course restoration – Syndication Server

Photos: Restored Tot Hill Farm in North Carolina offers unique Mike Strantz thrill ride

Feast your eyes on the sometimes wicked artistry of architect Mike Strantz at Tot Hill Farm.

Quirky. Unusual. Remarkable. Bizarre. Artistic. Surreal. Unorthodox. Wild. Weird. Polarizing. Unique.

All those descriptions and plenty more have been used in recent decades to describe the golf courses designed by the late Mike Strantz, whose layouts might best be described as fun for players looking for something completely different, classical orthodoxy be damned.

Having sharpened his pencil as a design associate to Tom Fazio, Strantz created or renovated only nine courses that bear his name as lead designer, most of them in his native Carolinas or nearby Virginia. He passed away in 2005 at the age of 50, a victim of cancer. A hands-on designer, he would spend weeks walking sites or exploring on horseback with a can of spray paint to mark features he either wanted to incorporate or build into the landscape.

Trained in studio art, Strantz would hand-sketch in great detail each hole of a course before it was built, then lead his team of shapers in making his art come to life. Those golf holes often include nearly impossible-to-reach hole locations, wild bunkering, extreme greens, eye-popping mounding and dramatic slopes – all elements beloved by a growing cadre of adventure-seeking golfers.

Imagine their despair when one of Strantz’s courses falls into disrepair, as happened with several of his layouts, especially in the wake of an industry-wide financial struggle starting in 2008.

Tot Hill Farm Golf Club in Asheboro, North Carolina, is one such example, having opened in 2000 but its former operators lacking the revenues to maintain and present the course as Strantz intended. Trees choked out fairways and strategic lines, bunker edges crumbled and playing surfaces suffered in recent years.

But that all started to change early in 2022 when native South Carolinian Pat Barber bought the course and amenities. Already the owner of two courses nearer the coast in the state – The Links at Stono Ferry and The Plantation Course at Edisto – Barber recognized an opportunity to restore Tot Hill Farm as acclaim for Strantz’s designs continues to grow, especially with the increasing popularity of the nearby Strantz-designed Tobacco Road.

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“Working with the course itself, the overall natural beauty, that really attracted us to the property,” said Greg Wood, the director of operations for all three of Barber’s course. “I’ve seen Mike in video interviews saying that he felt this was one of the best pieces of properties that he got to use in his design work. All we could see was the potential.”

A restoration of Tot Hill began in the spring of 2022, and it’s easy now to say this layout has rejoined the brief list of can’t-miss Strantz designs. It would be oversight for any Strantz fan to head to the nearby golf mecca of Pinehurst or the Carolina coast and miss the incredible amount of work that has gone into turning around the rolling and rollicking Tot Hill Farm.

The site always held so much promise. With more than 250 of feet of elevation change and boulders littering the landscape, the holes frequently heave up, down and across rambling creeks, the greens often perched perfectly into hillsides. The whole place just needed somebody to come along and scrape away 20 years of hard times.

More than 1,500 trees were cleared, re-establishing fairway widths and playing lines. Several arbitrary bunkers that weren’t part of Strantz’s design were removed, and his original traps were reinvigorated. Players must plot their way around them, and with the corridors having been widened, there are choices available instead of the previous condition of bowling alley tightness between the branches that choked out shot selection as well the health of the turf.

The greens were rebuilt and surfaced with Prizm Zoysia, a new strain of grass that promises to withstand Asheboro’s cold winters that are too frigid for Bermuda grass and the hot summers that are too steamy for bent grass to thrive. The new surfaces are still growing in, but during a late-fall round they had started to pick up some steam and promise even more to come. An interesting fact about this strain of zoysia: The grass covering is so dense, it’s almost impossible to leave a pitch mark on a green, and that same characteristic is promising for the preferred firm and bouncy conditions.

