{"id":468900,"date":"2026-02-11T22:14:11","date_gmt":"2026-02-11T22:14:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/468900\/"},"modified":"2026-02-11T22:14:11","modified_gmt":"2026-02-11T22:14:11","slug":"was-that-golf-architect-and-tiger-woods-confidant-beau-welling-at-the-olympics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/468900\/","title":{"rendered":"Was that golf architect and Tiger Woods confidant Beau Welling at the Olympics?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Beau Welling<\/a> admits he\u2019s quirky. He embraces it. Stop Welling \u2014 a golf course architect who helped his pal Tiger Woods put the finishing touches on both highly acclaimed Bluejack National outside Houston and Payne\u2019s Valley at Big Cedar Lodge near Branson, Missouri \u2014 and you\u2019re likely to get an earful on a topic that might surprise you.<\/p>\n

For example, Welling is known for his love of Sasquatch, and even had someone dress up as the mythical creature at his wedding a few years back to peer in through a window. And it doesn\u2019t stop there.<\/p>\n

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Welling, who grew up in Greenville, South Carolina, owns a degree in physics from Ivy League Brown University, and he also studied Irish literature at Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland, and is quick to evoke Oscar Wilde or James Joyce when it suits the conversation.<\/p>\n

But when Welling, who still maintains a deep Southern drawl, started to actively follow the game of curling during the 2002 Olympics in Salt Lake City, what had started as a passive interest became an obsession, one that eventually led him onto an international stage in Milan<\/a> this week.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe more I watched, the more fascinated I got,\u201d Welling told Golfweek when on-site for the official groundbreaking of the Travis Club in Austin, Texas. \u201cIt fits my brain. It\u2019s strategic. And it\u2019s a Scottish game that shares many qualities with golf. Both games are steeped in integrity and honor. In both games, you call your own fouls and there\u2019s a degree of physics. So the science of it all just fascinated me. The friction and trajectories. There was a lot for me to chew on.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Welling’s love of curling started via TV<\/p>\n

Between the 2002 and 2006 Olympics, Welling found himself working on a few projects in Canada and that only helped to fuel the inquisitive fire he\u2019d already been slowly building.<\/p>\n

\"Feb<\/p>\n

Feb 10, 2026; Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy; Gold medalists Isabella Wranaa and Rasmus Wranaa of Sweden celebrate during the medal ceremony for the curling mixed doubles gold medal game during the Milano Cortina 2026 Olympic Winter Games at Cortina Curling Olympic Stadium. On the left is golf course architect Beau Welling, who is the president of the World Curling Federation. Mandatory Credit: Michael Madrid-Imagn Images<\/p>\n

By the time the next Winter Games were played in Turin, Italy, Welling had become a bona fide fanatic. He estimated that of the 80-some hours of coverage NBC Sports had of the sport that year he consumed nearly all of it. Welling took vacation from a project he was working and learned everything about the sport he could.<\/p>\n

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\u201cThey all think I\u2019m losing my mind in the office,\u201d Welling said, as he\u2019d then worked his way up to the position of executive vice president for Fazio Golf Course Designers.<\/p>\n

Welling even researched many of the American team members and found an interesting similarity. Unlike other countries from around the world whose teams were stacked by various regions, the American team was comprised largely of members from one small town \u2014 Bemidji, Minnesota. Welling realized the U.S. National Championships were to be held that year in the same town, the home of Paul Bunyan and Babe the Blue Ox. And when a work assignment he had scheduled overseas was canceled, perhaps fortuitously, Welling says, he decided a field trip was in order.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis starts to feel like a calling, a sign from God, that I\u2019m supposed to go to this,\u201d Welling said. \u201cI look online and you can buy tickets, but I see the time has lapsed, so I\u2019m worried about this. I get my longtime assistant on the case and she has a thicker accent than I do. She gets someone on the phone and says, \u2018Hey, my boss just loves curling and he comes in here every day talking about it and I don\u2019t know what the heck he\u2019s talking about it, but I just know he\u2019d love to come up there and is there any way you can help me get him a ticket?\u2019<\/p>\n

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\u201cThe guy on the phone says, \u2018Do you mind if I ask where you\u2019re calling from?\u2019 and when she says North Carolina, he asks why anyone from there would be interested in curling. And she says, \u2018Well, he\u2019s from South Carolina.\u2019 And they got me a ticket.\u201d<\/p>\n

When Welling arrived, he was greeted by a blizzard, yet he still made his way to the event, and was welcomed with a seat on the glass underneath a handwritten sign with his name on it.<\/p>\n

\"Beau<\/p>\n

Beau Welling, left, and Tiger Woods visit the in-development Marcella Club in Utah.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think they all wanted to see if this nut job from South Carolina was really going to show up,\u201d Welling said.<\/p>\n

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Welling became close with coaches and was in parade<\/p>\n

He quickly ingratiated himself with friends, family and coaches, and by the time he left, he was looking to make a bigger impact on the game.<\/p>\n

At the conclusion, the president of USA Curling named Welling the official \u201cSouthern ambassador\u201d for the sport and he even took part in a parade through town.<\/p>\n

\u201cEveryone was so nice,\u201d he said. \u201cThat Midwestern nice. I wasn\u2019t sure if I was going to get bored so I had only planned to stay for a day or two, and I ended up staying nine days. People took me ice fishing, out for dinners and drinking. The town even threw me a birthday party.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\"Golf<\/p>\n

Golf course architect Beau Welling is the president of the World Curling Federation.<\/p>\n

Soon after, he got a call from the president of the USA Curling Board, Georgia West, asking if he\u2019d bring some fresh ideas to the board. He agreed, and his role got even larger when he was elected to the role of president of the World Curling Federation board in 2022.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a position that demands some of his time, although he\u2019s been able to balance the gig with his full-time job as a course architect. Welling designed one of the two courses at Fields Ranch, the new home of the PGA of America in Frisco, Texas, and he\u2019s got lots of other work in the pipeline.<\/p>\n

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As the president of the federation, he was able to take part in the Olympic Games in Milan, Italy, in 2026, and even walked out on stage to present medals to the winners.<\/p>\n

But he still has an affinity for curling that has him plotting and planning, trying to push the game to new heights.<\/p>\n

\u201cI love it more than ever,\u201d Welling said. \u201cI can\u2019t get enough. And to think that I would get to the point where I\u2019m at, especially since I knew almost nothing about this growing up, it\u2019s been an incredible experience.\u201d<\/p>\n

(Editor’s note: Much of this story ran on Golfweek in 2024.)<\/p>\n

This article originally appeared on Golfweek: Golf architect and Tiger Woods confidant Beau Welling at the Olympics<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Beau Welling admits he\u2019s quirky. He embraces it. Stop Welling \u2014 a golf course architect who helped his…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":468901,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[443],"tags":[191101,49,48,622,53610,70215,517,82,6982,191102],"class_list":["post-468900","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-golf","tag-bluejack-national","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-golf","tag-james-joyce","tag-oscar-wilde","tag-south-carolina","tag-sports","tag-tiger-woods","tag-welling"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/468900","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=468900"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/468900\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/468901"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=468900"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=468900"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=468900"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}