In the Beginning There Were T
wo
I
n the begining there were two individuals hired by the newly-established Kiawah Island Golf Resort who
clearly came to stay. Almost 40 years later Roy Barth and M.C. Hayward are still Resort employees, still involved in
the tasks they came to perform. They came for different reasons with different plans. They took a job but somewhere
along the way the job became a lifetime. These are two very special people.
Roy Barth
Roy Barth admits that had he been single 38 years ago when he took a perilous ride down Bohicket Road
(where he swears he had to brake for a feral pig) for an interview at a place he had never heard of called Kiawah
Island, he would never have stayed two years. But he was
a family man with a small baby then. He was leaving
a hectic life on the professional tennis tour and slowly
became grateful for the stability of staying in one place,
especially a place as beautiful as Kiawah. When he
arrived, the inn had a total of 35 rooms available and the
pace of life on the small barrier island barely moved. Four
decades later he presides over the country’s premier tennis
venue. The Roy Barth Tennis Center sits in a wooded
setting adjacent to The Sanctuary and Roy recalls planning
it with Mark Permar who kept his eye on the surrounding
habitat as they worked on its layout.
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