the Williamsburg Club.”
In particular Heath relishes the recent
awarding of the 2014 VSGA Junior Stroke
Play Championship to the Williamsburg
Club. The golf and club operation is guided
by Dan Capozzi, the general manager and
PGA director of golf. Capozzi is a native
Bostonian who learned the HuizengaMc Neely ethos of service and quality
first at The Floridian Golf & Yacht Club
in Palm City, Fla., and then at Diamond
Creek. Capozzi’s first season of 2010 saw
the Williamsburg Club’s member roster
shrinking, but since then the trends have
all been positive. There are now 100-plus
contented members, expanding fields for
annual club events and a rounds-played
tally edging toward 15,000 a year.
RESTORED FEEL, SERVICE-ORIENTED
ATMOSPHERE
The work done by LaFoy outdoors is part
of a 5 million infusion that truly reinvented
the golf course, following original corridors
but carving out 18 holes with a refurbished
look. LaFoy fashioned all new tees,
fairways, greens, bunkers, cart paths and
the absolute must-have for time-strained
Americans—a state-of-the-art practice
facility. It consists of a six-acre short-game
playground consisting of two putting
greens and a 9,600-square-foot chipping
and pitching green with two greenside sand
bunkers. Titleist Pro V1 balls are provided
as members work to fine-tune their touch
shots, while fresh NXT balls from the same
manufacturer are the choice for long-game
work on the driving range, with its natural
turf tee line.
Out on the golf course, greens are
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The par-5 16th hole is aesthetically pleasing
and tests golfers at nearly every turn.
“We’ve picked out a niche and presented
our product to the affluent, discriminating
golfer. People respond to a golf atmosphere
that’s relaxed but exciting at the same time.”
— DAN CAPOZZI, GENERAL MANAGER AND PGA DIRECTOR OF GOLF AT
THE WILLIAMSBURG CLUB
upholstered in A1/A4 bentgrass, fairway
turf is Tifway 419 bermudagrass, and teeing
grounds are Zorro zoysiagrass. The putting
surfaces will Stimp at speeds up to 13 for
events hosted by the club.
Capozzi isn’t shy about comparing the
Williamsburg Club to a pair of regional
standouts, central Virginia’s Kinloch Golf
Club to the west and Bayville Golf Club in
Virginia Beach to the east.
“We’ve picked out a niche and presented
our product to the affluent, discriminating
golfer,” he says. “People respond to a golf
atmosphere that’s relaxed but exciting at the
same time. Everything is taken care of—you
never touch your golf bag except during
play—but the course and the competition
will definitely get your adrenaline flowing.”
His staffing philosophy is to simply pour
out the professionalism and see how warmly
the membership receives it. A total of four
Class A PGA golf professionals star-stud the
Williamsburg Club golf staff—a manpower
factor that is rare these days.
“Our shoe-room attendant has no
professional golf training,” Capozzi comments.
“At every touch point, you are in contact with
either a Class A PGA member or, in some
cases, a professional golf management student
serving their required internship.”
On Sundays and event days, the golf
staff turns out in crisply-pressed dress
shirts and neckties.
Clubhouse improvements were guided by
interior designer Reese Fowler of Seattle,
Wash., who was hired to restate the colonial
charm of the place, using details like granite
countertops and custom cherry wood lockers.
The pool that was decommissioned by the new
regime was never resort-quality, and hadn’t
aged gracefully, to say the least. Fortunately,
a neighboring shared-ownership resort with
its own small water park was open to a
cooperative arrangement allowing member
families to swim and frolic at that facility.
LaFoy had a fondness for this landscape
even before receiving the assignment,
having scouted it years earlier for a possible
renovation job.
“The property has everything you would
look for,” says LaFoy, evoking a Goldilocks
notion for the site. “It’s located in an area
where there is lots of land that is too
flat for golf, and lots of land that is too
rugged or too hard to drain. Then you
have the Williamsburg Club, a site with
wonderful roll, good soil and so many
mature specimen trees.”
“They have a real jewel there,” he adds
with pleasure.
You might even call it the pearl of the
peninsula.
Author David Gould is a writer from Sandy
Hook, Conn., and a regular contributor to
Virginia Golfer.
SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2013 | VIRGINIA GOLFER
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