world, and more.
Champion Hills is a member-owned community with a range of membership options to fit your lifestyle. Memberships can include full access to Fazio's mountain Masterpiece, fresh new dining options, a state-of-the-art wellness center, our robust social calendar, access to nearly 500 clubs around the world, and more.
The 18-hole "Champion Hills" course at the Champion Hills Club facility in Hendersonville, North Carolina features 6,719 yards of golf from the longest tees for a par of 71. The course rating is 71.3 and it has a slope rating of 136 on Bent grass. Designed by Thomas Fazio, ASGCA, the Champion Hills golf course opened in 1991.
Champion Hills is an upscale residential community and home to Champion Hills Golf Club; a year-round facility nestled in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina.
Nestled in the natural beauty of North Carolina's Blue Ridge Mountains, Champion Hills is Hendersonville's premier private community. Southern hospitality blends with a mountain lifestyle to create a magical experience for our residents. Maybe it's the clear mountain streams, Carolina blue sky or our top-ranked Tom Fazio-designed golf course.
From our community, club and spectacular Fazio signature course, to charming Hendersonville and the surrounding Blue Ridge Mountain paradise: you have questions, and we have answers. Our blog posts bring you the inside story on living at Champion Hills and in one of North Carolina’s most awarded small towns.
Imagine a lifestyle steeped in quiet seclusion yet balanced with abundant inclusion. Elegance with an easy, casual ambiance. A bursting sky atop a mountain horizon. This is a life well lived at Champion Hills.
Donald Ross. Ross , who grew up in Scotland, has more than 400 golf course designs to his credit. As one of the preeminent golf course architects of the early 20th century, he designed such notable courses as Oakland Hills Country Club, Oak Hill Country Club, Seminole Golf Club and Inverness Club.
"Tillie" (as the noted architect was often called) has created masterpieces such as Winged Foot Golf Club, Quaker Ridge Golf Club, Baltimore Country Club, San Francisco Golf Club and Baltusrol Golf Club. His best layout accessible to the public is the infamous Black Course at Bethpage State Park in New York. Obsessed golfers regularly sleep in their cars to get a tee time for the next morning. Bethpage Black, which hosted the U.S. Open in 2002 and 2009, is a tribute to the "Golden Age" of golf course design. A word of caution: The course is extremely challenging, and it isn't too easy to walk (golf carts are not permitted).
Tom Doak. Doak has been the talk of the golf world ever since his Oregon coast meisterwerk Pacific Dunes created worldwide attention. Golf is Bandon's "raison d'etre" -- and Doak's bona fide links course is the shining star. The unorthodox layout features back-to-back par 3s and only two par 4s on the back nine.
Jack Nicklaus. While the Golden Bear is arguably the best golfer of all time, his course designs are a constant subject to criticism -- especially his earlier designs. They were described as too hard and demanded players to play a number of high fades -- Nicklaus' trademark shot.
His best layout accessible to the public is the infamous Black Course at Bethpage State Park in New York. Obsessed golfers regularly sleep in their cars to get a tee time for the next morning. Bethpage Black, which hosted the U.S. Open in 2002 and 2009, is a tribute to the "Golden Age" of golf course design.
Bethpage Black, which hosted the U.S. Open in 2002 and 2009, is a tribute to the "Golden Age" of golf course design. A word of caution: The course is extremely challenging, and it isn't too easy to walk (golf carts are not permitted).
David McLay Kidd. Kidd, a Sco tsman, gathered worldwide attention after his inaugural design at Bandon Dunes on the rugged Oregon coast. This seaside gem located on pure links land put the village of Bandon on the golf map and helped make Bandon Dunes a first-class golf resort.
Robert Trent Jones, Sr. (1906 – 2000) Robert Trent Jones, Sr. has been credited with designing or redesigning over 500 golf courses throughout 45 states in the United States and 35 countries worldwide. Jones began his golf course architecture career after college as a partner with Canadian Stanley Thompson.
Before getting into course design James Braid was first known as part of golf’s first “Great Triumvirate” of players along with Harry Vardon and J.H. Taylor. Braid became a prominent golf course architect and has been noted by some as the innovator of the dogleg, however existing courses had a design feature similar to a dogleg. During his time as a course architect he designed and redesigned numerous courses throughout England and Scotland.
Old Tom Morris, the “Grandfather of Golf”, was an innovator in greenskeeping and many modern golf course design techniques. Old Tom Morris got his start apprenticing for Allan Robertson and the pair worked together on a ten-hole design Carnoustie Golf Links in Scotland in 1842. Carnoustie would become one of the homes to the Open Championship. After parting ways with Robertson, Morris would go on to develop many more courses across Scotland. Some notable courses that Morris designed include Prestwick Golf Club which was home to the first Open Championship, Muirfield which was where Jack Nicklaus earned his first Open Championship and subsequently named his course in the U.S. after it, and both the New Course and Jubilee Course at the “home of golf” St. Andrews Links.
Old Tom Morris got his start apprenticing for Allan Robertson and the pair worked together on a ten-hole design Carnoustie Golf Links in Scotland in 1842. Carnoustie would become one of the homes to the Open Championship.
MacDonald spent his college years in 1872 at St. Andrews University in Scotland where he took up golf and was tutored by the great Old Tom Morris. After spending time as a stockbroker MacDonald returned to golf as the game was brought to New York by Scottish immigrants.
He then founded the Chicago Golf Club in 1892 with some associates and designed a simplistic nine-hole course, the first built west of the Allegheny Mountains. The following year MacDonald expanded on his design to create an 18-hole course, making Chicago Golf Club the first full-length course in the United States.
His father, Willie Park Sr., claim to golf fame is being the first Open Championship winner. Following in his footsteps Willie Park Jr. won 2 Open Championships of his own in 1887 and 1889. As his playing career was coming to a close Willie Park Jr. got into designing golf courses becoming one of the early golf course architects. It was at a time when golf was expanding from the United Kingdom to the United States. Throughout his career as a golf course architect Park helped design and redesign 170 courses within the UK, Europe, Canada and the United States.
Golf course architecture is a specific discipline of landscape design, with many architects represented in the United States by the American Society of Golf Course Architects. Some architects are highly successful professional golfers who went on to design golf courses.
O. Paul O'Brien, golf course designer & architect, and a member of the European Institute of Golf Course Architects - www.regolfdesign.com.