FERNANDINA BEACH, Florida — As a 19-year-old aspiring golf course architect, Beau Welling hopped the ride of a lifetime.
Few of us ever get to meet our idols, let alone spend quality time with them, but Welling was able to accomplish both during a chance meeting with legendary golf course designer Pete Dye.
Welling’s family had a vacation house on Kiawah Island at the time and a local sales rep thought it would be a good idea for the teenager to take a ride down the beach with his father in a Jeep and check out a new golf course that was being built — none other than the soon-to-be famous Ocean Course.
“We went up over the dunes to what is now the 15th fairway and immediately Pete Dye comes running up to us and is expletive, expletive, expletive, like ‘What are you doing here? Get off my expletive golf course,'” Welling recalls. “I’m 19 years old and I am horrified, I can’t believe this is happening.
“The sales guy rolls down the window and he’s like, ‘I’m so sorry, but this is Beau Welling and he’s interested in golf course design and he’s interning for Tom Fazio. We just wanted to show him the course.'”
Dye looked squarely at Welling and asked, “Is that true, are you working for Fazio?” Welling gave an affirmative thumbs up. Dye then kicked Welling’s father and the sales rep out of the Jeep and had Welling sit next to him in the front passenger seat.
“He proceeds to drive and give me a tour of the Ocean Course under construction,” Welling says. “So it went from being the most mortifying experience ever to, at age 19, the coolest thing that ever happened to me in my life.”
It was the start of a great friendship that lasted until Dye passed away in 2020. That’s what makes Welling’s $7.4 million renovation work at the 1972 Dye-designed Oak Marsh at Omni Amelia Island Resort extra special.
“My first thought after being hired was ‘Oh my God, we cannot mess this up or this man is going to come from beyond the grave and terrorize me,'” Welling says. “We felt like we wanted to try to honor our interpretation of the intent of Pete Dye.”
The “modern version” of Oak Marsh will open for resort guests and members in mid May, with Dye likely smiling from above with praise for Welling’s job well done. Welling is one of golf’s most sought after architects who formed a solid business relationship with Omni Hotels during his work a few years ago in Texas at PGA Frisco Resort.
The mammoth, 250-year-old oak trees, with each unique twist and turn, adorned with Spanish moss, along with thousands of yards of Dye bulkheads remain on a crafty 6,471-yard layout set against the backdrop of an expansive salt marsh.
Welling’s piece of the new puzzle involved exposing sandy areas along the perimeter of many holes, as fairways spill into waste areas without much, if any rough, to catch errant shots, as well as expanding green complexes to expose additional hole locations and opportunities around the putting surface to recover for the average player.
“The exposed sand will be a big wow kind of moment for returning golfers,” Welling says. “It’s very dramatic compared to what it was before. And yet I think they’ll appreciate that some of the bunkering and bulkheads still very much reads like a Pete Dye golf course.”
Welling also cut back some of the overgrown trees and opened up certain holes, like the stunning 523-yard ninth hole set along the salt marsh.
“That hole is now a more dramatic ‘wow version’ of itself than maybe what it was before,” Welling says. “So between clearing some things out and exposing sand it very much feels like a more coastal sort of setting. And while visually the course might be intimidating, it’s still very playable. I feel like you can still advance the ball of out of the sandy areas.”
For Omni, Oak Marsh’s renovation is yet another significant recent investment in the resort’s more than two dozen golf courses.
“Golf is an integral part of our guest experience and our brand identity across the country,” says Robert Stanfield, regional vice president and managing director for Omni Hotels and Resorts. “We are proud to own and operate 28 championship golf courses and exceptional short courses that celebrate destinations from coast-to-coast.
“We’re also passionate about the future of the game. These transformative renovations, with world-class designers such as Beau Welling, show a commitment to evolving our portfolio and elevating the golf experience at every turn.”
Welling also designed Little Sandy, the resort’s short course that features 10 holes around Red Maple Lake. The holes range from 30 to 125 yards, and the location also has an 18-hole putting course.
“The first time I was out at Little Sandy I went to the putting green and there was a dad and his daughter putting and two toddler boys doing somersaults around the green,” Welling says. “I thought it was perfect, that is couldn’t get any better than this.
“I see some of the corporate groups that come here and they play Little Sandy, and you get the non-golfers out there and they have the ability to have a golf experience where they can feel like they have a chance and they can do it. At least they’re willing to try it. Golf needs more of that. We need to have a wide funnel about how we’re bringing people in to the game.”
It appears Welling’s overall take on golf design is a perfect marriage with resort golf.
“I got involved in golf course architecture because I was a golfer, but somewhere along the way the light bulb went off in my mind that half my memories with my father were from the golf course and half my friends were from the golf course,” Welling says. “I looked around the projects I was involved in that I really thought were the coolest. Yeah, they had great golf, but they were doing so much more than that. They were creating environments for people to make memories, spend time, put phones down, share these sort of human experiences. And so that’s been a big part of what we’ve been super into for a long period of time.
“It’s not just that we want a higher handicapper to enjoy the golf course and a lower handicapper to enjoy golf course. We want them to be together and enjoy the golf course. I don’t want to organize my friendships by handicap; I don’t want to have a family organized by handicap. I think what we’ve done at Oak Marsh is make it more accessible, and if you are a member or a resort guest here and you’re bringing a beginner out, show that there’s a better way to play the golf course than before, that’s it’s super accessible.”