Woods has no such problems. Whether he is selling watches, conducting an interview with Matt Lauer on the Today show, or making his first public appearance in upstate South Carolina, everyone wants to be associated with him. Wearing a navy suit and white shirt sans tie, Woods enters the Cliffs Valley clubhouse and walks around the crowd that has gathered, eager to catch a glimpse of sport’s biggest star.

Woods strides onto the podium, sits behind a table and playfully announces, “I guess we all know why we’re here.” The occasion is the announcement of his long-awaited first design project in the U.S., the Cliffs at High Carolina. (Woods’ first course, Al Ruwaya in a development subtly named Tiger Woods Dubai, is so far away that it barely registers on the American golf radar.)

From an architecture perspective, the atmosphere at Cliffs Valley is similar to the sense of anticipation that surrounded Woods’ first professional tournament at Milwaukee’s Brown Deer Park Golf Course in 1996. And when High Carolina opens, the golf world will be expecting a debut no less spectacular than Woods’ 12-stroke win in the 1997 Masters. Seated next to Woods is Cliffs founder Jim Anthony, who is responsible for luring him to Travelers Rest. “I’ve been offered many times to design courses here in the States,” says Woods, “but I never felt comfortable with the partnership. After meeting Jim, it was an instant ‘yes.’ Jim is the sole reason why I’m doing this.”

The 63-year-old Anthony is known for his hard work and integrity, qualities to which Woods is drawn and evident in his choice of friends, like Michael Jordan and Roger Federer, who may be the best ever in their respective sports. But they reached their lofty positions through not wasting a single drop of their considerable talent. Woods does not put slackers on his speed dial.

Working as a telephone line repairman for 20 years while aspiring to be a developer, Anthony could have given Earl Woods two shots a side as a visionary. He bought his first parcel for $100 and eventually parlayed it into the Cliffs, which he founded in 1991 and quickly expanded into a network of private properties in the mountains of North and South Carolina. (High Carolina will be the eighth Cliffs community; five are open, with Tom Fazio and Gary Player layouts under construction.)

Later that afternoon, Anthony relaxes in the boardroom at La Bastide, a Cliffs-owned inn that looks transplanted from the French countryside, complete with vineyards. It is the end of a busy day. Prior to the press conference at Cliffs Valley, Anthony introduced Woods to more than 1,000 Cliffs employees at nearby Furman University. Afterward, they gave a presentation for more than 700 Cliffs residents at the Cliffs at Walnut Cove outside Asheville, North Carolina.

Anthony contacted Woods in February, and a major factor in Woods’ decision was the Cliffs’—and Anthony’s—emphasis on health and wellness, which mirrors Woods’ values. In the spirit of fitness, Anthony and Woods originally announced that High Carolina would be walking only. But in the only misstep of the day, they later clarified that walking will be encouraged but not required.

Perhaps it is this dedication to health that gives Anthony his energy at the end of what should have been an exhausting day. Or it could be the momentousness of the occasion. “It’s a watershed event in the Cliffs’ history,” says Anthony. “This takes us to another level.”

For now. There remains the considerable task of building a course worthy of the hype, not to mention Woods’ fee, estimated to be more than $20 million including real estate sales incentives—nearly 10 times the highest previous going rate. The Cliffs is still working on the permitting for the site, which sits at about 4,000 feet and features 50-mile views of the Blue Ridge Mountains. Meanwhile Woods’ design team, led by Beau Welling, formerly Fazio’s top man, has yet to finalize a routing—construction is not likely to begin until mid-2008 and the course won’t open for at least two years after that.

When it does, High Carolina will receive unprecedented scrutiny from insiders and the general public alike. But Woods is not worried. “It’s a beautiful piece of property,” he says. “You really can’t mess this up.”

Still, the transition from player to architect is not necessarily a smooth one. “The tendency for players is to design courses suited for their games,” says Quentin Lutz of Arthur Hills/Steve Forrest and Associates. “The real challenge is to make a course suitable for all levels of players, from tour pros to mid- and high-handicappers.”

Example A is Jack Nicklaus, who used to build difficult layouts that played to his strength: long, high fades. “When I first started I could do a golf course one way,” says Nicklaus, who now has more than 300 design credits. “I could do a golf course 20 different ways now.

“[Tiger] is a very smart young man and he’ll figure it out. He certainly can’t go out and do a design himself. He wouldn’t understand all the things that happen with it. It takes time to learn that.”

