Your family first had contact with Arnold Palmer when your uncle, George Fazio, gave a hitchhiking Palmer a lift to Wake Forest, where Palmer was at school. Did George introduce you two?
Yes, back in the early sixties, and it was great for me to get to know Arnold over the decades. We were both from Pennsylvania, so there was a lot of common ground. Arnold always remembered how kind my uncle had been to him.

Did you ever collaborate with him on a golf course design?
No, you could call us competitors. I enjoyed the thought that while I could not compete with Arnold in terms of playing golf, it was fun to be on a level with great names like Arnold’s in terms of course design.

Was it George who got you into the course-design business?
Yes, I grew up near Valley Forge, in a little town called Norristown. George owned and operated a club nearby called Flourtown, which had a little nine-hole course. That is where I grew up playing golf, and that’s where we started as a business. It was great at Flourtown, because when we weren’t busy, we would just head down the stairs and play golf! Our early contracts were to “design and build”—that is how you got a job, and that is how you could begin to build recognition. I was young, and I was the implementer, while George was the designer. I learned the business from George, and we learned together as we went along. The first golf course construction that I was in charge of was in nearby Paoli, called Waynesborough Country Club, in the mid-sixties. George leased the land, and we built the golf course, and then he sold it.

Were the sixties good years for working in golf development?
The golf industry was pretty low down after the war, for quite a while. There was a major boom in golf development from 1970 until 1974, when over 300 golf courses a year were being built in the United States. This was the start of the planned, residential golf communities that are so widespread today, and it really started at Hilton Head Island, which set a new model for golf development.

How would you describe your design philosophy?
Well, put it this way, I am not interested in having a style. I start every project as a new thought, like writing a new book. The only limitations you have are the ones that come from your brain. If you think outside of the box, you can create distinctive, one-of-a-kind golf courses. When you break it down, it is very basic: there are 18 pieces to a puzzle. The pieces come in all different sizes, and we create a puzzle with every golf course. Augusta National has consulted you on course design.

How is the golf course recovering from September’s Hurricane Helene?
That whole region, including Georgia, South Carolina, and North Carolina, endured a lot of tree damage. It was awful for the people who lost their homes, but when it comes to repairing land, it is coming back very well. The fallen trees get removed, ground gets repaired and regrassed, and things can get back to normal pretty quickly.

You’ve been working on restoring the Patch at Augusta Municipal. How is that going?
The property needs some tender loving care in terms of conditioning, and we are going to adjust the elevations of the land and introduce underground infrastructure and give the golf course the qualities you would expect from our premier venues. The work will enable the course to sustain droughts or wet spells, and the turf is going to be replaced with the finest Bermuda grasses. The Patch is going to be a model of what can be achieved with municipal courses and how they can be presented.

What else is keeping you busy?
At Atlantic Fields in Florida, the entire golf course is built, the grass is growing in, and we are going to have a spring opening. The golf course is on a large piece of property—1,500 acres, with a 110-acre lake, which is one of the design features. It has evolved from a big, excavated hole in the ground into a pristine golf course, with 30,000 trees planted around it. It is an environmental masterpiece, and I go there almost every day.