Story & lead photos by Dave Droschak


K


ris Spence grew up in a rural town of about 2,000 folks in the bootheel of


Missouri that didn’t have a golf course. Te Greensboro-based golf architect discovered the game as a 10-year-old when he stum- bled across some old clubs and balls leſt by a neighbor of his grandmother. “Te guy moved so I ended up keeping


the club and balls,” Spence recalled. “I was the kind of kid that could watch somebody


10 TRIANGLE GOLF TODAY • SPRING 2017


do something – whether it was a baseball player or basketball player or golfer – and I could replicate what they were doing. Nicklaus was the guy at that time.” Spence would repeat practice swing


aſter practice swing, pretending he was the Golden Bear, hitting a few shots here and there, but it wasn’t until he was 12 year-old that he stepped on a real golf course. “I had gotten pretty proficient at it,” Spence said of his early days of golf.


“One of my mother’s friends took me to a golf course and we played a two-man scramble and I birdied the first hole I ever played. I guess it can’t get much better aſter that. I just seemed simple to me.” We all know better, and Spence never


became the next Jack Nicklaus. Instead, he became an architect of note, turning a superintendent job into a special affinity for restoring and renovating layouts by the legendary Donald Ross.


www.trianglegolf.com


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