Woods does not have the luxury of starting slowly the way Nicklaus did in making 23 site visits while helping Pete Dye during the construction of Harbour Town Golf Links in the late ’60s. For now, Woods is relying on Welling, also the lead designer at Al Ruwaya, as he learns the finer points and hones a philosophy. “I’m more of a minimalist,” says Woods. “We’re not going to move a lot of dirt.”

Considering that minimalists like Tom Doak and the team of Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw have fashioned two of the best new courses—Doak’s Pacific Dunes and Coore/Crenshaw’s Sand Hills—of the past 15 years, Woods is saying the right things. Still, there are inconsistencies in his thinking. He often praises courses that are “right in front of you,” yet one of his favorites is the Old Course at St. Andrews, an 18-hole enigma of blind shots and unpredictable bounces.

While Woods trails Nicklaus by just five career majors, he has no aspirations of tracking down the Golden Bear the architect, at least in the number of courses. Tiger Woods Design plans to take on a small number of select projects, which means he can devote attention to each course. “I’ll be up here as much as I can,” he says. “As you all know, I’m a perfectionist.”

In addition to holding high expectations for High Carolina, including a
national ranking and the hosting of big events, Woods has a specific barometer for success. “I want people to walk off and want to come back to play it again ASAP,” he says.

History will be a more discerning critic. For Woods to cement his architecture legacy, he needs to build a monument of the game, the way other player-architects did: Bobby Jones’ Augusta National, Nicklaus’ Muirfield Village, Crenshaw’s Sand Hills. Woods, who always has been playing for history, is aware of the standards his predecessors have set. “Hopefully one day [I will do that],” he says. “Obviously you have to get the right situation where you can do that, where you can go ahead and design what you think is how golf should be played.”

Woods has one measure of success, history another. For developers, the course is the engine that drives the ultimate goal: real estate sales. Like the Cliffs, Discovery Land Company builds upscale golf properties, including Mountaintop in Cashiers, North Carolina. Discovery employs Fazio exclusively for its course designs, having gone so far as to buy a project with an existing Greg Norman course before replacing it with a Fazio layout.

“Tom is an extension of our company,” says Discovery Land CEO Michael Meldman. “He knows what our market is and creates aesthetic courses that both low and high handicappers can enjoy.”

A-list architects like Fazio and Nicklaus are in demand because of their proven work and ability to sell real estate. “The golf course architect is very important,” says Matt Shulz of Sky Sotheby’s International Realty, which handles upscale real estate in Sarasota, Florida, including at the Founders Club. “A high-end designer brings validation to the project as well as marketing power to the resale proposition.”

According to Sara Killeen of the Longitudes Group, which has done studies of golf communities, real estate at properties with courses by name architects has appreciated 10 to 15 percent more in the past decade than other real estate in the same area.Without an existing Tiger course, most of Woods’ value for the Cliffs lies in his name, image and reputation—assets he has sold to companies like Nike and General Motors for years. “I’m not completely oblivious to marketing,” Anthony jokes. Indeed, the Cliffs has used Woods’ name and image in national print ads, as well as television spots during the FedEx Cup.

As marketable as Woods is in print and in television ads, whether bouncing a ball off his wedge or hunting gophers, he is more compelling in person. At his presentation at Walnut Cove, Woods won over Cliffs property owners, who are first in line for buying lots at High Carolina.

“I’m not a big Tiger fan,” says David Griefe, who is building a house at Walnut Cove. “But he truly was an impressive guy. He was very articulate, came across as genuine and really engaged the crowd. There was a real sense of excitement among the members.”

Cliffs members are not the only ones in the area looking forward to Woods’ project. Just as Woods’ ripple effect has made fellow tour pros richer, nearby communities hope to draft off the Cliffs. “Tiger puts western North Carolina on the map,” says Barton Tuck, developer of Bright’s Creek Golf Club in Mill Spring, not far from High Carolina. “We have been trying to feed off the Cliffs’ advertising.”

The western Carolinas is one of the busiest regions for golf community development in the U.S. In addition to the courses planned at the Cliffs, there are projects by  Arnold Palmer, Phil Mickelson and Tom Kite under construction. At the epicenter of this growth is Anthony, the man who went from fixing phone lines to taking calls from the most famous athlete in the world. “All this is beyond my imagination,” he says. “Now the whole world knows about us.”