Good Neighbor Podcast Northport
Bringing Together Local Businesses and Neighbors of Tuscaloosa and Northport!
Good Neighbor Podcast Northport
The Dells Golf Club: Roger Taylor's Hole In One
Have you ever witnessed a phoenix rise from the ashes? That's exactly the story Roger Taylor shares with us about the incredible transformation of Dells Golf Club, a once neglected course that he's turned into a golfers' nirvana. Our latest conversation on the Good Neighbor Podcast shines a light on this local gem in Northport, where Roger, a fervent lover of the links, took on nature, outdated equipment, and a massive clean-up to give the community a place to embrace the sport they love.
Roger's account is nothing short of a labor of love, a journey through the ups and downs of rescuing a golf course from the brink of extinction. With a grand reopening in December 2023, the Dells Golf Club is now a stunning testament to Roger's dedication and hard work. As you tune in, you'll get an insider's look at the meticulous renovations, from redesigned greens and strategic tee box placements to a complete clubhouse makeover. This episode is for anyone who appreciates a good comeback story or simply loves the game of golf – it's a narrative that captures the heart and soul poured into every fairway and bunker of the Dells Golf Club. #GNPNorthport #TheDellsGolfClub #Golf #TuscaloosaGolf #Tuscaloosa #Fairway #GolfLife #GolfPro #GolfSwing #ILoveGolf #GolfLife
This is the Good Neighbor Podcast, the place where local businesses and neighbors come together. Here's your host, Patricia Blondheim.
Speaker 2:Welcome to the Good Neighbor Podcast. I'm your host, Patricia Blondheim, and today we have good neighbor Roger Taylor, and Roger is the owner-operator of the Dells Golf Club here in Northport. Roger, how are you this morning?
Speaker 3:Very well, Patricia. Thanks for having me.
Speaker 2:Well, I'm excited to hear all about this as a new development and, I think, part of the growth of Northport which we're all excited about and anticipating. So tell me all about the Dells.
Speaker 3:Well, it's not really new. In December of 2021, I purchased the Hidden Meadows Golf Course and we closed it down the day we purchased it and started a major overhaul and renovation of the place. It took almost two years to the day to get it to a point where we could reopen for play. We reopened on December 22nd of 2023. So happy to be here. Things are finally greening up.
Speaker 2:Yes, yes, tis the season, right Correct? We've got all our pollen out and the grass is greening up. So tell me, because every golf course has its own personality.
Speaker 3:Describe your golf course to me. I love the course here. I've played it off and on since it opened in the 90s. I remember when it first opened as Old Cove Golf, checking in at the trailer and taking off on the unpaved cart paths. Through the years it had some highs and lows. Over the last probably five to ten years it started to deteriorate pretty bad. So when we came in, the first thing we did we had to conquer the drainage issues out here. Mill Creek actually runs through the golf course. Through the first couple of months that we had it we busted up 28 beaver dams and trapped over 50 full-size beavers that had backed water up all through this golf course and created really havoc. I mean we had to silt ditches, silt ponds, replace drainage pipe and culverts and take some of the undersized culverts out of the creek and replace them with bridges and just a lot of recovery work. We actually ended up removing over 3,000 trees and 4,000 dump truck loads of debris from this golf course.
Speaker 2:Wow, you just described a major undertaking. It's Herculean.
Speaker 3:Huge. I mean we had two choices when I bought it. We could have just kind of cleaned the place up, given it a facelift, and tried to continue on with business. But I felt strongly that we had one opportunity to take the golf course down, take it back to its bones and rebuild it from the ground up and make a new first impression on people. And that's what we've tried to do. We've spared no expense. It has been a multimillion dollar renovation. We spared no expense. It has been a multimillion dollar renovation. The greens have all been completely redone. We resized, moved tee boxes where appropriate, brought all the fairways back to their Bermuda original state and totally remodeled the clubhouse and made a major investment in the proper equipment to maintain this place. When I first bought it, they had literally a worn-out greens mower, a zero-turn lawn mower and a bush hog, and that's what they were trying to maintain a golf course with.
Speaker 2:One zero-turn mower yeah.
