Member Clubs
“I just realized through all that time that I
really missed being on the golf course.”
—Chip Bass
courses at Farmington, Boonsboro and
International country clubs, to name a
few—created the original nine at Falling
River. (Nine more holes were added in 1983.)
“One of the stories I got from one of the
older members was they didn’t have the
money to build it the way it was designed,”
Bass said. “So they just took the original
design and shrunk it. I remember playing
Boonsboro as a kid and seeing a lot of the
similarities here. If you just made it a little
larger, then that would be it.”
When Bass arrived, the two set to work
not only to clean up the course, but to
make some strategic changes to increase
playability. New tee complexes were added
on some holes. Greens were rebuilt on
others. Bunkers were added in spots as
well. Jamerson and Bass have allowed
some natural areas that were previously
mown to grow in and up, allowing for more
definition on certain holes. Jamerson said
a tree-planting program is in the works,
which will further enhance the experience.
“So with some of the new tees we’ve
added, we’re not trying to take away from
the original Findlay look to the course,”
Bass said. “We both like traditional archi-
tecture way more than some of the modern
stuff. … We don’t want to take away from
what we’ve got. We just want to make it a
little bit bigger, a little bit better.”
Falling River has 351 members, Jam-
erson said, and those members are close
knit. Members who have connections in
construction, for instance, have contrib-
uted their time and materials to course
improvements over the years. And the
club is planning on nearly $1.5 million in
capital improvements in the coming years,
with money going from everything to the
golf course, maintenance facility, carts, the
swimming pool and the clubhouse.
“Knowing each other as long as we have,
to be able to carry that over to a working
relationship … really, he stays out of my
hair, and I stay out of his hair,” Jamerson
said. “If there’s something I see needs to
be done, I talk to him about it, and he’ll
actually listen to me. In a lot of places, the
superintendent and the GM may not have
the relationship that we have.
“I know how he ticks, and he knows how
I tick. And it’s really allowed us to move
forward with the club. What I do up here
complements what he does, and vice versa.
I think a lot of that is the relationship we’ve
developed over the last 40 years.”
And Falling River continues to reap the
benefits of that friendship.
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