Behind the Design: Ballamor
by Bill Kamenjar
Set within quaint Egg Harbor Township neighborhoods spotted with local ice cream dairy bars and manicured front lawns just outside of Atlantic City in Southern New Jersey are two outstanding golf course layouts named Ballamor Golf Club and Twisted Dune. As the latter continually prospers off its “wow” factor due its upscale Irish links ruggedness making it visually imposing, the former similarly gets high praise for its more typically American-style approach to the game – not to mention its Kasselrock Kickin Chicken Sandwich, which boastful staffers in particular gobble up “by the dozen.”
Featured on the menu during the season at the Ballamor Golf Pub & Grill is in fact this locally popular sandwich consisting of blackened chicken, cheddar cheese, bacon, lettuce, tomato and house made spicy mayo. How this culinary standout got its name remains a secret to this author at least. But what is no longer a mystery – and is about to be revealed here for the first time – is the way the even more highly-regarded Ballamor design came to fruition back in the early part of the current century.
Opened in 2001, the golf course at Ballamor is the revelation of architect of record Daniel Schlegel who was working for the nationally known firm of Ault, Clark and Associates at the time. The course was commissioned by Pat Delaney, a businessman from the Philadelphia area with the desire to fashion a distinctly private golf course (though today operates as a public-accesses venue).
“Once we were hired,” said Schlegel, “I remember going to a Philadelphia Flyers’ hockey game and sitting in pretty good general admission seats. During the game, Delaney’s project manager and I sat in the stands reviewing the routing plans for the course.”
A few slap shots later, modern golf course history was in the making.
The routing, originally blueprinted as a massive 36-hole golf experience, eventually streamlined into a robust “go out and stay out” 18-hole layout spanning 347 acres. The ninth green and tenth tee boxes would become the farthest spots from the Ballamor clubhouse and its popular pub & grill.
As for the layout’s now infamous “four-pod” configuration, its future was predetermined off the site’s positioning at the headwaters of English Creek.
“Due to this environmental feature, buffers of 150 feet on each side of the creek and its tributaries were required,” Schlegel continued. “This broke up the site into its four distinctive pods of land. This makes the course hard to walk and dictated the go and stay out routing.”
What made the course so tranquil – and continues even up today – was the fact that it was carved out of a completely wooded site made up mostly of pines and oak trees. The Ballamor layout was shaped by Pavelec Brothers, a local New Jersey golf course construction firm known for quality work.
“The soils are mostly sandy and once the clearing was complete the shaping of the golf holes was fairly easy,” Schlegel said. “Other than holes Nos. 2-4 and 15-17, you do not play back-to-back holes of the same par. There’s lots of variety in the flow of the golf course.”
And so it goes at Ballamor, along with the added enjoyment of fairly generous fairways and a few holes offering an aggressive opportunity to bite off yardage. The greens, in addition, are fairly large and undulating with a lot of defined pin areas that add challenge to approach shots.
One of the architect’s favorite holes is the 417-yard, par 4 No. 11.
“It is the most natural hole on the course,” Schlegel said. “Small areas were leveled to build the tees and the green but the fairway rolls in natural terrain.”
Recent upgrades to the course include a bunker renovation that kept the same size and shape of the hazards but now with zoysia grass around all bunker surrounds.
In all, Ballamor has been described as cart ride through pods of nature with no outside-world intrusions. It’s like playing and driving through trees, across bridges and through the heart of woods to get to where you are going. As the course nears its penultimate conclusion, things truly become a test of mind and body.
According to its creator, “The owner liked to wager a bit when he played so he requested that the last two holes were good gambling holes. Hole No. 17 is a short par 4 that is drivable and hole No. 18 is a par five that can be reached in two, needing to carry a large pond to get to the green.”
So grab you clubs, head to Atlantic City and go tee it up at Ballamor in 2025. With your driver in one hand and perhaps a kickin chicken sandwich in the other, you won’t be disappointed.
