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Jodi Lutz

Pine Dunes Resort & Golf Club, located in Frankston, TX, opened in June 2001 from a series of visions by Jodi Lutz, a young, entrepreneur former pro figure skater from Minnesota, and the excellent advice of PGA Tour player David Frost and golf course architects Jay Morrish and son Carter. The resulting 7,117-yard par-72 design takes you through a dense pine forest dotted with dogwoods, around rolling mounds, over bunkers with rust-colored sand, and past a modest four bodies of water. Venture into the trees, and you will have a typically sandy lie, although the Bermuda grass from the fairways is creeping into the rough.
👉Wanting to keep the experience all about golf, you won't find any ornate granite layout plaques or ball washers (they are on the carts), but you can get a glossy-color yardage guide. Simple flowering potted plants are the tee markers. And you will love the fact that houses won't line the fairways, although surrounding acreage away from the golf course will be developed with homes. "There is no need to go to Augusta National or Pine Valley to play a superb golf course; we have our right here in Texas," said Frost of Pine Dunes.
👉Lutz, a senior portfolio manager for some D-FW professional athletes and creator of a million-dollar art supply business, was dabbling in commercial real estate when her agent posed this question: "How would you like to own a golf course?"
👉Even though she had never played the game, Lutz took the challenge. The land included a nine-hole course named Dogwood Trails, but it was primitive. She asked Frost to survey the property, and he was "blown away" and convinced it would make a first-class golf resort. So Jodi bought it!
👉She loved the golf course so much that she moved her parents down from Minnesota (her dad had always wanted to own a golf course) and started dreaming of the day Pine Dunes Resort would become a reality. Sister Lisa Lutz was asked to take care of admin duties and manage the clubhouse. And Dallas investor Scott Miller chipped in with the additional financing. “Morrish sent his son Carter down for the initial site visit, and he went back to Dallas and reported to Jay all excited about the land, the soil, and the trees. We decided to scratch the original holes and add 175 acres," Lutz recalled. "And we knew that no one would want to drive from Dallas to play unless it was a great golf course."
👉The Texas-sized par-3 No. 6 is 254 yards from the back to an amphitheater green cut into a hillside. This one will challenge anyone. There's water left, but you have to yank it to go there. Even if you hit this massive right-to-left sloping green in one, there's a tricky, slick putt on the Tiff Eagle. The only parallel holes on the course at 14 and 15 are beauties. No. 14 is a healthy 434 yards slightly uphill with a pond on the right 281 yards from the tee. The 15th is one of those reachable par 4s, 344 yards, with the same pond on the right and a vast bunker engulfing the fairway 260 yards from the tee. A 275-yard drive from the back tees will clear the trap, setting up a birdie opportunity.
👉This piney woods golf experience is not to be missed -- you might think you are playing golf in North Carolina.
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