CHARLOTTE, NORTH CAROLINA | Walking outside the Rolex chalet perched on a hillside directly above the Presidents Cup’s 12th tee at Quail Hollow Club, Johno Harris, the event’s executive director, waved some visitors to the edge of the porch to appreciate the view.
With the September sunshine shimmering on the lake around which much of the back nine plays, the spot offered a sweeping view of four holes including the meat of the club’s famous Green Mile.
Thousands of fans ringed the holes across the water, hundreds more stood on a specially built viewing dock and white hospitality chalets sat like a small town across the lake, evidence of the enormous success of the event played at the site of the PGA Tour’s Wells Fargo Championship.
“It’s pretty incredible,” Harris said while looking across the water.
It is the Quail Hollow way. Guided by president Johnny Harris and his son, Johno, the club has grown into a part of the global golf scene. In addition to hosting the annual PGA Tour event, it held the 2017 PGA Championship won by Justin Thomas and will be the site of the 2025 PGA Championship.
Beyond that, there will be more professional golf at Quail Hollow.
Hosting the best players in the game is an essential thread in the fabric of the club James J. Harris – Johnny’s father and Johno’s grandfather – created with about two dozen others in the early 1960s on a piece of land where many went quail hunting.
Having befriended Arnold Palmer at Augusta, the elder Harris had the assurance from his friend that if Quail Hollow was built, pro golf would find its way there. By 1969, the PGA Tour’s Kemper Open had arrived and Quail Hollow has hosted a professional event more years than not in its history.
“One of the guys (asked), ‘Can we build a golf course good enough that the pros will want to come and play?’ ” Johnny Harris recalled. “Arnold said, ‘Well if you put enough money in, they will play down Independence Boulevard,’ ” referencing a major Charlotte thoroughfare.
It would be easy for the club with its small, wealthy and powerful membership to keep its doors closed. It is a place where CEOs of Fortune 500 companies and billionaires can get away for a few hours, but Quail Hollow was built on golf and all the game can be.
The Harrises believe golf is about the community, both large and small. And while there is an exclusivity to Quail Hollow, its commitment to hosting big-time golf events is driven by its desire to invite the city in to share in the place.
"We have broken the mold on how to run an event, and now we need to figure out how to do a regular event and make it feel at least as attractive as we can to compete with what this has done."
Johnny Harris
Set upon 250 acres approximately 15 minutes from uptown Charlotte, Quail Hollow has created an infrastructure to facilitate the hosting of large crowds. In other words, it has been built for weeks like the Presidents Cup, down to a well-hidden but wide service road that runs through the course and the presence of two permanent electrical substations to accommodate the needs of world-class tournament golf.
Beyond the physical attributes, Quail Hollow is guided by an ethos passed down to Johnny Harris by Palmer, who was one of his closest friends.
“Last time he was here I got him to come up and play as an amateur in the (2011 Wells Fargo pro-am) with his grandson and myself,” Johnny Harris said. “And it was funny as when we finished and he was getting ready to go the airport and fly back he grabbed me outside the car, and he put his hands on me and he said, ‘I know you know your mother and father would be proud, but what I want you to understand is that greatness is always under construction and don’t you ever stop making this place better.’ And then he got in the car and drove away.”
Few courses have been changed as often as Quail Hollow, where architect Tom Fazio regularly tweaks the layout originally designed by George Cobb. The intention is to make the course better while also enhancing the property.
There are many clubs that want to host major golf events but relatively few are capable of doing it on the level Quail Hollow can. Getting to this point has been part of an evolving plan that has spanned decades.
Sitting in the Rolex chalet, Harris recalled how badly he wanted Quail Hollow to have one of those tall green Rolex clocks because he saw it at clubs that hosted the game’s most prestigious events. When Quail Hollow landed its first PGA Championship, Harris said he called Rolex the next day and had a clock on its way. It’s still there.
So is the sign on the wall in the maintenance building that reads “Greatness has a home.”
“Everybody drinks the Kool-Aid around here and we have one place south of here that we respect probably more than anywhere else but we are sure trying to catch everybody else,” Johnny Harris said, alluding to the home of the Masters Tournament.
“My father used to tell me that when you have a vision or a goal, he said, ‘If you’re trying to get to the end of the street and the dogs are barking and you try to stop and quiet every barking dog on the street then you will never get to the end of the street.’ I never worry about the negatives or the things that are hard to do. …
“I am going to try and call a meeting with the people working on the Wells Fargo and tell them we have a problem. We have broken the mold on how to run an event, and now we need to figure out how to do a regular event and make it feel at least as attractive as we can to compete with what this has done. And we will figure something (out) and do a good job and have a great Wells Fargo, but I never look back as that’s not what we do, not what I do.”
Harris and his son did, however, take a moment to enjoy the view more than once last week.
Ron Green Jr.
Rolex the Official Timekeeper and Global Partner at the 2022 Presidents Cup, which took place for the first time at the Quail Hollow Club in Charlotte, North Carolina, USA, from 22–25 September 2022.
Top: Johno and Johnny Harris (Photo: Chris Turvey, Rolex)