Articles
Local Designer Craig Bryant Finally Digs His Way Back to Bozeman
Course of history
Local designer Craig Bryant has finally dug his way back to Bozeman
By TIM DUMAS Chronicle Sports Writer
Bozeman’s golf timeline ticks through him. From the sand “greens” of the original Valley View Golf Course to the expansive layout of Black Bull eight miles to the west, Craig Bryant has played a major role in the sport’s local evolution.
He cut his teeth as an 8-year-old, driving a tractor and helping to oil down those primitive greens which once graced the land below the water tower near Peets Hill.
That was nearly 60 years ago. Bryant eventually branched out to help develop golf courses around the country alongside designing — not to mention playing — greats Nicklaus, Palmer and Weiskopf.
This from a former scholarship baseball player at Montana State University.
Bryant’s latest project is the posh masterpiece known as Black Bull, located west of Bozeman on Love Lane.
In between, Bryant was on the developing team for well-known courses in California, Arizona and Florida, some of which were among the highest-ranked in the country — and in one instance — the world.
And it all started at the original Valley View, land which is now lined with tall trees and spacious homes.
Valley View in the 1940s hardly resembled the lush courses of today. The fairways were filled with more dirt than grass. The greens? When Bryant recalled their consistency, it sounded more like the description of a bunker.
“It was a round circle, that’s all it was,” Bryant said Friday at Valley View’s current location on Kagy Boulevard. “We would dump sand down and roll it.”
In order to make such a surface prime for putting, the course’s maintenance crew, i.e. Bryant and his father George, would use leftover oil from the automobile dealers in town and spread it over the greens to make them solid.
Once golfers reached the green, they used a rake-like device in order to sweep a smooth track from where their ball was located to the hole. No doubt an arduous process, but it was also a chore just to reach the green.
Since the fairways were mostly dirt, players needed to seek out the nearest patch of grass for their next shot.
“You’d get to where your ball was and you’d move your ball to a piece of clump grass,” Bryant, 67, said. “Then you’d hit it to the next place until you finally got to the green. That’s how they played it back then. By the end of the match, you looked like a mechanic.”
Valley View moved to its current spot during the 1960s, but the original clubhouse still exists near the corner of South Church and Kagy, although the red and yellow log home is now a private residence.
“It was a big social outlet,” Bryant remembered. “Dancing was so big back then; TV didn’t exist.”
The first edition of Valley View, which was started by a group of volunteers headed by George Bryant, was one of Bozeman’s two golf courses — both of them consisting of nine holes — during the ‘40s. The other was run by the Elks Club and was located just east of where Lindley Park currently sits.
According to Craig Bryant, Valley View was built first, but was in constant competition with the Elks course.
“They were always in mortal combat, one thinking they were better than the other,” he said while admitting, “the Elks had a better place. They had actual grass on their fairways.”
The Elks eventually moved to Springhill Road and became what is now known as Riverside Country Club. Craig Bryant worked on that project in 1959 and Riverside opened a year later. Valley View soon sold its land and moved westward along Kagy. A plaque that honors George Bryant, who remained a member at Valley View for several decades before his death, adorns an east-facing wall at the club.
Craig Bryant, who was born in Bozeman, attended Gallatin County High School and was part of the first class to move into Bozeman Senior High. After American baseball, he attended Montana State and played four years of baseball as a pitcher and right fielder. The program, which no longer exists, once held spring training in San Diego.
Bryant graduated from MSU in 1964 before leaving the area for 34 years, beginning with graduate school in Clermont, Calif.
His first two golf course development projects were on the opposite coast, however. Bryant worked with 18-time major champion Jack Nicklaus on a course at Disney World World in Orlando, Fla., and another, Royal Oak, in nearby Titusville.
Bryant later became a principal within The Winchester Group and helped create such entities as The Quarry in La Quinta, Calif., which was ranked as one of the country’s top 100 courses by both Golf Digest and Golf Magazine. Winchester also developed Estancia in Scottdale, Ariz., which was once ranked 64th in the world.
While enjoying success in his profession, Bryant lived in Florida, Alabama, Michigan and California, but longed to return to Montana. That opportunity arose when Winchester was hired to build The Stock Farm in Hamilton, a golf course/equestrian center that was completed in 1999.
“I was to my way back to Bozeman,” he said. He finally broke through with Black Bull, a project overseen by former British Open champion Tom Weiskopf. The course and living community sit on a 483-acre tract that was once an Angus ranch owned by Jay Leachman, who still lives on the property.
“I designed a lot of the holes in my head while I was bailing hay and feeding cows,” Leachman said last year when Weiskopf, who owns a house in Gallatin Gateway, was in town to display plans for the facility.
On a breezy Friday afternoon that was perfect for golf, Bryant was proud to do a little more showing off, walking the layout — which includes stunning views of the Bridger Mountains and Spanish Peaks — and highlighting its amenities. While he gave his brief tour, final preparations were being made to the course and adjoining practice facility, which by itself would dwarf the sandy, oily, dirty landscape that was once Bozeman’s first golf course.
“I couldn’t feel better about it,” he said of Black Bull. “I once left Bozeman, anxious to get out of this little cow town, and about two years later I realized what a mistake I made. It took me all those years to get back here.”
Tim Dumas is at tdumas dailychronicle.com and 582-2651.