Wood is quick to call all the work a restoration effort, not a renovation. Crews worked in painstaking detail to put back what Strantz had intended, frequently using the architect’s hand-drawings – those sketches now decorate the new clubhouse that has been created in an idyllic old farmhouse, replacing a trailer that served that function before. The restorers also had access to more than 40 hours of construction video featuring the original design.

“Over time, we figured out how it’s supposed to be,” Wood, a longtime PGA of America member, said of Strantz’s design which is a likely contender for future inclusion among Golfweek’s Best public-access courses in North Carolina. “And for somebody like me, figuring out the puzzle and the why – even now, as I walk a hole, I’ll find something new.”

Playing Tot Hill is a mixture of various wows and walking on eggshells, so far as the scorecard goes. Strantz clearly wasn’t interested in building easy golf, and several holes prove Tot Hill is no exception. Much like Tobacco Road just more than an hour’s drive away, Tot Hill Farm in particular punishes wayward approach shots, the greens frequently seeming to shrug off approach shots with a “not-good-enough” attitude.

Strantz included sections on several greens that might prove inaccessible to all but a tour player’s towering precision. The skinny back right hole location on the par-3 third hole, hidden behind sand aside a hill with a creek just steps off the back, will likely prove to an average player to be a no-go.

Another thrilling tear-jerker is the drop-down rear portion of the 10^th green before the putting surface tumbles steeply downhill to form a double green with No. 12, the center portion now covered in tight fringe instead of even lower green-height zoysia. Just try and hit the back right portion of the par-3 13^th green, hidden beyond a stream and behind a boulder.

There are other oddities. For example, several tees are routed in such a way that players must double back and play directly across previous holes, as noted on No. 4 and possibly No. 14 if a restored tee atop a hill is put into play. Such routing can create odd bottlenecks, and while it might be manageable on a private course with limited rounds, it could prove problematic on a packed day of public play.

These and other examples might cause a facial tic among some classic architecture purists. But with plenty of width now available, a thoughtful golfer can find a way around all the trouble, choosing to play to safer sections of the greens on each of the examples above, then putting the putter to use in search of par. All around Tot Hill Farm is danger to a golfer’s score, and close by is a safer route. It’s up to the golfer to put aside ego and expectation, accepting the limitations of what Strantz offered in some places while pouncing on opportunities when friendlier hole locations are identified. There are birdies out there.

In short, it’s all about the strategy. And that might begin even before the first tee shot, as the frustrations of Tot Hill Farm’s difficulties most greatly affect stroke play. This could be one of the best match-play courses in the U.S., for those who embrace that format.

“If you come back and play this course several times, the thing you’ll find intriguing is there are multiple ways to play every hole,” Wood said. “When I first took on the project, I didn’t really understand that. But as I continue on and on with it, I find that very intriguing and I’m enjoying it more and more.”

The layout reopened in the fall of 2023, and bookings are picking up speed for 2024. Green fees are relatively low, currently $70 through the winter with a peak of $125 planned for the new year – carts are an extra $25. Tot Hill Farm is also appearing as a packaged option around Pinehurst, which is less than an hour to the south via Interstate 74.

The best way to enjoy Strantz’s work at Tot Hill Farm might be to race across the Carolinas, playing Tot Hill and Tobacco Road in North Carolina before heading to the coast to sample Strantz’s Caledonia Golf and Fish Club and True Blue near Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. For an adventurous group of golfers, that would be an unforgettable trek.

And it’s just such players that are most likely to book and rebook rounds at Tot Hill Farm. It’s not a classical layout, and it might be too severe in places to tickle every player’s fancy. But the recent surge in popularity for Strantz courses, particularly on Instagram and X-the-former-Twitter, will surely help Tot Hill’s operators fill the tee sheets.

“We think the adventure-style golf course, Mike was kind of at the forefront of it, and we feel like we’re bringing something that was almost forgotten back to people,” Wood said. “We feel really fortunate to be a part of it. Unfortunately, Mike passed away way too soon. For us to be caretakers of a Mike Strantz course, we find that to be a real honor.”

