
                         THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
                 Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, June 15, 1994                    TAG: 9406150498 
SECTION: BUSINESS                     PAGE: D1    EDITION: FINAL    
SOURCE: BY RICH RADFORD, STAFF WRITER 
DATELINE: 940615                                 LENGTH: VIRGINIA BEACH

TOM FAZIO SET TO TRANSFORM BAYVILLE FIELDS INTO GOLF GEM

{LEAD} The site may have previously been home to a dairy farm. But, to borrow from golf vernacular, it won't be a cow pasture after Tom Fazio is finished.

Plans for Bayville Golf Club, the 18-hole championship golf course to be built on the former site of Bayville Farms, were unveiled Tuesday afternoon in conjunction with the formal kickoff of the club's membership drive.

{REST} At $30,000 per membership and with Fazio, a world-renowned course designer, on board, Bayville promises to be the elite club of this corner of the state.

``We're limiting our membership to 350 so that accessibility to the course won't be hindered,'' club president Gary L. Strickfaden said. ``We don't want to have members having to call for tee times. We want them to be able to just show up and get on the course in a reasonable amount of time.''

Once on the course, which will be completed at an estimated cost of $6.5 million, Fazio promises the membership will find a par-72 gem measuring 7,042 yards.

Fazio said the 266 acres at his disposal are ``more than enough land to build a state-of-the-art'' facility. Fazio, recognized as one of the world's top golf course architects, estimated that most courses today are built on tracts of approximately 175 acres.

The course's rough sketch begins and ends in dramatic fashion with an opening tee shot over part of Pleasure House Creek and the 18th green on a finger of land that juts into the creek. Water comes into play on seven holes.

Since 1967, Fazio has designed over 80 courses. The resident of Asheville, N.C., works on five at a time. Current projects include courses in Aspen, Colo., Atlantic City, Wilmington, Del., Atlanta and St. Louis.

The 40 founding members of the club - a group which includes Norfolk Southern chairman David Goode and Landmark Communications chairman Frank Batten - have leased the land with an option to buy after 10 years, according to membership secretary Alaura Guion.

Also included among the founding members are Mr. and Mrs. Robert M. Stanton and Mr. and Mrs. Harry T. Lester, all of whom are family members of the Burroughs and Tyler families which ran Bayville Farms primarily as a dairy farm from 1919 to 1992.

Princess Anne Country Club investigated building a second 18-hole golf course for its membership on this same Bayville tract two years ago, but backed off the idea.

``A lot of the founding members here came out of the Princess Anne experience believing that this land should still be used to build a championship golf course,'' Strickfaden said at a cocktail party Tuesday that introduced Fazio to prospective members. ``They didn't want to let it get away.''

Fazio expects to break groundin September and said the course could be available for limited play in late fall of 1995 and will be fully operational by spring of 1996.

Fazio's most talked-about recent gem is Shadow Creek in Las Vegas. That course, in only its first year of eligibility, popped in Golf Digest's top 10 rankings of U.S. courses, checking in at No. 8.

by CNB