2025 Tour Guide: KPMG Women’s PGA Championship
In the world of professional tournament golf, there may be no greater contrast in championship pedigree between the course playing host to an event and the person in charge of maintaining that course than what you’ll find in Frisco, Texas, the sprawling Dallas suburb located about 30 miles due north of downtown.
That’s where you’ll find Fields Ranch, the relatively new 36-hole facility — 46 holes if you include The Swing, the property’s 10-hole short course — that’s part of the PGA Frisco development along with the headquarters of the PGA of America and an Omni hotel and resort.
The East and West courses at Fields Ranch opened for play in the spring of 2023 and were designed to host major championship golf. But to date, that aspiration is still in its infancy — this year’s KPMG Women’s PGA Championship, June 19-22, on the Gil Hanse-designed East Course, is just the second big event to be contested at Fields Ranch.
Contrast that with Roger Meier, the facility’s director of golf course maintenance operations. He brings a deep history in major championship golf to his work at Fields Ranch, which made him an obvious choice to oversee operations at a facility that will ultimately host two PGA Championships in 2027 and 2034, another KPMG Women’s PGA in 2031 and a Senior PGA Championship in 2029 (after hosting its first in 2023).
“I love championship golf. There’s just a whole other level to what it takes to put these events on, and the camaraderie with your peers and the people who come in to support you is something else. It’s fun,” Meier says.
“That’s what intrigued me most about this project. During our initial conversations, what they were talking about and committing to was pretty unprecedented. There was a commitment from the PGA, from Omni, from the city of Frisco that was really exciting. It felt like the stars were aligning, and it was something I wanted to be a part of.”
Small town to the big-time
Meier grew up in the small town of Trumansburg in upstate New York and was introduced to golf course management through a job at the city’s public golf course. With encouragement from superintendent Mike Addicott (now at Newman Municipal Golf Course in Ithaca, N.Y.), he enrolled in the turfgrass program at the nearby SUNY Cobleskill.
His experience there and the degree he would ultimately earn spurred him to jobs with the PGA Tour’s TPC network before he landed his first head superintendent position at Chariot Run Golf Club in Laconia, Ind., just over the state line from Louisville, Ky.
And it was in the Derby City, at Valhalla Golf Club, where he would ultimately get his first taste of championship golf. In 2010, Valhalla’s longtime superintendent, Mark Wilson, announced his retirement, and the PGA of America — which owned Valhalla then — picked Meier to succeed him from a deep pool of talented, experienced turfgrass managers.
“It was really a stab in the dark for me to apply (at Valhalla). I thought it was a win just to be asked to interview,” Meier says. “But I was blessed that they offered me the job, and I ultimately hosted three major championships there and oversaw a big renovation in 2012 (in advance of the 2014 PGA Championship). It was such a rewarding experience.”
New challenges
Meier moved to Fields Ranch and the PGA Frisco project in 2019, not long after the PGA of America committed to relocating their longtime national headquarters from Palm Beach Gardens, Fla., to the suburbs of Dallas.
His experiences at Valhalla made him a perfect fit there. On the construction side, he’d work with golf course architects Gil Hanse and Beau Welling to build an unrivaled golf campus that would include a pair of championship golf courses, a short course and a huge practice green.
On the tournament side, hosting majors was planned even before a shovel of dirt had been turned on the project, so Meier’s track record at Valhalla fit right in with the PGA’s plans to bring 26 championship events to Fields Ranch in its first 12 years of operation, including those two PGA Championships.
Construction on the golf courses began in earnest in 2020. The goal was to complete the entire development — golf courses, hotel, PGA headquarters — by 2022, but COVID threw a wrench in those plans. While the golf courses were ready in 2022, other elements of the project fell behind, so the official opening was delayed until 2023, when Fields Ranch East successfully hosted the Senior PGA.
As much as COVID tested his team during construction, Meier notes that the massive scope of PGA Frisco was an even bigger factor that had to be managed.
“Really, the biggest challenge with this project as a whole was just the scale of it. I mean, it’s a huge facility,” he says. “The entire development, the entire tract of land, is 2,500 acres. We ended up taking 600 acres for the golf course. They say everything is bigger in Texas, and that’s definitely true here.”
Tournament tested
During the final stages of construction at Fields Ranch, Meier admits that it took extra focus to avoid being distracted by the major championships that were on the horizon for the East Course.
Thankfully, Meier assembled an all-star team of senior leaders that helped crews stay focused on the task at hand and resist the urge to spend too much time thinking about the 2023 Senior PGA, this year’s KPMG Women’s PGA and beyond. That team now features Bryce Yates, managing superintendent of golf and grounds; Nic Zickefoose, Fields Ranch East superintendent; and Zach Barber, Fields Ranch West superintendent.
“Bryce was with me at Valhalla, and he was one of the first ones that I thought, ‘I’ve got to get this guy to Texas for with me,’” Meier says. “Super smart, great individual, great leader. I knew I needed him in my hip pocket to help me with this massive project.
“And we’ve had a great group of other superintendents with us, too, through construction, grow-in and now guys like Nic and Zach for regular operations and tournament prep. They make everything go here.”
Meier says that the lessons learned from hosting the Senior PGA in May 2023 will help provide an improved road map for preparations for the KPMG Women’s PGA on everything from maintenance of the bermudagrass playing surfaces (TifEagle on greens and Northbridge on everything else) to tournament logistics.
“We learned a lot from the Senior PGA, not only from an agronomic standpoint and how the golf course is continuing to evolve and mature but even from the spectator experience and how things flow around the golf course,” Meier says.
And how to apply what was learned during the first championship won’t just affect this year’s tournament, Meier says. Data is being collected and analyzed to incrementally improve preparations for each subsequent championship.
“We’re going to host 26 PGA events here, so we’re learning as we go and trying to understand the dynamics of the facility from an agronomic side,” he explains. “We’ve been collecting information for day one, really, as we were constructing the (East) course and seeing Gil’s vision, what direction the holes would run, how things would align, where the wind would come from.
“We’ve worked very closely with Kerry Haigh (the PGA’s chief championship officer) on collecting data during the Senior PGA, during advance week, studying weather conditions, assessing what the native areas would look like. That event was in May, and the Women’s PGA is in June, and a month can make a big difference here. But we’re learning what we can and trying to be ready for any eventuality.”
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