Air Jordan built own exclusive golf club
Plan is to have less than 100 members
The Last Dance documentary reminded us (not that we needed it) that basketball has been the driving force in Michael Jordan’s life, but golf doesn’t lag far behind.
His Airness, who got hooked on golf as a student at North Carolina, welcomed rookie Scottie Pippen to the Chicago Bulls by giving him a set of golf clubs, the better to indulge another passion: gambling.
“He was trying to lure me in so he could take all my money,” Pippen said.
That wily rascal, who owned up to his unreal level of competitiveness on the ESPN documentary, now can lure Pippen and others to his own golf club, The Grove XXIII. A ridiculously exclusive joint, the course in South Florida’s Hobe Sound area has lured Phil Mickelson.
“It’s a really cool place,” Mickelson said Monday on The Dan Patrick Show.
As the principal owner, Jordan sought to limit membership at the club to fewer than 100, according to multiple reports. The Grove XXIII opened in the fall of 2019 and is a roughly 10-minute drive from Medalist, home to Tiger Woods and Rickie Fowler.
“You have to be invited,” Mickelson said of membership. “Fortunately, I know a number of members there, and my wife and I just bought a lot fairly close, about 10 to 15 minutes away. So it’ll be a great place to play and practice.”
The 18-hole course features a futuristic clubhouse inspired, according to the NBWW architectural firm that designed it, to pay discreet homage to Jordan’s iconic
You have to be invited. Fortunately, I know a number of members there.
flying dunks and to his somewhat less iconic golf swing.
“We wanted the precision and flow of the golf swing as well as Michael’s athleticism and corporate finesse to inspire the contemporary form and detailing,” Don Wolf of NBWW said on the firm’s website.
The Roman numerals “XXIII” are discreetly etched into the stone facade, the sign that you’ve entered Jordan’s world.
Bobby Weed, a protege of famed golf course designer Pete Dye, was reminded of Shinnecock Hills on the northern end of New York’s Long Island as he designed the course, he told Golf Digest. The low, flat area, with wild grass in the sand, offered “views across the whole course.”
“The old agricultural property did offer an unexpected bonus in the form of two deep irrigation canals bordering the north and eastern boundaries,” Derek Duncan wrote. “Weed notched slender strips of tees atop the high banks on the opposite sides, using the canals as the rarest of features in American golf: long, dead-straight hazard lines that play like inverted versions of the stone walls at North Berwick in Scotland.”
Word of warning: If a tall guy smoking a gargantuan cigar walks up, talks trash and wants to make a little side wager while you’re on the course at The Grove XXIII, walk away. Listen to Pippen.
The Washington Post