Jared Lucero was on the seventh tee at Sweetens Cove when he asked a question about the land next door. The Tennessee course already had an audience. Architect Rob Collins had ideas for cabins and a short course, but had struggled to make the economics work. Collins later recalled that, during the walk down the fairway, Lucero worked out a model for doing it. A recreational round had acquired a second purpose.
It is a useful introduction to a real estate executive whose working life increasingly revolves around other people’s leisure. Lucero’s own encounter with golf began at Dinaland, a public course in Vernal, Utah. His later projects have taken him into very different surroundings. There are lava fields, ski slopes and lakeside developments on the map now. The golfer and the financier keep finding reasons to have the same conversation.
Before the cameras, the capital
Lucero is the co-founder and CEO of Reef Capital Partners, with a seat on its board. His earlier career included the presidency of PCG. He attended Utah State University in 2001 and 2002, and became Reef’s chief executive in August 2018. Based in Alpine, he leads a business headquartered in nearby Lehi. The professional geography has remained rooted in Utah while the projects have traveled.
The financing background matters. Reef works in private credit, private equity and opportunistic real estate. Its platform also extends into development and operations. A project can therefore pass through several parts of the same organization, from the terms of an investment to the experience of the person who eventually visits. There is a considerable distance between those two ends of the work. Lucero’s job spans it.
Think of the decisions involved. Someone must decide whether a site is worth pursuing, how to finance it and what to build. Later, someone must make the finished destination useful. Reef’s combination puts those questions in conversation with each other. It also leaves fewer opportunities to treat the guest’s experience as somebody else’s problem. A building can be finished while the job of running it has only begun.
Three connected activities within Reef’s platform. A business diagram, not a forecast.
A deadline written in lava
Black Desert gave that span a particularly visible test. Reef became involved in the Ivins property in 2018. Lucero has acknowledged that the idea of a resort golf course there preceded his involvement. That distinction is revealing: the work was to carry an existing possibility toward a place that could receive paying guests, and eventually a tournament field.
The setting provides its own color scheme. Black basalt borders green fairways beneath southern Utah’s red cliffs. Tom Weiskopf and Phil Smith designed the course; it became Weiskopf’s final course design. Resort development brought accommodation, dining and other activities into the same landscape. For an investment executive, there were buildings and operations to consider. For a golfer, there was also the fairly immediate business of keeping a ball out of the rocks.
In October 2024, Black Desert hosted the first PGA TOUR tournament in Utah in more than 60 years. Matt McCarty won the inaugural championship. The lava was more than scenery: the tournament produced over 200 penalties associated with balls finding it. A landscape can be an effective advertisement and a rather expensive place to miss a fairway.
Utah’s return after more than 60 years.
Black Desert’s inaugural women’s tour event.
The LPGA Tour followed in May 2025, also returning to Utah after more than six decades. Its first Black Desert field included 17 of the top 25 in the women’s world rankings. These were separate sporting occasions with separate fields, bringing the same property into two professional calendars. Years of financing and development had become something people could follow one round at a time.
Lucero’s response when the PGA TOUR arrival was announced was brief. He described the occasion as special and wrote, “Feeling very blessed.” In July 2025, he stood with Bank of Utah president Branden Hansen, PGA TOUR executive Kelly Jensen and Utah Senate President Stuart Adams for the announcement of the tournament’s new title sponsor. The event became the Bank of Utah Championship. Securing the next chapter required another set of partners.
The shed is part of the appeal
Sweetens Cove asks a different set of questions. The South Pittsburg course has nine holes, a shed and a way of playing that encourages people to linger. Visitors buy day passes and can keep making circuits. The attraction depends partly on the freedom to choose another loop. A very small clubhouse has not prevented a very committed following.
Reef’s expansion partnership, announced in 2024, proposed overnight cabins, a short course, dining and a distillery. Those additions would let visitors stretch a day of golf into a stay. They also brought a delicate assignment: give people more to enjoy while preserving the qualities that made them care about the place in the first instance. The existing audience had something worth protecting.
Lucero’s interest in different kinds of golf helps explain the connection. Sweetens offers a contrast to the scale and setting of Black Desert. Reef’s current plans describe a 13-hole short course that can overlap with the original layout for cross-country play. The extra holes are meant to make room for invention. The business proposition still begins with a recognizable human request: can we go around again?
A mountain has more than one season
Near Park City, the design choices become another way of giving people variety. Marcella brings together Deer Valley ski access, Jordanelle Ridge golf and a Main Street setting. Skyline is Tiger Woods’ first mountain course. Its second 18-hole course, Ambush, comes from King Collins Dormer. Pairing different designers gives the development two distinct golfing identities rather than asking one course to satisfy every preference.
Lucero’s connection with King and Collins developed after the Sweetens visit. He later explained that the relationship helped make them a fit for Marcella, where the team wanted a different theme for the second course. Relationships established at one property could travel to another without requiring the two properties to look alike.
A smaller design detail captures the seasonal thinking: Marcella’s planned short course has a winter role as a sledding hill. The same ground can serve a different family outing when the snow comes. It is an appealingly practical adjustment to the mountain calendar. The children need not develop a putting stroke before they can appreciate the slope.
Cormont, Reef’s five-tower residential development at Deer Valley East Village, approaches the calendar through daily movement. Its plan places homes around a pedestrian village, with ski access, cafés and plazas close by, and the Jordanelle nearby for summer recreation. The objective is a stay whose parts are within reach of one another. Where a visitor goes after leaving the front door becomes a development question.
The next fairway faces a lake
At Tributer Resort in Virginia, the setting changes again. Reef acquired the property in 2018. The Lake Anna development already has Cutalong; in June 2026, it announced a second championship course from Tiger Woods’ TGR Design. The new course is planned as a private member offering. An announcement establishes the direction of the work, while construction and opening remain separate milestones.
TGR’s plan measures 7,310 yards across rolling farmland, hardwoods and pine groves. A ridge provides the setting for the clubhouse. The design emphasizes decisions and changes in terrain, giving the resort a second golf experience shaped by the site. Lake Anna supplies another reason to visit, beyond whatever happens to someone’s score.
The residential plan calls for more than 900 residences at full buildout. Golf villas and cottages form part of that wider development. These are plans for a community growing over time, with the obligations that accompany each stage. For Lucero, the challenge extends from arranging another design partnership to making the different uses of the property belong together.
The business of coming back
“transactional golf to experiential golf”
Jared Lucero, on the change he sees in golf
Lucero has described a shift from “transactional golf to experiential golf.” In his June 2026 interview, he connected golf communities with travel, investment and social life. He expects hospitality and residential property to become more closely connected with the game. That is his stated direction for the business, and it puts considerable weight on what happens between rounds.
His responsibilities now make that connection explicit. Alongside the CEO role, Reef lists him as President of its lifestyle division. Reef 365 links members, owners and investors across destinations through access, events and member services. The properties remain different places; the operating ambition is to make the relationship continue between visits.
For a guest, the test is pleasantly ordinary. Was the day worth the journey? Would another season offer something different? Is there someone you would bring next time? Lucero’s career has moved toward arranging the buildings, capital and partnerships around those decisions. Back at Sweetens, another round is always a tempting answer. A developer has to work out where everyone will sleep.