David Stone wasn’t looking for a job that hot summer’s day in 1982. He already had one he loved as the greens superintendent at Knoxville’s Holston Hills Country Club. All he had wanted that morning was to meet the internationally renowned golf course architect Pete Dye, who was rumored to be building a golfer’s paradise in Ooltewah.
So when the late businessman and philanthropist Jack Lupton offered Stone a similar gig at Dye’s yet-to-be-completed Honors Course, Stone decided to make Lupton an offer any self-respecting, right-thinking billionaire would refuse.
“I told him I wanted a house on the property,” Stone recalled. “I thought that would be the end of it.”
And you wonder why Stacy, his bride of 11 years, says of her husband, “He’s something of a maverick. He’ll take chances others wouldn’t.”
But Lupton was a bit of a maverick himself, and used to never taking no for an answer. So 33 years after Stone moved into that house near the subdued, nondescript entrance of one of the nation’s top 35 golf courses, the only course superintendent the Honors ever has had is calling it a career at the end of this year.