Here are more photos of the course:

Gil Hanse, Jim Wagner restore Olympic Club’s Lake Course to historical glory

Gil Hanse and Jim Wagner looked to the past to set up Olympic Club for the future.

SAN FRANCISCO – From the first tee to the 18^th green, golfers will notice plenty of differences on the recently renovated Lake Course at the Olympic Club, a layout that already had seen plenty of changes since it was first designed in 1924.

In 2020, Gil Hanse and Jim Wagner were hired to renovate the Lake Course, which has several top-tier professional and amateur events scheduled for coming years. The layout ranked No. 8 on Golfweek’s Best 2023 ranking of top private courses in California, and it was No. 44 on Golfweek’s Best 2023 list of all classic courses built before 1960 in the U.S.

As they did at several other major championship courses including 2023 U.S. Open host Los Angeles Country Club, Hanse and Wagner planned for the future by studying the past.

Hanse Design associate Tommy Naccarato said that meant researching old aerial photos from the 1920s and ‘30s as well as Spring Valley Water Company’s plans. That allowed the team to identify fairway bunkers that had been abandoned over the decades, and the historic research also provided clues on fairway widths, approaches and green surrounds.

Olympic Club Lake Course — The Spring Valley Water Company’s historical plans show the routing of the the Lake Course at Olympic Club. (Courtesy of Hanse Golf Course Design)

Ultimately the Hanse plan would call for the reintroduction of fairway bunkers on Nos. 4, 9, 14, 16, 17 and 18. Other refinements included the expansion of greens by roughly 33 percent to provide more pinnable space, widening fairways by roughly 25 percent to better fit the land, expanding approaches to greens to offer more ground-game options and converting numerous green surrounds from fairway to rough for consistency course-wide.

The final piece of the plan was the creation of a new seventh hole to better connect Nos. 6 and 8 after the 2009 shifting of the tees on No. 8. The new No. 7 remains an uphill and drivable par 4, but the green was shifted down a hill to the right. The tee shot offers numerous options, the best of which come when players challenge a new fairway bunker about 50 yards from the green, Hanse said via zoom at a September reopening event.

Players can notice the differences from the first tee shot, where the removal of dense shrubs between the first tee and second green has opened a view across the property and down to Lake Merced, all the way to the 18^th, where fairway bunkers were added and the green was expanded.

All told, the refinements have provided the Lake Course with a more consistent Golden Age look and feel as well as improved playability for day-to-day play.

The Lake Course offers a rich history that Hanse and Wagner were able to tap into. William Watson and Sam Whiting designed the first version of the Lake in 1924, but storm damage led to a Whiting redesign in 1927.

Starting in 1955 the Lake Course became a familiar home to USGA championships, hosting U.S. Opens in 1955, ‘66, ‘87, ‘98 and 2012. It also hosted the U.S. Amateur in 1958, ‘81, and 2007, as well as the U.S. Women’s Open in 2021.

Throughout its championship history, plenty of work was done to the course while leaving the routing intact. Before the 1955 U.S. Open, architect Robert Trent Jones Sr. toughened the course. In 2009 the uphill par-3 eighth hole was shifted to the north and the greens were converted from poa to bent grass. And in 2016 a bunker renovation was executed under the direction of Bill Love.

The course played beautifully during a media event thanks to the work of director of grounds Troy Flanagan and his team that worked closely with Hanse’s team, including shaper Shaymus Maley who was on site every day throughout the project.

“Tapping into his knowledge and enthusiasm allowed us to do a better job and be much more responsive on how the golf course plays,” Hanse said of Flanagan. “I can’t think of better greens I’ve played on for an opening day.”

The praise of the course was music to the ears of Olympic Club president Jim Murphy, who led the club through what is always a nervous time for a membership.

“First there was uncertainty, then there was anticipation and now there is jubilation,” Murphy said of his members’ response to Hanse and Wagner’s work.

