TYRONE, GEORGIA | That a place such as the Wendell Coffee Golf Center exists at all is worth appreciating. That it has survived three decades including recessions and retractions in the golf industry (not to mention divorce) is a testament to the man whose name and sweat equity are responsible for every inch of the 50-acre golf playground off of State Route 74 about a mile-and-a-half south of Interstate 85, southwest of Atlanta.
“It’s been a labor of love and a labor of hate,” said Wendell Coffee, the 76-year-old PGA professional who keeps his nine-hole par-3 course and expansive driving range in prime condition despite the constant ups and downs that too often force many self-made golf businesses to shutter.
Coffee’s golf center is the only public facility in a Georgia county with a lot of well-heeled clubs. Situated about 20 minutes south of America’s busiest airport in the northwest corner of Fayette County between the towns of Fairburn and Peachtree City, Tyrone is a developer’s dream for its high land value and accessibility to Atlanta. Its most prominent export are football players from Sandy Creek High School, with its most notable alumnus – Pro Football Hall of Fame wide receiver Calvin Johnson – hailed on the welcome sign at the town limit on S.R. 74 about a par-5 away from the entrance to the Coffee Golf Center.
Coffee’s facility offers another diversion for a growing county. He is what we’d call a “lifer” in the golf industry. An accomplished player, Coffee won a couple of state titles at Avondale High School and was the No. 2-rated junior in the nation in 1964. He lettered four years at the University of Florida, where he was a member of the five-man Gators golf team that won the 1968 NCAA Championship.
After college he became a Class A PGA professional, first serving as an assistant under Davis Love Jr. at Atlanta Country Club in 1972-74. He spent 17 years as the head professional at Flat Creek and Braelinn golf clubs in Peachtree City, where he distinguished himself as merchandiser of the year on multiple occasions. In 2000, he was honored as the Georgia PGA Teacher of the Year and was ranked among the “Top 50 Teachers in America” by Golf Range Magazine in 2006.
Coffee had game, as his five course records (including a career-low 63) attest. He won the Atlanta Golf Open in 1976 and qualified and competed in four PGA National Club Pro Championships. His competitive form really hit stride when he became senior eligible, winning the Georgia Senior Open in 1999 and 2005 and receiving Georgia PGA Section senior player-of-the-year honors in 2005. He competed in a few senior majors as well – the 1999 and 2000 Senior PGA Championships and the 2005 U.S. Senior Open.
His success as a club pro and retailer allowed Coffee to buy 50 vacant acres right off the highway in Tyrone in 1983. “I tried to get this rezoned in 1983 for a driving range and I was going to do it as a kind of an offshoot, but they denied me,” he said of the Fayette County zoning board.
Then he went through a divorce. His ex-wife got the house and he got to keep the vacant land. Without much money left over, he put his designs for it on the back burner.
By 1991, Coffee was out as the pro at Flat Creek and was ready to embark on a new project. He was long-time friends with architect Rocky Roquemore, the son of Georgia Golf Hall of Famer Bill Roquemore, who pioneered the turfgrass business in Georgia and developed a set of private courses in the Atlanta area called Canongate Golf Clubs. Rocky carried on the family business as a course designer across the world including Portugal, South America and the Caribbean as well as the U.S.
Despite another denied zoning request for his 50 acres in 1991, Coffee was confident that he would win approval the next time and asked Roquemore if he could design him a two-sided driving range like the one he ran at Flat Creek. Coffee led a crew building it himself, which was no small feat considering the middle of it was unusable swampy wetland that needed significant piping, grading and filling in to convert it into the expansive grass range with natural targets that’s there today.
After a full year of construction, Coffee’s driving range opened on March 1, 1992. “I mean, it was a nightmare getting rid of the water, but we opened up,” he said.
“I’ve got a master’s in accounting. I did all the lawyer work. I clean the toilets. I could get money also from golf lessons, because the business was very nominal as evidenced by all the golf courses that shut up. Nobody could get enough business. Everybody got equally poor.” – Wendell Coffee
In 1997, when “Tigermania” sparked a surge in golf interest, Coffee asked Roquemore if a par-3 course might fit on the unused land around a seven-acre pond between the clubhouse and the highway.
