The late, great architect Mike Strantz never hewed to convention. So it’s only fitting that a side project spawned by his most iconoclastic creation skips a few conventions of its own.
At Tobacco Road Golf Course in the North Carolina Sandhills, owner Mark Stewart has announced construction of the Matchbox, a 12-hole par-3 course that will thread through the trees near the 12th and 13th fairways of Strantz’s wondrous funhouse of a layout. Like its big sibling, the new course will sit on family land that once served as a gravel mining site, its spoil piles and sandy ridges providing the unruly raw material for Strantz’s imagination when the main course opened in 1998.
Short courses are everywhere these days, sprouting up at resorts and daily-fee facilities across the country. But Tobacco Road has put a twist on the trend.
The Matchbox will be built with synthetic turf blended into the natural landscape, allowing for more consistent conditions without having to clear the tree canopy for sunlight. It will also feature a mix of real-sand and faux bunkers.
Stewart, who spoke to GOLF by phone Tuesday, said the approach fits with the out-of-the-box thinking Strantz brought to the original course. “I think he’d be thrilled,” Stewart said. “It goes along with his whole maverick approach.”
The Matchbox is being designed by Carlton Marshall Golf Design, whose principals, Justin Carlton and Chris Marshall, specialize in synthetic-turf projects. Another key player is Mark White, a former Strantz apprentice and one of Tobacco Road’s original shapers.
Strantz himself died of cancer at 50 in 2005, but not before blazing a distinctive path. An Ohio native, he cut his teeth under Tom Fazio and then lit out on his own, earning acclaim for his first solo project, Caledonia Golf & Fish Club in South Carolina, as well as for its neighbor, True Blue. Tobacco Road came next. A wild statement piece, the course perplexed some critics but attracted a huge faction of admirers. Over time, the latter camp has only grown, and Tobacco Road has emerged as a Sandhills must-play, a quirky complement to the region’s more classical designs.
Part of the Matchbox routing will play along a pond that even many Tobacco Road regulars might not know exists. Stewart said that he and Strantz had discussed having a par-3 play over it during the original design process, but it didn’t make the final routing.
The holes themselves cut the profile of Tobacco Road’s Mini-Me, stitched onto a five-acre parcel with roughly 40 feet of elevation change. The 3rd will play as a blind 60-yard shot from an elevated tee. The 7th requires a 40-yard carry over a cove. The 9th is meant to channel the spirit of the big course’s in-your-face opening, playing through two large mounds.
Stewart said he’d had his eye on the par-3 parcel for more than 20 years, long contemplating what he might do with it. And the name he had in mind all along was never in doubt. The Matchbox nods to tobacco (matches for lighting), but also alludes to a golf match while winking at the intimate scale of a matchbox car. “I’ve had that name in mind for years,” he told GOLF.