Those sentiments were echoed by longtime Golfweek’s Best rater and Olympic Club member Pat Murphy, who said, “I’ve been a member of the Olympic Club for 65 years, and previously served as green chair, on the board and as vice president. I feel this renovation has done a great job of honoring our past and positioning us for the future. The golf course is as beautiful, fun and engaging as it has ever been in all my years.”

There is no doubt the course refinements will be embraced by the membership, but perhaps the bigger question is how will the course play in championships. The Lake Course is set to host the 2025 U.S. Amateur, 2028 PGA Championship, 2030 U.S. Women’s Amateur and 2033 Ryder Cup.

The amateur events and the Ryder Cup should be able to tee off while maintaining the added fairway width thanks to their match-play formats. It will be interesting to see how chief championships officer Kerry Haigh and the PGA of America prepare the course for the 2028 PGA Championship, for which conventional wisdom would suggest the narrowing of fairways to add challenge. But a potential ball rollback, more hole locations from which to choose and more rough around the greens may see them embrace the added width – we can only hope.

Like big bunkers? Check out Tyler Rae’s restoration of Wakonda Club in Iowa

Big, steep bunkers and fresh greens highlight the work at Wakonda Club in Iowa.

Wakonda Club in Des Moines, Iowa, is nearing completion of a restoration at the hands of golf architect Tyler Rae and his associate, Jim Ryan Jr. Work is nearly complete with just a few items left as the course grows in.

Wakonda Club opened in 1922 with a design by William Langford, who started laying out courses during the golden era of golf design. Langford typically worked with partner Theodore J. Moreau through the early 1940s before continuing on his own later.

Along with Wakonda Club, Langford’s highest-rated courses include Lawsonia Links in Wisconsin, Texarkana Country Club in Arkansas, Skokie Country Club in Illinois and Culver Academies in Indiana. Wakonda Club, as judged before the restoration, ranked No. 4 in Iowa in Golfweek’s Best 2023 ranking of private clubs in each state.

Wakonda Club has an extensive competitive pedigree, having hosted many tournaments including the 1963 U.S. Amateur won by Deane Beman, who would go on to play on the PGA Tour before becoming the Tour’s longtime commissioner. The club has hosted the Principal Charity Classic on the PGA Tour Champions since 2013, with Stephen Ames having won it this year.

Rae has an extensive list of credits to his name, including historical restorations and new builds. His other projects include Lookout Mountain Club in Georgia, Brookside Country Club in Ohio, Mountain Lake in Florida and Brae Burn in Massachusetts.

As noted in an email from the club, Rae’s extensive plan for Wakonda has included:

All new tee boxes, adding length to the championship tees while shortening the forward tees.
Ten-plus acres of fairway expansions, reinstalling width to the course. This includes joining two sets of fairways at Nos. 8 and 10 and Nos. 11 and 15.
Added five new greens (Nos. 2, 5, 9, 15 and 17) using themes from Langford and Moreau’s best work.
Used 22,000 square feet of sod from the old greens that were rebuilt to expand the greens on the 13 other holes.
Rebuilt every bunker to Langford and Moreau’s style, and reclaimed many bunkers that had been grassed over – L&M were not afraid to build deep bunkers with tall, nearly vertical faces. (Check the photos below for examples.)
Added XGD drainage to every green and installed a new Toro irrigation system.
Rebuilt the short-game practice area.

Check out several photos of the work below:

Check out photos of every hole at Cherry Hills for the 2023 U.S. Amateur

Check out the first par 5 in the U.S. with an island green, and every other hole at Cherry Hills.

Cherry Hills Country Club near Denver wrapped up a multi-year renovation in 2022, putting the course in prime condition for this week’s U.S. Amateur.

The William Flynn-designed layout in Cherry Hills Village opened in 1923 and was the site of several major championships: three U.S. Opens (including Arnold Palmer’s 1960 victory, his only U.S. Open title), two PGA Championships, one U.S. Women’s Open and two previous U.S. Opens.

Cherry Hills ranks No. 66 on Golfweek’s Best 2023 list of top classic courses built before 1960 in the U.S. It also ranks No. 3 among all private clubs in Colorado.

