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
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