Steve Shand is the Golf Course Superintendent at The Cliffs at Walnut Cove, where he’s spent more than a decade caring for its Jack Nicklaus Signature course. Jeff Tyrrell is Director of Operations at The Cliffs, helping oversee operations across the organization’s seven communities.
This September, their work will take on a much bigger stage when The Cliffs at Walnut Cove hosts the Biltmore Championship Asheville, the first PGA Tour event in Asheville in 80 years.
The tournament takes place Sept. 17-20, with Biltmore Estate and Explore Asheville serving as co-title sponsors. Explore Asheville projects the event will generate $15 million to $30 million in direct spending at local businesses, along with more than $100,000 for area nonprofits.
The Cliffs is a collection of seven private mountain and lake communities across the Carolinas, and The Cliffs at Walnut Cove sits in a valley just south of Asheville, bordered by Pisgah National Forest and the Blue Ridge Parkway.
In this episode, Steve and Jeff take us behind the scenes of what it takes to transform Walnut Cove into a PGA Tour venue, from building grandstands and television compounds to preparing the course itself. We talk about the challenges of maintaining a championship golf course in the mountains (including the occasional bear that takes off with a flagstick), and what it means to showcase Western North Carolina to a national audience nearly two years after Hurricane Helene.
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Theme Music
The song “Goa” was written by Lyndsay Pruett and performed by the Jon Stickley Trio.