During the renovation, architect Tom Doak and his Renaissance Golf Design team, largely under the direction of Renaissance associate Eric Iverson on the ground, restored several greens to their original size. Bunkers also were reworked to reintroduce their original intent. The cross bunkering on the 17^thhole, for example, was restored on what was the first par 5 to feature an island green in the U.S. Perhaps most striking: Little Dry Creek, which in no way is actually dry, was brought more into play on several holes.

Check out the photos of each hole below, courtesy of the club and photographer Evan Schiller.

PGA Championship: Oak Hill partnered with Andrew Green to restore Donald Ross’s Golden Era architecture that had gone missing

Starting in 2015, the club decided to put the Donald Ross flair back into the course.

Nothing remains static on a golf course for long.

Grass grows, often in new places and in unexpected ways. Bunkers shift as sand is blasted out by players. Trees grow, blocking light, air and playing lines. Undulations shift on greens, which themselves often shrink over years and decades. Whether through intentional architectural efforts or natural evolution, every golf course changes in time.

Even those that host major championships. Consider Oak Hill Country Club’s East Course in Rochester, New York, site of the 2023 PGA Championship. The East ranks No. 12 among New York’s elite roster of clubs on Golfweek’s Best list of top private courses in each state, and it’s No. 42 on Golfweek’s Best list of classic courses in the U.S.

Opened in 1926 with a design by architectural legend Donald Ross, the East had undergone many changes over the decades, many of them in pursuit of additional challenge to the best players in the world. Among its many championships, the East has hosted three PGA Championships (1980, ’03 and ’13) and three U.S. Opens (1956, ’68 and ’89), with winners including the likes of Jack Nicklaus, Lee Trevino and Curtis Strange. Add to those events a rich history of amateur and senior events, plus the 1995 Ryder Cup, and Oak Hill’s rich championship history clearly ranks among the best clubs in the world.

MORE: PGA Championship live updates

The greens for Nos. 4 and 5 at Oak Hill Country Club’s East Course in Rochester, New York (Photo: Gabe Gudgel/Golfweek)

But the course had changed dramatically over the years, losing much of its Ross flavor. Robert Trent Jones tweaked the East in the 1950s and ’60s, including – in the name of spectator flow – the replacement of a par 4 considered by many to be among the best in the country.

In the 1970s, George and Tom Fazio further modernized the layout, redesigning three holes – the fifth, sixth and 15th – and moving the 18th green. While these changes were all implemented in the interest of increased difficulty for touring professionals, the club received criticism about eliminating too much of Ross’s original design.

Add in naturally occurring changes to the course over the years, and club officials knew it was time to make some changes.

“It’s just like owning a home in some regard. You always have to do some housekeeping, always have to do some updating,” said Jeff Corcoran, Oak Hill’s manager of golf courses and grounds. “And I think the progression of the game dictates a lot of the work you need to do, in some regards, if you want to be a golf course that hosts major championships.”

Starting in 2015, the club decided to put the Ross flair back into the course. It hired architect Andrew Green, who the club said worked with Corcoran; Jeff Sluman, PGA Tour professional and Rochester native; and an East Course Restoration Committee led by Tim Thaney and Jim McKenna. The club said its objectives were to add length where possible, create more forward tees for members, expand areas where cups could be cut into greens and to evaluate options for holes that had been changed over the years. Green used Ross’s original drawings and historical photos to determine the best course of action in restoring the layout.

“Donald Ross set the East Course at Oak Hill Country Club on a stunning piece of ground where the holes turn direction and flow over the property in an inspired fashion,” Green – who has established himself as a restoration expert with such work completed at Wannamoisett, Inverness, Congressional and several other such classic layouts – told the club at the outset of the restoration. “We will utilize every ounce of historic data to reflect the strategy, style and intent of Ross with a keen eye on the way the game of golf is played today. The results will protect the legacy of Oak Hill for decades to come.”

