The Playbook: How Carter Callaway is redesigning Hattiesburg Country Club

• Golfweek magazine recently named the 18-hole, par 72 golf course the best private course in Mississippi.

When Carter Callaway purchased the Hattiesburg Country Club (HCC) in 2017, he set himself an ambitious 10-year goal: to transform the outdated property into the most beautiful private country club in the South.

After extensive renovations to the golf course and major improvements to the tennis and pickleball courts, Callaway is halfway to the finish line. The Giddis Golf Center for the Southern Miss golf team, to be shared with club members, is nearing completion. Soon, he plans to convert the outdated pool area into a resort-like building. After that, he will demolish the original clubhouse, with its low ceilings and unused space, and build an energy-efficient plantation-style clubhouse with high ceilings and spectacular views.

Last year, Golf Week The magazine listed the 18-hole, par 72 golf course as the best private course in Mississippi. Max Maxwell and Nathan Crace redesigned it in 1999.

Callaway’s path to becoming a country club owner began more by chance.

Callaway was born in the Delta and raised in Jackson, the son of the legendary, late golf pro Charlie Callaway.

“I always just wanted to play golf professionally,” he recalls.

Instead of going to college with his friends, Callaway spent a year learning the trade from Bob Toski, a legendary golf instructor and the PGA Tour’s biggest moneymaker in 1954.

“My dad sent me there to live and work with Bob for a year,” said Callaway, who worked at Toski’s driving range in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. “But at the same time, I missed all my school friends who were going to college.”

In the spring, Callaway enrolled at Ole Miss and was expected to join the school’s golf team in the fall.

“I only lasted one semester,” he said, laughing. “I was pretty good at getting up and going to golf practice, but I wasn’t very good at getting up and going to class.”

Callaway returned to Florida, worked on his golf game for another year, and turned professional at age 20. He lived in Orlando and traveled the country for three years playing on the golf tour.

When a rotator cuff injury sidelined him, Callaway returned to Jackson for shoulder surgery.

“I hadn’t played golf for about a year and needed something new to do. So I reached out to a friend who was renovating houses and showed me how to buy and sell houses in South and West Jackson,” said Callaway, who met his wife, Katherine, at a wedding in Jackson during that time.

“I got into selling houses by accident just to make some extra money and was able to live pretty well off of it,” he said. “I never went back to professional golf.”

About four years later, Callaway’s wife took a job at a pharmaceutical company in Hattiesburg.

“It was right around the time Hurricane Katrina hit (August 29, 2005) and shortly after,” he said. “We were in the process of selling our house in Madison and wanted to buy one in Hattiesburg, but everything on the market was snapped up.”

Callaway saw an opportunity in the homebuilding market and, with his home sales partner, founded the Kendallbrook Crossing community in Oak Grove. After building a few model homes there, Callaway found success building custom luxury homes in the Hattiesburg area.

“As a golfer coming to the Hattiesburg area, I played all the courses and fell in love with HCC,” said Callaway, who joined the club in 2006 when it had about 600 members.

“Things were going well, but when the economy took a hit in 2008, the club took a hit,” he said. “People were cancelling their memberships because everyone was doing badly at the time. And if you want to get rid of something, you have to get rid of the club membership. From then on, club membership dropped by about 10% every year. They lost members and then raised dues on the remaining members to make up the difference. And after doing that once or twice, people didn’t want to pay the dues anymore and cancelled their memberships. And then the next year they had to raise more dues. They couldn’t put money into the facilities, so the quality of the club continued to decline.”

Fortunately, thanks to the wizardry of long-time greenkeeper Frank Ogletree, the golf course has not suffered much during its decline.

“He was operating on a very tight budget,” Callaway said. “I remember hearing stories of equipment that was so old it was almost falling off.”

But other details of the golf course began to fade.

“For example, I noticed that the golf cart paths were becoming increasingly pothole-filled and no one wanted to use the restroom on the course,” he said.

By 2015 or 2016, the club had only 250 members and the board was looking for solutions to rebuild the property. Callaway asked if they would be willing to sell to an individual who could put money into the club.

“I spent a year working on a business plan,” he said. “The formula of running it as a membership company and under the leadership of a board of directors was no longer working. To survive long-term, it needs to be run like a business, not just rely on quick fixes. I realized it might not be the smartest investment in the world, but I saw potential.”

Callaway needed the right partner. Keyword: Paul Maholm, Major League Baseball player for the Pittsburgh Pirates, Atlanta Braves, Chicago Cubs and LA Dodgers, who had retired to Hattiesburg and was looking for interesting projects. Maholm, who comes from Holly Springs, had been a golfer as a child and had studied the PGA Golf Management Program at Mississippi State University. Callaway, a father of three children, and Maholm met as coaches in Little League Baseball, where their sons played.

