Jefferson County businessman Gary Surdyke said his dream of owning his own golf course has come true.
Surdyke has bought the Crystal Highlands Golf Course, 3030 Hwy. 61 south of Festus, from the Union Pacific Railroad.
Both parties declined to disclose the sale price for the 145.87-acre property.
The sale closed on July 9.
“In some respects, I can’t believe this is happening,” Surdyke said. “I’m so excited, but as people have pointed out to me, it will have a substantial impact on the community.”
Surdyke said the target date to reopen the course is Aug. 2.
“There are a lot of details to line up to be ready to do business between now and then,” he said.
Surdyke said Crystal Highlands will be a semi-public course, meaning annual memberships will be sold, but non-members may make an appointment to play and pay a daily greens fee.
“We’re planning family memberships, and corporate memberships that can be tailored to the needs and size of your business,” he said.
People may schedule tee times through the course website at
crystalhighlandsgolf.com or by calling 636-543-7616.
The golf course was built in 1988, and was open to the public until 2002. After that, Union Pacific bought it and primarily just allowed employees to use it.
In 2018, the course was closed, and as a cost-cutting measure, the company put it up for sale, along with the 2,300-acre Selma Castle property to the north of the golf course.
The June 4 sale of the larger property that includes the renowned “Kennett’s Castle” to a Texas-based corporation, Selma Farm LLC, did not include the golf course.
The railroad had renamed the golf course Castle Ridge, but Surdyke said it will revert to Crystal Highlands.
“That’s what everybody knows it as anyway,” he said.
Surdyke said he became interested in the course when it was placed on the market and made some inquiries, but Union Pacific officials “didn’t return his calls.”
“I think they were more interested in packing the castle and golf course together,” he said.
Surdyke, who lives about a mile and a half from the course, said he was driving past it on May 7 and saw a sign that the course itself was for sale.
“I stopped and took a picture with my phone and got the agent’s number,” he said. “I don’t know what golf courses are valued at, especially golf courses that have no cash flow, but I had a number in my head that I was going to offer. It turns out the sale price was significantly less than that.”
Surdyke said the course has been well-maintained throughout its closure.
“The railroad kept a grounds crew, and they kept it in excellent condition. This is not just a cow-pasture golf course, as many of them are. This is a superb course. It’s a championship-level course. I’m sure the grounds crew is going to be excited to see people play on it again,” he said.
Surdyke said other than repairing the course’s sand traps, the course is pretty much ready for public use again, although a front desk needs to be built.
“They didn’t need anything like that when it was just the railroad executives dropping by,” Surdyke said.
He said he plans to employ about 20 people, some of them seasonally, once the course is up and running.
Surdyke said he will keep the grounds crew, with three full-time employees and one part-timer, and probably will double the size of the crew.
An employment application may be found on the course’s website.
Surdyke didn’t have to take applications to fill management positions, as his son-in-law, Josh Huelsing, will be the course’s general manager.
“He has a lot of experience in the golf industry,” he said. “I don’t think I could have found someone better.”
Surdyke’s daughter and Huelsing’s wife, Jennifer, will be the administrative assistant.
“Josh calls her a force of nature, and he’s absolutely correct,” Surdyke said.
Union Pacific had built and outfitted a kitchen large enough to front a restaurant, and while Surdyke said it was seldom used, he hopes that in time, a full-service restaurant open to the public will be added.
“We don’t have a lot in this area,” he said. “I think people will welcome that.”
Another of his daughters, Rebecca Surdyke Waterkotte, will manage the food and bar operations.
“I’m fortunate that a lot of my family is excited to be involved with this as well,” Surdyke said.
He said his connections in the motorcycle and motor sports industries – he founded a chain of family-owned businesses that sell those vehicles – helped him surmount another hurdle to getting Crystal Highlands online so soon.
“When I talked with people about this, they said one of the biggest hurdles was going to get golf carts. We figured we’d need about 60 of them. The golf cart industry, like a lot of industries, has a lot of demand, and new cart orders are being filled in six months to a year and a half,” he said.
However, Surdyke said he placed a call to a Yamaha distributor he has been dealing with for five decades.
“Yamaha makes a quality cart, and he said he was filling an order for a course, and that he could get 60 of their used carts for me. They’re in good shape, I’m told, and we’ll use them until we can get a fleet of new ones in a year or so,” Surdyke said.
He said he considered himself a casual golfer until the 1980s or so, when his family, who had taken over the day-to-day operations of his businesses “didn’t want me around so much,” he joked.
He said he played Crystal Highlands hundreds of times until it closed to the public.
“I’ve said I always wanted a golf course nearby, and that’s the main reason when we bought a second home at the Lake of the Ozarks. It’s on the Osage National Golf Course,” he said.
Surdyke said he sees the purchase of the course as “divine intervention” after the death of his wife of 60 years, Linda, on May 14 from complications that arose during a “routine” surgery.
“I think I’ve been given something to try to take my mind off that,” he said. “This was given to me for a purpose.”
As a tribute to his late wife, Surdyke named the limited liability corporation he established for the course LMLGolf.
“LML stands for Linda My Love,” he said.
