How did golf course architect Beau Welling become one of the most powerful people in the sport of curling? (Golfweek)

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

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’t stop there.

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.

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.

“The more I watched, the more fascinated I got,” Welling told Golfweek when on-site for the official groundbreaking of the Travis Club in Austin, Texas. “It fits my brain. It’s strategic. And it’s 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’s 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.”

(Click to read the full Golfweek/USA Today story)