talking points Tom Fazio Hits the Road

Last year, Tom Fazio agreed to do something he's never done before: cross an ocean to design a golf course.

This is a major departure for Fazio, who's been designing bona-fide world-class golf venues since the 1960s but has rarely strayed far from his home in Hendersonville, North Carolina. His international portfolio is painfully thin, consisting only of a few courses in Mexico, the Dominican Republic, Barbados, Puerto Rico, and Panama.

Of course, that was then. In the prime of his career, Fazio could afford to spurn the advances of solicitous foreign suitors and take his pick of high-profile opportunities close to home. Now, he has no such luxury. If he wants to work, he has to follow the money.


That's why he's designing his first course in Europe, a 7,867-yard track for a resort community called Herdade da Comporta, on Portugal's Alentejo Coast. It's the first step in what appears to be a sincere effort to establish a global presence and create an international brand. I suppose that's why Fazio has called the commission “a great opportunity for us.”

In a recent story, Fazio explains why he took the job:

I wouldn’t travel far from home while I had my children, but now [that] they have grown up and left home, I’m free to travel the world and to accept some jobs I would have turned down in the past. My family has always come first, and you’d have to say I didn’t have much incentive to travel, either.

I’d have to check the actual figures, but my house in Asheville, North Carolina is about two hours from New York, two hours from Chicago, two hours from Dallas, two hours from Palm Springs. [Note: I think he may have meant (or said) Palm Beach, Florida.] And in that area, I’d guess there has been around 4,000 courses built since I started out in the design business back in the 60s.

I have probably built about 150 courses within two hours of my home. There was no need to travel. But now there’s no reason to stay home, which is why I’m here at Comporta and why we’ll probably do other overseas projects in the future.

We’re going to put our name in Europe, put our name in Portugal. The time is right.