Virginia Golfer Jul / Aug 2020 | Page 29

COURTESY OF THE COURSE The course is plenty challenging. Fairways are fairly wide and mostly flat, with several doglegs all around. The rough is thick and long enough to punish errant shots and make golf balls disappear. Water comes into play on a number of holes, with expansive bunkers protecting every green and plenty of places on the putting surfaces to place tricky hole locations. Each of the dozen ponds features spraying fountains turned on only when someone is playing. Life preservers are positioned at every one of them, just in case someone falls in. Heronwood also was built to USGA specs and stretches over 130 acres in the middle of the farm on land that once served as cattle and horse pastures, as well as cornfields. The entire farm, including a classic Revival-style manor house, three other houses and several apartments, is now up for sale at a price of $19.5 million, recently reduced from its original asking price of $24.5 million. It’s listed by agent John Coles of Thomas & Talbot Real Estate in Middleburg. ‘I THINK I’M GOING TO DO IT’ The current owner, the octogenarian widow of the man who decided to build his own golf course, requested that the family name not be mentioned in this story. So we’ll call him “Nelson Byron,” and correctly describe him as a long-time major developer and builder responsible for many projects that Heronwood sits on 500 acres near the tiny, tony town of Upperville. Heronwood features a dozen ponds. Life preservers are positioned at every one of them, just in case someone falls in. helped transform the Washington, D.C. area. He purchased Heronwood in 1983 as his horse country “getaway.” Mr. Byron had been an avid tennis player until a sore elbow forced him to curtail that sport. So he took up golf, and after several excursions with this wife to play in Scotland, he was totally hooked on the game. He first installed a practice green on the property, then had three holes built in 2003, “just to see how he liked it,” according to Rogers. “We built six more holes in 2005, added three more in 2006 and then got final approval from the county (Fauquier) to do the last six holes and make it 18. When he first said he was thinking about a course, I thought he was joking. One day he looked at me and said, ‘I think I’m going to do it. What do you know about building a golf course?’ I told him absolutely nothing. Then he said, ‘That’s okay, we’ll learn it together.’” Mr. Byron retained the services of the golf design and architectural firm of Ault, Clark & Associates, with offices in Marshall, Va. and Clarkesville, Md. The company has designed, built or renovated hundreds of courses around the country, including Congressional Country Club, Kingsmill in Williamsburg and several TPC venues owned by the PGA Tour. Brian Ault, the son of company founder Ed Ault, handled the design and oversaw the construction of the Heronwood course, with plenty of input from the owner. Sadly, Mr. Byron died in 2010 at the age of 81 and only had three years to play his beloved creation. However, his wife continued to use the golf course up until last fall, when knee problems forced her to put her clubs away for a while. “At first they walked the course,” Rogers said. “Then they got those self-propelled hand carts, and finally they bought vsga.org J ULY/A UGUST 2020 | V IRGINIA G OLFER 27