Speaker 3:And a bush hog. And this place is not small. I mean we maintain about 98 acres. The golf course itself the property is a little over 199 acres but as far as fairways, greens, surrounds, tee boxes and so forth, playable rough, we cut and maintain over 90 acres Playable rough.
Speaker 2:We cut and maintain over 90 acres. That is just a huge undertaking, Just the upkeep of a golf course. It kind of blows me away that when you came in it was in that kind of condition. Given the equipment that you had, it should have been in much worse condition, right.
Speaker 3:Well, it was bad. I mean my son and I, who is my hedge groundskeeper he and I played the course in November of 21, before I bought it in December, and I mean it was pretty bad. The water was backed up across the cart paths in several areas. I mean there was one area in particular. We had to literally get off the golf cart and push it through the water in order to continue playing. So drainage was the first major issue and hurdle we had to overcome and we rented a long track track hoe and I had a gentleman that ran it 10 to 12 hours a day, six days a week for five weeks, silting out the ditches and the ponds and getting the water where it would flow through the course. Just this week we had a two and a half inch rain event and just within a matter of a few hours it had drained and the course was pretty much playable.
Speaker 2:Yeah, job well done right.
Speaker 3:I have to give a lot of credit to consultants and contractors and employees. They've worked really, really hard and done exactly what we wanted to do, so we're pleased with where we are.
Speaker 2:Tell our listeners about your journey, because you have an interesting road that led you up to this, golf course.
Speaker 3:I do. As I said before, I've played it for many years. I think it's a great layout. As far as the golf course goes, it's not a standard, you know, down and back municipal course. It's laid out over 200 beautiful acres of rolling hills and trees and there's not a lot of houses on the course. I think that the previous owners had lotted out and sold a few houses on the course, maybe a half dozen.
Speaker 3:We were fortunate enough to acquire all the property that touches the golf course. So any development that happens in the future, we'll have total control over that and we're not planning to do a lot of that close to the golf course. So any development that happens in the future, we'll have total control over that and we're not planning to do a lot of that close to the golf course. Simply because I mean, it's very surreal, it's a, it's a great afternoon of golf to come out here and play and the surroundings and, and you know just the natural beauty is, is, uh, is a good thing. So we want to maintain that. I spent personally almost 40 years in the software business. I generated software for the cabinet industry worldwide, created the two largest custom cabinet software companies in the world. They both reside here in Tuscaloosa, alabama, so that's kind of a unique thing. I bought the golf course in December of 21 and ended up selling my last software company in September of 22. So fully devoted to this at this point in time.
Speaker 2:Well, that was a seamless transition. Well not really.
Speaker 3:It's a little different from sitting behind the computer monitor and creating software, than trying to get you know, get the beavers out of a creek, but we've made the transition. It's interesting. After my son and I played the course in November, I was sitting at home one night in December and just discovered that Hidden Meadows was for sale again. I think they had tried to sell the place a couple of times unsuccessfully and I just clicked the inquire button and a realtor called shortly thereafter. We talked, I decided to make an offer. They sent contracts. I signed them, scanned them, sent them back to the realtor probably about 10 o'clock at night by the time I got them back to her and I went to bed, didn't think anything about it. Got up the next morning at six o'clock and, over a cup of coffee, opened up my email and the current owner had already signed the documents. So I ended up buying the place in less than 12 hours.
Speaker 2:So a lot of people are going to walk into or they're going to consider this an extension of Hidden Meadows Having. You know, a lot of people are familiar with the old Hidden Meadows golf course. How does this golf course differ, besides having improved drainage? How?
Speaker 3:have you improved?
Speaker 2:it.
Speaker 3:It's completely different. I would say anyone who's coming out expecting to play Hidden Meadows is in for a rude awakening. We've had a lot of people who were former members there. We've had a lot of golfers from all over town that are members of even the more elite country clubs in town that have come out and really have had really nice things to say, have had really nice things to say. I mean, we're looking to create a premier golf destination for Northport Alabama and we're on our way to doing that.