The newly renovated sixth hole at Oak Hill Country Club’s East Course in Rochester, N.Y. (Gary Kellner/PGA of America)

Work wrapped up in 2019, with each of the 18 greens having been rebuilt to U.S. Golf Association specifications with enhanced drainage to provide firm playing conditions. All the bunkers were rebuilt with improved drainage and some were relocated, and they are now more classically Ross in appearance. An overabundance of trees of was removed to improve playing conditions, open vistas and reestablish playing lines. More than 175,000 square feet of new bent grass was installed on the putting surfaces and approaches, the club said, and Green led the restoration of green sizes and sometimes the alteration of existing contours to reestablish classic hole locations that had been lost in time.

“The big thing people are going to see is a tremendous amount of variety in the daily setup, because there are going to be hole locations that members haven’t seen for maybe 40, 50 years,” Green said in a club video commemorating the restoration. “It’s going to add to the aura and how great a major championship venue that it is.”

Most important, the three holes that been altered by previous designers were rebuilt to better match the intent of Ross, even if it was impossible to rebuild them exactly.

“Nos. 5, 6, 15 and to a lesser extent 18 had been the three or four holes that have been the most vilified here at Oak Hill,” Corcoran said. “They are the holes that were redone prior to the ’80 PGA. As we were walking around, we were like, if we’re going to all this trouble on the East Course, shouldn’t we rectify this biggest perceived problem?

“It really came down to, if we were going to redo something, how would we redo it in keeping the original architectural intent that Donald Ross had envisioned of this property? Andrew is phenomenal at that.”

The newly renovated fifth hole at Oak Hill Country Club’s East Course in Rochester, N.Y. (Gary Kellner/PGA of America)

Green designed a new fifth hole, a par 3 named Little Poison, in the same spot that held a par-3 fifth for the 1968 U.S. Open. The new green is slightly elevated and surrounded by Ross-inspired bunkers, with a wide range of flagstick locations and assorted challenges for any player who misses the putting surface on approach.

The club said the new par-4 sixth “sympathetically represents” Ross’s original par 4. Named Double Trouble, the hole crosses Allen’s Creek – a prominent feature throughout any round on the East – and can be stretched beyond 500 yards in a championship.

The new par-3 15th hole, named Plateau, removes a pond introduced during the Fazios’ renovation in the 1970s and reintroduces a large swale aside the “Postage Stamp” style of green that is long and narrow.

“They just feel like they flow,” Corcoran said of the new holes. “When you used to go to the old fifth and sixth holes, you would get to those holes and go, it just doesn’t flow, it doesn’t feel right. Anybody who had a little bent toward golf course architecture could definitely see it.

“Restoring that architectural intent, there’s just something very satisfying about that and knowing that future generations are going to get 18 contiguous holes to play out here. That’s a pretty special thing.”

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Photos: Major championship site Cherry Hills near Denver wraps up decade-long restoration

These photos of a restored Cherry Hills will have you dreaming of Colorado golf.

It’s happy 100^th to Cherry Hills Country Club near Denver.

The club in Cherry Hills Village, Colorado – where Arnold Palmer won his only U.S. Open in 1960 – has completed a decade-long restoration of its William Flynn-designed course that opened in 1923. Among many large events, Cherry Hills has been the host site of three U.S. Opens, two PGA Championships, one U.S. Women’s Open and two U.S. Amateurs, and it will again host the Amateur in 2023.

Architect Tom Doak and his Renaissance Golf Design team, largely under the direction of Renaissance associate Eric Iverson on the ground, have restored several greens to their original size matching Flynn’s intent, and bunkers were reworked to reintroduce their original intent. The cross bunkering on the 17^thhole, for example, was restored on what was the first par 5 to feature an island green in the U.S.

Perhaps most striking: Little Dry Creek, which in no way is actually dry, was brought more into play on several holes.

