Imagine the luxury of walking out the door of your house and stepping onto your own private golf course. What most golf lovers only fantasize about is a reality for Dennis Albaugh.

Albaugh, a local business owner and developer, is building a state-of-the art private golf course on the property surrounding his home and office in Ankeny.

The course starts on the south side of Northeast 36th Street across from Otter Creek Golf Course and extends nearly a mile south parallel to Interstate 35. Albaugh calls his course Talons of Tuscany, a name inspired by the marble and jade eagle statues seen throughout the course and the Mediterranean-influenced architecture of his home and office.

The Ankeny native travels a great deal as chairman of Albaugh Inc., an international agribusiness company he founded 25 years ago, but he tries to spend quite a bit of time home in the summer so he can enjoy the course.

“A lot of times in the evenings, I’ll go out and play four or five holes,” said Albaugh, who plays golf about three or four times a week in the summer, both at his course and others. His love for the game started in high school, although he says he didn’t always have the time or money to play when he and wife, Susan, were raising their two daughters.

When Albaugh started buying land around his $4 million mansion – the most expensive home in Polk County – his plan was to develop building lots for homes. But he discovered that much of the land was in a flood plain because Four Mile Creek and Otter Creek ran through it. He then came up with the idea of turning the 98 acres of otherwise unusable land into a golf course. The Iowa Department of Natural Resources had to grant several permits before Albaugh could carry out his plans, since the department closely monitors how floodways are used.

“There were a lot more steps involved than I ever imagined,” Albaugh said.

From the time Albaugh took on the project, he decided it would not be a small-scale course with par-3 holes. He hired a course designer out of Cedar Rapids to design the 6,450-yard links. In the beginning, Albaugh and the designer, Mark Kurr, drove tractors into the once-dense timber that was to become the golf course to make decisions on the layout of the course. Albaugh continued his hands-on approach throughout the construction process, doing some of the seeding and tilling himself.

Tractors started moving dirt for the course construction in late 2004, the same year Albaugh moved into his home. The first nine holes were finished in June of last year, and 2 1/2 more holes have been completed since then. Albaugh expects to seed the remainder of the 19 holes in mid-August so they will be ready for use by next spring. The 19th hole will be used for tiebreakers, and it serves as an entrance to his office.

So far, Albaugh has shot par just once on the par-71 Talons of Tuscany. He and his employees utilize the course for both business and pleasure. On special days of the year, such as an employee’s birthday, the office sometimes closes early so everyone can golf. The course is also great for entertaining clients.

“It’s nice to talk customers out to play a round of golf and sit down in the clubhouse in the evening and have a barbecue,” he said.

The clubhouse, located on the bottom level of his office building, is equipped with a kitchen, bar, lots of seating and a large flat-screen TV. One of the clubhouse walls is painted with a mural of four of Albaugh’s favorite golfers: John Daly, Tiger Woods, Phil Mickelson and Ben Crenshaw.

Albaugh has spared no expense when it comes to the course. A computerized irrigation system keeps the grass watered, and a concrete cart path winds through the course. Instead of a traditional turf, Talons of Tuscany uses a dense fescue, a grass whose blades are close together, which makes the ball stand up nicely. The only thing the completed holes lack right now are sand traps. It’s no coincidence that Albaugh doesn’t like sand traps.

“I don’t necessarily like them (sand traps), but we will go back and put them in,” he said. He said all the greens are set up to have sand traps. “I wanted to get the course perfect this year before we go back and add the sand traps next year.”

Several items from Albaugh’s travels adorn the course, including the Chinese marble and jade eagle statues, wooden benches from Brazil and marble yardage markers from South Africa.

It takes a team of four full-time greenskeepers and up to 10 seasonal employees to maintain the course.

What does all this cost, you ask? That is something Albaugh doesn’t have a good answer for. Let’s just say he isn’t expecting a return on his investment. He hasn’t charged fees to anyone who has played the course, including several non-profit organizations that have hosted golf outings there.

“I don’t actually know what it costs,” he said. “It’s not something I enjoy tracking because I know I’ve put a lot of money into it already and I’m still spending money on it.

This is my first and only investment that makes zero sense because it doesn’t return any money.”

But, he adds, “It’s fun to have, and we’ve enjoyed it a lot.”

Sidebar  Cars: Another passion of Albaugh’s

Even though his golf course is still in the process of being finished, Dennis Albaugh is already working on his next project: a car museum. Construction is under way on the museum, which is adjacent to his office building, on the clubhouse level. The museum will showcase Albaugh’s collection of classic cars, mostly Chevrolet convertibles. His goal is to own at least one Chevy from every model year from 1912 through the 1970s. He now has 57 cars, with plans to buy more.

“The sensible thing to do would have been to put up a steel building,” Albaugh said. “But that wouldn’t fit with the look of the golf course.”

The museum is expected to be finished next spring.