Halyard. Lawrence to produce comprehensive book and film series documenting two legendary careers
AUSTIN, Texas, MILWAUKEE, Wisconsin & MARGATE, England – The remarkable career of golf course architects Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw is to be celebrated by a multi-platform project, in a partnership with Coore & Crenshaw, that will include books and a major documentary series.
Both will be produced by golf journalist Adam Lawrence of Oxford Golf Consulting, the founding editor of the industry magazine Golf Course Architecture, and producer Vaughn Halyard of StoryLounge, a former senior executive with Sony Music, Columbia Records, Motown, and Disney Studios (and two-time Grammy Award winner), the golf and greens chair during the restoration of Cedar Rapids Country Club in Iowa, and the current president of the Donald Ross Society.
“While on a call with Bill for a GCA article, from nowhere, I asked him why no-one had ever done a book on them,” says Lawrence. “He laughed, and said that their business manager Scotty Sayers had been trying to persuade them to do a book for more than 20 years, but the time had never seemed right.
“I decided to send them a pitch, and, while conversing with my friend Vaughn about it, he said, ‘That’s a brilliant idea, but it’s also an iconic 360 degree project’. Over the next few months, we crafted a proposal with the commensurate depth and pitched it to Bill, Ben, and Scotty. They initially showed reluctance, so we fine tuned the package in a manner that enabled C&C to say yes. We are truly humbled that they have chosen to partner with us.”
“This is one of the greatest stories in golf,” says Halyard. “It’s not an understatement to say that Coore & Crenshaw changed the direction in which the game was heading. When they built the Sand Hills course in Nebraska, they started a movement to return to the classic values of golf design, and so many great courses that have been built since then draw their lineage from Sand Hills.
“I first met and began filming with Bill and Ben during the earliest days of Sand Valley. They were still cutting trees for the first course. Golf was paramount. The C&C course was completed before the rooms were built and operations were being conducted from a modified shipping container. That was a revelation.
“Adam and I met at the opening of Sand Valley – our first collaboration was a search for late evening drinks, before the Lodge had been completed.”
Coore and Crenshaw partner and business manager Sayers, says: “Over the years, we have heard a multitude of book pitches; this one struck the right note. Trust is essential to our team and families. As such we spent a long time pondering this proposal. We feel this is the right time to tell our story and are very much looking forward to working with Adam and Vaughn.”
Halyard has recruited long-time friend, notable media and tech attorney/strategist/entrepreneur, Ken Hertz to advise the media project. Hertz, a golfer, was blunt: “I was in before the end of the pitch.”
Production has already quietly commenced as the team continues to fine tune their portfolio of multi-platform storytelling strategies, as well as creating an entity that will be jointly held by Coore & Crenshaw, Halyard and Lawrence.
“This will be a long road – a story this big is going to take time to tell properly – but we are honored, thrilled and humbled to be going on so fantastic a ride,” says Lawrence.