Duran Golf Club

Lewis C. “Chip” Powell – ASGCA

Lewis “Chip” Powell is a graduate of Danville Community College and Illinois State University. In 1974, Powell began his professional career as a golf course superintendent.

By 1982, his work at various clubs in Florida fulfilled the necessary requirements for him to earn the designation of Certified Golf Course Superintendent as recognized by the Golf Course Superintendent’s Association of America.

After nearly 10 years as a golf course superintendent, he entered golf course construction, where he oversaw the building and remodeling of numerous golf courses while working with several highly acclaimed golf course architects.

In 1991, he founded Powell Golf Design Co., of Sarasota, and has since completed more than 50 design projects, including master planning of golf course communities, the design of a variety of new golf courses from public to private, the remodeling of existing golf courses and the historic restoration of classic older courses.

In 2003, he became an associate member of the American Society of Golf Course Architects. He also belongs to the Tillinghast Association, the Ross Society and the Florida Turfgrass Association. An avid student of golf history, Powell has a single digit handicap. He resides with his wife and two children in Bradenton, Florida.

Besides laying out the Duran Golf Club, he has created such Florida masterpieces as the Renaissance Golf Club in Sun City Center, the Solana Golf Club in Fort Myers, and the Links at Greenfield Plantation in Bradenton.

His keen eye for manipulating an area’s natural weather patterns and wind tendencies make him a highly sought, Florida course architect. At Duran Golf Club, he incorporated design features that considered the wide-open spaces of an established sod farm, along with the widely variant coastal winds characteristic of the East Coast of Florida. This combination can result in holes that can have as much as a five-club difference from day to day. Duran is destined to become one of Chip Powell’s greatest creations.