How Greenville native Beau Welling climbed to the top of a global curling organization
Yes, the president of the World Curling Federation is from Greenville, South Carolina.
His name is Beau Welling, a professional golf course designer who lived 18 years before ever hearing of the sport he’s now responsible for leading on a global scale.
The former J.L. Mann Patriot and Brown University graduate was in high school the first time he saw people curling on TV but was in his mid-30s when the sport finally slid into his consciousness.
“The more I learn, the more fascinated I get. I think it’s because it’s a strategic game, which sort of fits my mind; it’s an ancient, Scottish game—just like golf,” he says.
To the naked eye, curling is sliding large stones along a sheet of ice into a target area. But for Welling, who studied physics at Brown, it’s a lot more than that.
“The nerd in me likes the science of curling—of trajectories and friction—all that kind of stuff,” he says, recalling the 2006 Winter Olympics in Turin, Italy, when he watched as many as 10 hours of curling a day from his couch. “I couldn’t get enough of the stuff.”
From Capital to President of Curling
Two weeks later, Welling found himself in Bemidji, Minnesota, the unofficial capital of ther sport in the United States, attending the U.S. Curling Championships as a guest of honor.
“Everyone was like ‘Oh my god, you’re the guy from South Carolina!'”
Welling, who worried he’d be bored in Bemidji, now chuckles about what became a nine-day stay. “People took me ice fishing . . . dinners . . . drinking . . . the town threw me a birthday party . . . just the nicest people ever,” he says.
By the time he left, he’d been appointed “Southern Ambassador for the Sport of Curling,” and was, within months, on the USA Curling board.
He attended the Vancouver Olympics in 2010 as an official member of USA Curling and in the years since, has applied some of what he knows of the Professional Golfing Association’s business model to help monetize and expand curling’s influence and reach.
Fast-forward to 2018, when Welling was appointed to the board of the World Curling Federation, using the opportunity to help revamp the federation’s strategic plan while making his mark as a communicator and collaborator.
As a result, he easily won his bid to become the federation’s president in late September 2022.
“I got talked into running by some larger nations,” he says. “And I’ve been drinking out of a fire hydrant ever since.”
There’s little doubt the position will demand a lot of Welling, who, as founder and CEO of Beau Welling Design in Greenville, leads a talented team of golf course designers the rest of the time.
But he’s okay with it.
“What keeps me going is the people in the curling community,” he says. “If the world had more curlers, the world would be a better place.”
Join a local curling club by visiting palmettocurling.com
