The Man of The People

Golf Digest has awarded Justin with one of eight of its 2009 Golf Innovator Awards thanks to his green course, Mirimichi, in his hometown of TN. “Innovators need not reinvent the game. They need simply to improve it, whether it’s through creativity and commitment, kindness and courage, or just good old-fashioned clever thinking, ” says the magazine. Here’s what JT had to say on the project:

“I love this game. I learned it playing on a course in Memphis, Tenn., called Big Creek. It was the first place my dad taught me how to hit a ball. A couple years ago, my dad told me that the course was going to close and become a development. He said, ‘What if we buy it?’ I started laughing, but he wasn’t. He was serious. I said, ‘If you’re serious, so am I. Let’s do it.’

“The course was a landmark in the community; we had to save it. I’ve put my heart and soul into the project. We renamed it Mirimichi. We wanted to refurbish it. I asked some questions, and we found out we could make it a ‘green’ course — the first course in the U.S. to be designated as a certified Audubon International Classic Sanctuary. It was important to try to reuse water, to zero out our ecological footprint.

“Before we opened this summer, we had three missions: Create an amazing sanctuary for the community, create an eco-friendly course, and create a public course [that would be] mentioned in the same sentence as Torrey Pines and Bethpage Black. This is one of the coolest things I’ve ever been a part of. It’s an awesome feeling to give this course back to the community.”