Spencer Cody jokes that he maintains an office at Omni Hotels & Resorts’ corporate headquarters, but his light is rarely on. It’s little wonder. Cody, Omni’s Corporate Director of Club and Golf Operations, and his colleagues have been juggling a lot of projects at the company’s 13 golf destinations with 26 courses and multiple short courses around the country.
Last month brought the most anticipated golf opening of the year, the Omni PGA Frisco Resort, which was recently showcased during the KitchenAid Senior PGA Championship. Seth Waugh, CEO of the PGA of America, described the 660-acre resort located 35 miles north of Dallas as “an ocean in the middle of the desert.” Where once there was a large ranch, now, seemingly overnight, a destination resort with elements tailored to golfers of all levels has been born.
Architect Gil Hanse’s Fields Ranch East, now open to the public following the 83rd KitchenAid Senior PGA Championship, was designed with big tournaments in mind.
“Gil’s vision was a major spectator championship course with extreme flexibility for setup,” Cody said. “Thanks to the ribbon tee complexes and from a yardage standpoint, we can get it back to almost 8,000 yards for a PGA Championship or Ryder Cup type of event, or we can go as short at 4,000 yards, or even less, for a PGA Junior League.”
The wholesale use of Northbridge Bermuda turfgrass throughout the course will make it a snap for the maintenance team to pinch fairways for tournament play, and the extreme sand-capping and drainage should limit weather delays. “If we’re hosting a major championship and we have a large rain event, the golf course will become playable very quickly,” Cody said.
Beau Welling’s Field Ranch West is a stark contrast. It’s a links-inspired layout, with Texas-sized fairways – some as wide as 100 yards in spots – and a rolling terrain that reminds Cody of his days working in the Hill Country. The real challenge will be on the greens and surrounds, which can be quite penal.
As one might expect, given Omni’s partnership with the PGA of America, there’s also a 10-hole short course, The Swing; the two-acre Dance Floor putting course along with coaching and practice facilities to accommodate all ages and handicaps from locals just knocking it around after work to serious players looking to get the most out of their games.
“We’re very much aligned with the PGA of America’s mission – grow the game, expose people to the game, make it inclusive, approachable,” Cody said. “The best players in the world will go out and struggle to shoot par from the back tees all the way down to, I had my 2-year-old out there for the first time, there is truly something for everyone.”
What’s fascinating about Omni Hotels & Resorts at this particular moment, having just opened the year’s biggest project, is that it also is celebrating the 100th anniversary of one of the nation’s most beloved classics, the Cascades Course at The Omni Homestead Resort in Virginia. It’s the most famous of a collection of Golden Age designs – including classics in Bedford, Pa., Bretton Woods, N.H., and Asheville, N.C. – that complement Omni’s modern classics at Frisco and elsewhere.
“Our portfolio alone helps us differentiate,” Cody said. “We have these historic Golden Age, classic courses all the way to the new home of modern golf at Fields Ranch.”
Kevin Brown, a Golfweek rater from Georgia who visited the Omni Homestead last fall, was there as the resort was completing a $150 million renovation, but even that didn’t spoil his experience.
“We wanted to stay at the hotel because of the history and tradition, and it certainly didn’t disappoint,” he said. “There’s a tremendous amount of history at the resort and the courses. I wanted to get up and see if it’s worth the hype it’s received over the years, and it certainly measured up to that. The design of Cascades is fantastic, and then you couple that with the history that is at the Homestead.”
In retrospect, it’s noteworthy that the Cascades Course was almost never built. Several prominent Golden Age architects – including A.W. Tillinghast and Seth Raynor – visited The Homestead in 1919 and declared that the Allegheny Mountains farmland selected as the Cascades site was not suitable for golf. Finally, the resort’s owners turned to William S. Flynn, an architect with a reputation for taming difficult land, and he molded the terrain into one of golf’s most revered classic designs.
“What an historic site. It was magnificent,” said David Jett, an Alabama course rater who visited in 2020 and enlisted a childhood pal of local legend Sam Snead to caddie for him. “He gave us a history lesson on the golf course.”
While there’s much to celebrate this year at PGA Frisco and the Homestead, Omni has been pouring resources into upgrading its golf operations around the country.
At Omni Barton Creek Resort & Spa in Austin, where Cody used to be the Director of Golf Operations, all four courses have undergone renovations, most recently the resort’s anchor course, Fazio Canyons, which is fresh off a $5 million upgrade.
“I really like Fazio Canyons, especially the back 9,” said Jake McCarthy, a Texas rater who played the course recently. “I was talking about the course with a friend who plays on the PGA Tour … and we both talked about how much we liked the course. I personally liked the shaping of the bunkering and greens and the tumbling fairways and undulations.”
At Omni Amelia Island, which sits on 3.5 miles of pristine beachfront in northwest Florida, Omni last year opened Welling’s Little Sandy short course, part of a broader corporate effort to attract golfers of all ages and skill levels.
“We were leaning heavily into nontraditional and approachable golf experiences even before Covid, but it really drove home the value of that,” Cody said. “The business model is to offer the golf experience for everyone. The culmination of that is PGA Frisco, but we like to do that everywhere.”
Welling, along with Hanse, also is busy at Omni La Costa Resort & Spa north of San Diego, where Cody envisions a “restoration of Omni La Costa to the glory days.” It’s certainly going to be a high-profile destination over the next three years. The resort’s Champions Course will host the NCAA Division I men’s and women’s golf from 2024 to 2026, and the coaches behind the move to La Costa have floated the idea of making it the permanent site.
Hanse is reinventing the Champions Course, which he has said will become an homage to some of the great Golden Age architecture in Southern California. Meanwhile, Welling this month begins shaping work on the resort’s undersized range, creating a Tour-quality product.
Even with the Frisco property up and running, the projects at Omni’s other golf resorts pretty much guarantee that Cody won’t get a breather anytime soon.