“Paul was all in,” Callaway said. “We both agreed that we needed to make it a family club.”

The ownership changed in 2017 to HCC Mississippi LLC, and Callaway and Maholm set about frying burgers, serving food and lending a hand when needed.

“After a few years, Paul was ready to move on to other ventures,” Callaway said.

Enter Russ Bloom, a native of San Diego, California, and owner of Bloom Golf Management in Pass Christian, with contracts for clubs in Mississippi, Alabama and Louisiana.

“Russ was our advisor in running the club and wanted to get involved,” Callaway said. “It was a perfect fit.”

Lake Garner, DDS, a Hattiesburg dentist whose entrepreneurial activities extend to real estate and more, recognized the club’s growth opportunities. Callaway and Garner had met on some real estate projects.

Callaway, Bloom and Garner continued under the same company name: HCC Mississippi LLC.

After improving the golf course and clubhouse, Callaway turned his attention to the tennis courts. He consulted with Justyn Schelver, longtime tennis director at Reunion Golf and Country Club in Madison, about ways to incorporate the fast-growing sport of pickleball into the renovation project. The result: six pickleball courts and three renovated tennis courts on the upper level, plus four completely new tennis courts on the lower level. Schelver was recently hired as tennis director to expand the program.

“What I love about HCC is that it welcomes all ages,” said Andy Douglas, a retired production manager and tennis player from Cambridge, England, who attended the club’s first Cinco de Mayo tennis tournament in early May. “Everyone is so happy and friendly; it’s such a family atmosphere. Usually there’s a certain tension at tournaments, but not at this one. It was great to see everyone having fun.”

Callaway is excited about Southern Miss’ 3,500-square-foot indoor golf facility being built at the end of the driving range. It will include three tee boxes, an indoor putting studio with full club repair facilities, a teaching area with fitting equipment, as well as video swing analysis software and a TrackMan simulator in each tee box. The new tee box addition will expand the driving range to 3,400 yards.

“Eddie Brescher, the head coach at Southern Miss (golf), has been a great partner on this facility,” Callaway said. “The plan was in place before I bought the club. It’s going to be a very cool facility.”

The renovation of the swimming pool will enable the club’s summer season to be extended to the entire year.

“We want our members to feel like they are at a luxury resort, as if they were on vacation in the city,” he said.

Callaway considered renovating the 1950s clubhouse, but then decided that building a new clubhouse would have been more realistic.

“We would literally cut the building in half, with a 20- to 25-foot gap between the new building and the other half,” he explained. “We would put up a temporary wall and construct the new building while we live and work in the existing building.”

Managing the club is not without challenges, Callaway admitted.

“I mean, the food and beverage business is a nightmare, but we’re making progress,” he said.

200 members and their guests attended the Mother’s Day brunch.

“The chef (Nic Netti) was phenomenal,” Callaway said. “He did a really good job.”

Callaway has 600 members and is aiming for 800. That’s the magic number that will allow it to continue making improvements while creating a great experience for families.

“I don’t want to have so many members that you never get a tee time,” he said. “I’ve heard stories…”

Ogletree is committed to continually improving the golf course.

“It hasn’t looked so good in the 25 years I’ve been here,” he said in May.

When Callaway bought the club, the average age was over 50. “We were able to bring it down by at least 10 years,” he said. “We were able to attract new, younger families, and that’s what you have to do to survive in the country club world.”

The club has revived a version of the famous Magnolia Classic, which was played annually at HCC from 1968 to 1993 during the same week as the Masters. Thirteen years ago, HCC member Justin Cockrell started the Magnolia Amateur, which attracts 160 of the country’s top amateur golfers. Callaway last year started the Magnolia Junior, which is played annually in the second half of September.

“The Magnolia Amateur always takes place the first week of July and has become one of the most elite amateur tournaments in the country,” Callaway said. “It was pretty cool to see golfers who played in that tournament go on to play on the PGA Tour.”

The Mid-South 4-Ball Tournament, a fixture for 50 years and held annually in mid-May, is the club’s premier event for non-members.

The HCC currently offers five membership levels: Corporate Membership, Full Club Membership, Junior Membership, Non-Resident Membership and Society Membership.

“When we took over, I promised the members there would be no more evaluations,” Callaway said. “If I run the business right, I won’t have to evaluate people. As the club improves, membership dues will go up slightly and the initiation fee will go up.”

In the seven years that Callaway owned the club, he did not take a single penny from the club.

“That’s what I want,” he said. “Maybe one day I’ll make some money, but right now I want to reach my ten-year goal, and when I get there, everything will be fine.”