Day and night, the new clock at Biltmore Forest CC now stands as a proud beacon of the club’s rich history—and as a useful reminder of current schedules as well.
A sense of timelessness is one of the most endearing qualities of Biltmore Forest Country Club (BFCC) in Asheville, N.C. The club itself, and in particular its stately stone clubhouse and Donald Ross-designed golf course, still look very much the same today, thanks to careful restoration and preservation, as they did when they were created in the earliest days of the Roaring Twenties, on land acquired by Mrs. Edith Vanderbilt (widow of George W. Vanderbilt) from her family’s famed Biltmore Estate. The splendor of the nearby Smoky Mountains also adds an enduring nature to the setting.
But BFCC is also a very active and up-to-date club operation, and maintaining smooth operations does require that staff and members remain aware of daily schedules—and in particular, have an effective way to gently keep golfers apprised of when they are supposed to tee off.
All of this kept coming to mind to David Cappiello, an orthopedic surgeon who has been a member of BFCC since 1972, when he joined the club’s Board in 2007 and began to familiarize himself more with other clubs’ operations. “I kept reading magazine articles and seeing pictures of impressive clocks that other clubs had in prominent places on their property, and thinking, ‘Wouldn’t something like that look nice here?’ ” Cappiello recalls.
And as the Board continued to hear reports from BFCC’s golf department of missed tee times and resulting scheduling complications, it became clear that the 10-inch-diameter “watch clock” posted on a board outside the golf shop was proving to be “inadequate,” Cappiello says, for properly reminding the club’s golfers when they should be on the course.
Easy Choices
When Cappiello became President of BFCC, he decided it was time to implement a proper solution for providing a better sense of up-to-the-minute reality within his club’s timeless setting. Identifying the type of clock, and source for it, that would fit best in Biltmore Forest’s serene surroundings was easy—almost all of the examples from other clubs that had made such an impression on Cappiello were clocks manufactured by The Verdin Company, the six-generation, Cincinnati-based family business that has made cast bronze bells, carillons, tower and street clocks and other streetscape furnishings since 1842.
And being able to show examples of Verdin’s work also made it easy for Sheila Fender, BFCC’s long-time golf shop manager, to solicit contributions from members for a special clock fund (the 26 contributors are acknowledged on a plaque on one side of the clock’s four-sided base). “No one who Sheila asked refused,” says Cappiello. “They all love seeing their names on the clock now, and once it went up, we had other members say, ‘Why didn’t you ask me, too?’ ”
There was also a natural choice for where the two-sided, illuminated clock should be located—just behind the back of the clubhouse, within easy view of both the pro shop and the grill room, and on the way to the golf course’s first tee.
Since Biltmore Forest’s new Verdin clock was installed and dedicated in 2012, it has been embraced as though it was always part of the property. “Initially there were some traditionalists who didn’t think they wanted to have it, but everyone came to like it as soon as they saw it in place,” says Lowell Pearlman, the club’s current President. “I know that if we were to suddenly remove it now, we’d get a lot of complaints.”
Biltmore Forest’s General Manager/COO, Todd Cromie, CCM, CCE, says the clock has become a “showcase piece” for wedding photos, in addition to eliminating tee-time questions. “Everyone knows now that no matter what their watch says, the clock is what we go by,” Cromie notes. Adds Fender: “We count on it now as an invaluable asset [for the golf department]—and if it wasn’t working, we’d hear about it in 10 minutes.”
“The clock fits very well with our location and our tradition,” says Cappiello, who can see its comforting glow at night from his home that adjoins the club property. “In fact, people who come here now for the first time are surprised to learn that it hasn’t always been here.”
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