The club commissioned Doak in 2007 to develop a restoration plan to focus on strategy while adding length where necessary for future championships. Before completion of the restoration, Cherry Hills tied for No. 70 on Golfweek’s Best 2022 list of classic courses built before 1960 in the U.S. and was the third-ranked private course in Colorado.

Nos. 7 and 14 of the restored Cherry Hills Country Club in Denver (Courtesy of Cherry Hills/Brian Walters)

“The transformation that Tom Doak and Eric Iverson of Renaissance Golf Design have brought to William Flynn’s classic design brings extraordinary pride to our membership,” Cherry Hills president David Keyte said in a media release announcing the completion of the project. “In 2022 we celebrated 100 years as a club, and in 2023 we will be celebrating the centennial of our first round of golf at Cherry Hills, which coincides with us hosting the U.S. Amateur, which is very exciting. The restored shot values on display next summer will certainly remind the golfing world of Cherry Hills’ timelessness and stature as a world-class championship venue.”

Photos: Grande Dunes Resort Course in Myrtle Beach to reopen with fresh, expanded greens and better bunkers

A four-month project restored the greens and improved the bunkers at Grande Dunes Resort Course in Myrtle Beach.

Grande Dunes Resort Course in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, will reopen Sept. 15 with restored greens, refreshed bunkers and an overhauled clubhouse.

Architect John A. Harvey and his team began the project in May on the course originally designed by Roger Rulewich and opened in 2001.

Much of the work focused on the greens, which were returned to their original dimensions – nearly 40,000 square feet of putting surface was reclaimed in all. The greens were sprigged with fresh TifEagle Bermuda grass. Harvey’s team also cored out the floors of the bunkers and installed Capillary Concrete bunker liners, which improves drainage.

The clubhouse will feature a new restaurant, expanded outdoor seating and a larger pro shop.

“We are delighted with the progress in all three phases of the Grande Dunes renovation,” said Founders Group International president Steve Mays in a media release. FGI owns 21 courses in Myrtle Beach.

“We allowed four months for the completion of the project, ensuring the course will be in spectacular condition from the moment we welcome players back,” Mays said. “As we enter the homestretch and you see the grass growing on the greens and the work being done on the bunkers, it only heightens our anticipation. I can’t wait to play the course again, and hopefully the golfers who flock to the area this fall feel the same way.”

Check out the photos of Grande Dunes below, as seen as the restoration wraps up and the new putting surfaces grow in.

Pinehurst No. 8 reopens with new greens, faster and firmer playing conditions

Work includes new TifEagle putting surfaces, refreshed bunkers and tree removal.

Pinehurst No. 8, designed by Tom Fazio and opened in 1996, has undergone extensive agronomic and infrastructure enhancements this summer and will reopen Friday, Sept. 2.

The course, built to commemorate the resort’s centennial anniversary, ranks as the No. 7 public-access layout in a stacked state, as judged by Golfweek’s Best raters. The resort’s famed Pinehurst No. 2 course is the top-ranked public-access layout in North Carolina, the No. 4 course ranks second in the state, and the No. 9 and No. 7 courses also make the top 15 in the state.

The work to No. 8 included new TifEagle greens, restored bunkers with fresh sand, improved drainage throughout the course and the removal of invasive trees that blocked sunlight and views. The fairways also were “fraise” mowed, a disruptive process that removes years of thatch and undesired organic matter to provide faster, firmer playing surfaces.

“No. 8 now appears crisper to the eye and plays firmer and faster, the way Tom Fazio originally intended it,” Pinehurst Resort director of agronomy Bob Farren, who oversaw the work, said in a media release announcing the news. “Fazio, (resort owner) Bob Dedman and (resort president) Tom Pashley all agreed that No. 8 should retain its original, commemorative design. As such, these changes are aesthetic and agronomic with no alterations to the course’s architecture.”

There’s plenty more work being done at the resort including the renovation of the Carolina Hotel, on which Phase 1 of work is being completed. Other work at the hotel includes upgrades to the Ryder Cup Terrace that wraps around much of the building, which now will include areas with fire pits and soft seating near the Ryder Cup Lounge.