“He misinterpreted and thought I said, ‘Let’s start building a par-3,’” Coffee said. “I didn’t want a par-3. But he designed it, and we started going and we built the par-3 course.”
With holes around and beyond the pond ranging from 100 to nearly 200 yards, the par-3 course adds another element to the golf center. There used to be a Himalayas-style natural putting course adjacent to the 3,000-square foot event center that’s connected to the 5,000-square-foot clubhouse, but that proved to be more trouble than it was worth to maintain.
Coffee also experimented with a sports bar with 11 TVs, but that enterprise failed in 2010 on the heels of the Great Recession. So he basically rents that event room out for weddings and parties for an extra revenue stream.
“I’ve got other investments; I almost bought another golf course and almost built another range,” Coffee said. “Thank God I didn’t do either one of those.”
The Wendell Coffee Golf Center’s ninth hole (left), its range and No. 1. (Click on images to enlarge.)
Coffee’s enterprise has weathered a lot in the 31 years it’s been open. He labels it mostly “very unsuccessful,” but yet he’s still here through the many ebbs and flows in the golf economy over three decades.
“From 1992, ’93, ’94, I was just starting up,” Coffee said. “Tiger Woods came (on the scene) in 1998, ’99, 2000 and 2001, so business was booming during that period for everybody. Then 9/11 happened and that killed the golf economy. It was coming back, then the recession hit in 2008-2010 and that killed it. From 2011 to 2020, golf courses were just closing all over.
“I could stay open because I was the green superintendent, I was the accountant – I’ve got a master’s in accounting. I did all the lawyer work. I clean the toilets. I could get money also from golf lessons, because the business was very nominal as evidenced by all the golf courses that shut up. Nobody could get enough business. Everybody got equally poor.
“I stayed aboard because everything was paid for, so I didn’t have a mortgage. I also didn’t have any savings. Every time I had some savings, I built the par-3 and paid for it and paid for the irrigation on all 50 acres. And then when I got some money, I put the event center in and then had no money again.”
“So it’s been very much a success story these last three years where before it was not successful. But I was never in a bind, so I was never stressed out and could always pay my bills.” – Wendell Coffee
As Coffee finally emerged from all of his divorce costs and was starting to accumulate savings again, the coronavirus hit. Coffee didn’t shut down, and that decision soon paid off when everybody realized that golf was something people could do safely outdoors.
“Everybody started coming to the driving range,” Coffee said. “It was strictly social. Then all of a sudden they’d say, ‘Man, this is a fascinating game.’ They started coming out in groups of four. Used to be we’d get one guy or two guys, but now four guys were showing up just like at a golf course. Then families started showing up, six or seven. They wanted to play sevensomes.
“It’s been like that for the last two and a half, three years. My business has basically doubled. … So it’s been very much a success story these last three years where before it was not successful. But I was never in a bind, so I was never stressed out and could always pay my bills.”
It’s not the lucrative endeavor it was for Coffee when he was raking in merchandising profits and cart fees for two clubs that had more than 100,000 combined rounds per year, but this labor of love/hate has been rewarding in other ways.
“I hate when I have to do something, and I hate when I get stressed and have problems,” he said. “But it’s been very much fun because I’m a loner. Golfers are loners. I just love coming out here, and no salesmen are coming in and bothering me like at the country club and no members are coming in and dragging me, asking me questions or giving me suggestions. So it’s been very refreshing for 31 years of doing this.”
If more people appreciate the value of $20 unlimited range balls with a 100-yard practice pitching area with greens and bunkers and putting greens or $15 for nine-hole par-3 course ($21.50 to play it twice), affordable local facilities like the Wendell Coffee Golf Center could be sustainable grow-the-game generators in any market.
The bigger issue is finding enough Wendell Coffees to make it happen.