2025 Charlotteans Of The Year: Keith Wood
Quail Hollow Club’s director of green and grounds, who prepared the site for this year’s PGA Championship, has surged past doubts and setbacks to set a surer course
A few days before 200,000 people arrived at Quail Hollow Club in May, Keith Wood paused to admire the golf course his team had nurtured. They’d overhauled the greens, overseeded the rough, and overworked themselves for two years to prepare for the PGA Championship. From tee to green, Quail was in the best shape Wood’s seen in his 10 years as director of green and grounds.
“It was just perfect,” he says.
Then it rained. A lot. About five inches fell in the days leading up to the tournament. On Monday of the big week, rain canceled practice rounds.
In his younger days, Wood might have melted. But now—in his 50s, with experience hosting majors—he didn’t panic. He sent 80 volunteers home and permitted only his top staffers to tiptoe the grounds and look for trouble spots. By Thursday, the course was ready. By Sunday, the outcome was ideal: Golf’s best player, Scottie Scheffler, hoisted the trophy and chased his toddler across the 18th green.
Wood’s calm encapsulates what made the 2025 PGA Championship feel different from other global events Charlotte’s hosted. For the 2012 Democratic National Convention, the 2017 PGA, or the 2019 NBA All-Star Game, the city was about as composed as a child at an ice cream shop. This time, a new trait sprouted from the rich south Charlotte soil, one that the wider city could stand to display a little more: confidence.
That showed before the first tee shot. A national golf podcaster ripped the city and Quail Hollow as bland. Then, after golfer Hunter Mahan compared Quail Hollow to a Kardashian, club president Johnny Harris shot back with, “Tell me who that is.”
Yes! Five words that said more than any task force in history could. Five words that make it clear: If you don’t like Charlotte, that’s your problem, not ours.
One reason Harris could be so assured is Wood. Golf course superintendents are farmers, weather forecasters, landscapers, and construction foremen wrapped into one. They’re the blue-collar side of a place like Quail, home to one of Charlotte’s most prestigious memberships. I’ve known Wood, who grew up in rural Bamberg, South Carolina, for nearly a decade. When he arrived from Greensboro’s Sedgefield in 2015, he was a jittery young father trying to settle into his job, Charlotte, and his relationship with Harris and the members.
Quail was still reeling from embarrassment after its bentgrass greens died and patched out on national television during the 2013 Wells Fargo Championship. Wood led a renovation that replaced bentgrass with champion ultradwarf bermudagrass, rerouted holes, and removed 800 trees.
The club then hosted the 2017 PGA and the 2022 Presidents Cup, but Wood still found things he could’ve done better. In 2023, they rebuilt the greens again and redid the bunkers.
The biggest difference with the 2025 tournament, though, was that he’d earned the confidence of Quail’s members. When the course closed for renovation, they didn’t question him. By spring 2025, those new greens and bunkers were two years old, an ideal age to stand up to any storm.
“I think the membership here, having gone through some trials and tribulations with turf and their golf course prior to my arrival, have come to a spot where they trust my judgment,” he says. “I know the property too, and I know the members. I know what to expect when I walk up to a member on the golf course, because I had a chance to learn who they are.”
That trust reflects Wood’s growth. Now he manages 40 staffers, and several of his protégés have gone on to top jobs elsewhere.
“He’s the best in the business,” says Johno Harris, Johnny’s son.
Wood wants to stay at Quail until retirement. Regardless, he’s already earned a place as one of the key figures in the history of Charlotte’s most exclusive club, which continues to show us what Charlotte can be if we just trust ourselves.