Speaker 3:You know, the fairways are going to be well-maintained. The outlying areas, the rough, is going to be well-maintained. We've brought the sand bunkers back. We've brought the greens back. The green surrounds are in great shape. It's going to be a nice golf experience for those coming out the sand bunkers back. We've brought the greens back. The green surrounds are in great shape. It's it's going to be a nice golf experience for those coming out and beyond just the golf course. We also totally remodeled the clubhouse and we've added two professional grade simulators to the clubhouse. So on bad weather days or, you know, during cold weather or just as an alternative to being outside, people have the option to come in and up to four players at a time can play a championship golf course on our simulators. We've got about 180 golf courses there. It's on a worldwide network so as people host tournaments in other parts of the world, our customers and patrons can actually come in and sign up for that tournament through the True Golf Network and participate in the tournament. So got some neat things going on.
Speaker 2:So I'm going to assume there are club memberships available.
Speaker 3:We are doing a founding member drive at the moment. We're accepting 100 founding members and that will be the limit of membership at the moment founding members, and that will be the limit of membership at the moment.
Speaker 2:Well, Roger, what do you do? Funny thing to ask a man who owns a golf course. But what do you do for fun?
Speaker 3:when you're not working. Well, there hasn't been a lot of time for that recently, but in general, enjoy spending time with my grandchildren. I'm the proud grandfather of five. My oldest daughter just had twins recently and my oldest son has three two little girls and his little boy was born within a month of those two twins. So I went from two grandchildren to five in the course of about a week. You sure did you seem to do things like that.
Speaker 2:You own a golf course overnight and you instantly become the grandfather of multiples in a week, right?
Speaker 3:Right, well, I've got four children. Love them all, very blessed. You know they're all very successful and good people and contribute to their community. And one is an aerospace engineer at NASA, one is a furniture builder, one owns his own business and the other is my head groundskeeper here at the Dells Golf Course. So, and besides that, travel a little bit, enjoy the, the ocean. So try to get down to Key Largo as often as possible and, uh, have a few classic cars that I've accumulated through the years. So enjoy spending time driving those and, um, just relaxing and having fun.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I can picture that that's a pretty great lifestyle right there.
Speaker 3:And occasionally we'll go sit in and listen to the bluegrass music scene around town.
Speaker 2:Oh, yes, yes, and it's growing right, the bluegrass scene. Here it is. It's pretty exciting. Anyway, what would you like our listeners to take away about the Delt?
Speaker 3:That it is new and improved. A fellow from Alabama Golf did an article in an interview with me some months ago and that was his conclusion at the end of the day and I think even the name of his article was everything that was old is new again, and I would say that's where we are. You know it's going to be a pleasurable golf experience. We've got a new fleet of club cars with satellite so they can see the holes and how they lay out and their distance to the ball. They're with Bluetooth. They've got Bluetooth on them and USB ports and club head washers and ball washers. I mean it's first class. So as soon as some of the areas that we had to clear so much rubbish grow in fully, I think it'll be a nice, pleasurable experience for everyone.
Speaker 2:Well, it sounds like it already is. How can our listeners find the Dells?
Speaker 3:and how can?
Speaker 2:they contact you.
Speaker 3:Yep, we have a website. It's thedellsgolfcom. We have a website up now. We're working on it as we move along. We're currently only open on weekends, so we're open for play on Friday, Saturdays and Sunday afternoons. Effective Tuesday April 16th, we'll be open six days a week. Monday will always be our maintenance day, unless it's a holiday, but otherwise we'll be open six days a week. So we're going to treat that weekend kind of as our ground grand opening. So that'll start on February 14th.
Speaker 2:That's great.
Speaker 3:And we still have the same. We still have the same phone number. It's 205-339-4FORE, which is 3673.
Speaker 2:I'm glad you spelled that out, Roger. It's been great meeting you. Thank you so much for coming by and sharing the Delves Golf Club with us. I really appreciate it.
Speaker 3:Thank you for having us, and you guys have a great day.
Speaker 1:Thank you for listening to the Good Neighbor Podcast Northport. Thank you for listening to the Good Neighbor Podcast Northport. To nominate your favorite local businesses to be featured on the show, go to gnpnorthportcom. That's gnpnorthportcom, or call 205-809-4910.