Source: The Capital (Annapolis, Md.)
During a 16-year tenure with Ault-Clark & Associates, Dan Schlegel designed or co-designed several award-winning golf courses. In the past seven years, Schlegel was involved in the design of more than 40 new courses and more than 25 renovation projects under the Ault-Clark umbrella.
Of course, work isn't usually hard to come by at Ault-Clark, the Kensington-based company that is responsible for some of the best courses the mid-Atlantic region. But even at Ault-Clark, the phone isn't ringing quite like it did a decade ago.
"There's not as much new-course work," said Schlegel, an Edgewater resident. "There are probably 150 new courses being built a year now as opposed to almost 400 a year in the late 90s. Most of the work now is concentrated on renovation of existing courses.
"There's still a lot of work out there, you just have to be aggressive to find it and make it stick."
That's the challenge that awaits Schlegel, who left Ault-Clark earlier this year to start up his own firm - Schlegel Golf Course Design, LLC.
"The last five or six years I'd been thinking along those lines," Schlegel said of branching out on his own. "For the last 16 years, I've learned as much there as I could. I decided to try and capitalize on what I've done and get my name out there."
A low handicap golfer, Schlegel, 40, is a 1988 graduate of Penn State, where he holds a degree in landscape architecture. A native of Millersburg, Pa., Schlegel earned membership in 2002 into the exclusive American Society of Golf Course Architects. In the last seven years with Ault-Clark, Schlegel solo-designed 10 new courses, including Heron Glen Golf Course in Flemington, N.J., and the River Course in Radford, Va., which GOLF Magazine named honorable mention for Best New Daily-Fee Course in 2002 and 2000, respectively.
Currently, Schlegel is designing a course in Lynchburg, Va. An existing, 18-hole course - Oakwood Country Club - had been built in 1914 on 75 acres, half the acreage of a typical 18-hole track. Schlegel's job is to design a new, sprawling 9-hole course complete with a driving range. In addition, Schlegel has made the short-list for renovation work on a course in West Palm Beach, Fla.
From his work in the eastern United States and along the Atlantic Seaboard, Schlegel has developed a reputation for his eye-catching bunker work, with flash sand and grassy fingers protruding into them.
"Between bunker work and the contour of the greens is where an architect can really put flash into a course," Schlegel said. "The most important thing in designing a course is good routing of the golf holes so the course will drain fast. Once you have good routing you then analyze the natural features to determine where to put bunkers and hazards.
"I've always liked bunkers with sand flashed up a little so they're not perfectly round or oblong."
While it would seem unlikely that Anne Arundel County could accommodate another new course, Schlegel said that may not be the case.
"I think there's definitely room for more, maybe not oo many more, but there's definitely enough land, it just needs to be the right piece of land where people will want to go to play."
As for Compass Pointe Golf Courses in Pasadena, a planned 36-hole facility that has yet to open the final nine holes due to repeated delays, Schlegel said he believes the course will ultimately succeed.
"I know about all the problems they've had with Compass Pointe," Schlegel said. "But I know (golf course architect) Lindsay Ervin is a great architect and he did a great job, and the company that built it (Landscape Unlimited) is one of the best in the country, so I'm sure it will turn out to be a very successful venture."