Check out these photos of No. 8.

Photos: Westchester Hills Golf Club in New York completes renovation by Rees Jones

Rees Jones completes facelift of the 109-year-old layout just north of New York City.

Architect Rees Jones has wrapped up a $3.5 million renovation at Westchester Hills Golf Club in White Plains, New York, that was undertaken to improve the functionality and aesthetics of the 109-year-old course just north of New York City.

Westchester Hills’ greens, chipping areas and fairways were expanded, new tees were added and the bunkers were renovated on the layout designed by Peter Clark, the club’s first head professional, and opened in 1913. Jones also installed a new 6,700 square-foot practice green.

“Our design was to liven a classic-style golf course while upgrading the course’s playability and maintenance standards,” Jones said in a media release announcing the completion of the renovation. “The members at Westchester Hills strive for excellence, and we are proud to be included in their success. We fully expect the golf course’s new features to take the Hills golf experience to a new level in the private club community.”

The details of the renovation:

Added 20,000 square feet of green expansions.
Added 50,000 square feet of chipping expansions.
Added 30,000 square feet of fairway expansions.
Installed XGD drainage in all greens.
Upgraded and renovated all bunkers with new sand and capillary concrete drainage.
Installed 10 acres of new sod throughout the course.
Installed a new irrigation system consisting of 12 miles of pipe, 1,250 sprinkler heads and 54 quick connects.
The club also renovated its pool area and landscaping around the clubhouse.

“The membership at Westchester Hills is thrilled to see the completed result at our club,” said Mark Stagg, president of the club that is part of the Privé Privileges program of course-management company Troon. “With so much going on at the club including a pool renovation, elevated dining experiences and significant membership growth, the course redesign is the finishing touch to achieving member satisfaction for years to come.”

Check out the photos of the renovated course below.

Highly rated Pasatiempo Golf Club in California to undergo restoration by Jim Urbina

Jim Urbina plans to restore Alister MacKenzie’s original intent for the highly rated public-access layout.

Pasatiempo Golf Club in Santa Cruz, California, announced Wednesday that it will undertake a renovation of the greens and bunkers on its course designed by the legendary Alister MacKenzie and opened in 1929.

The club has hired architect Jim Urbina to restore the original style of push-up greens as intended by MacKenzie and to restore the bunkers with modern construction methods. The project will take part in two phases, and the club will keep one nine open during the nearly two-year restoration. Work on the front nine is scheduled to begin in April 2023 and wrap up in December that year, then the back nine will be closed April through December in 2024.

“The future of the golf course, in terms of sustainability, requires a full restoration of the greens with modern infrastructure and drainage,” Pasatiempo superintendent Justin Mandon said in a media release announcing the restoration. “Over its nearly 100 years of play, and particularly the more recent increase in the volume of rounds, coupled with the addition of alternative water sources and lack of infrastructure, has led to the rapid evolution of the greens.

“The club’s restoration committee has been working on this project for several years, visiting and consulting numerous golf courses with recent histories of successful restoration work. That information, along with our unique variables, allowed us to develop a scope of work, timeline and process we believe will give us the highest degree of success.”

The club announced that opening-day photos from 1929, combined with onsite evaluation of the original sub grades, will be used to guide restoration efforts that will incorporate lasers to reconstruct the greens to exacting tolerances and to USGA specifications. The new greens will be seeded with bentgrass. The green surrounds will be resurfaced and sodded to assure proper sloping and contours, with modern infrastructure installed to improve drainage.

The daily-fee Pasatiempo ties for No. 34 on Golfweek’s Best list of classic courses built before 1960 in the United States. It also is the No. 2 public-access layout in California, and ties for No. 12 among all public-access courses in the U.S.

The layout has undergone several smaller restorations since 1999. The club was founded by World Golf Hall of Fame member Marion Hollins and was built by Robert Hunter. MacKenzie would go on to live aside the layout’s sixth fairway.

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