Golf rewards early commitment. Most elite players are exceptional talents who started young and stayed committed, progressing from the youth circuit to college programs and then the professional game. Of course, some take detours. But there is one main road, and it is long and narrow.
Golf course architecture could hardly be more different. For every great designer who started making golf holes while still in diapers, there are others who fell by the wayside on the course. Alistair MacKenzie was a surgeon in the British army long before he completed his first course. Kye Goalby worked in finance. Bill Coore studied classics in college, aiming to become a professor.
Then there is Mike Koprowskiamong the most unlikely stories of all.
Although Koprowski played golf in high school, he never considered the game as a career. At the University of Notre Dame, he enrolled in the ROTC and, after graduation, served as an Air Force intelligence officer overseas. He went on to collect degrees from Duke and Harvard and built a resume in public policy and education. Golf architecture filled a quieter corner of his mind: a fascination, not a plan, and certainly not a way to make a living.
Eventually, in a move that felt equal parts reckless and inevitable, Koprowski turned his back on Beltway stability and cold-emailed architect Kyle Franz, which led to a practice in the Sandhills outside Pinehurst. He learned the trade from the dirt up—shaping, clearing, studying the soils—and, before long, did something even bolder: He bought a rugged patch of sandy land outside Columbia, SC, and began building his own course.
The result is Broomsedge, set on 197 acres of rolling terrain, its fairways stitched between native grasses and sandy scrub. By any measure, it’s an impossible feat.
A few weeks ago, Destination golf The podcast team visited Broomsedge, where we recorded a episode in progress with Koprowski. You’ve heard of game lessons. This was a simulated interview. During the round, Koprowski talked about his unlikely path into architecture and the hard lessons that came with betting on himself. There were times, he admitted, when the bank’s balance sheet was bleak and his pie-in-the-sky project seemed doomed. But the vision remained.
Others have taken note. With Broomsedge in the works to good reviews, Koprowski is offering opportunities for additional work. One project, Candyroot — a destination resort in the works on the edge of the Carolina Sand Belt — is still under wraps, with details to be revealed soon. For a guy who once wondered how anyone gets into this business without inherited land or inherited wealth, the irony is not lost.
Koprowski says he almost has to fool himself when someone asks him to pay for his services.
“It’s really hard for me to know what to charge because I’m having so much fun, I’d probably do it for free,” he says.
How about advice for aspiring architects? It is extremely simple. Read books on design. Travel to see as many great courses as you can. Study the land. And then, he says, offering advice that applies beyond golf, “throw caution to the wind.”
After all, life is like golf at dusk. You only go once. You can watch the full episode on Spotify here.
