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By Design
I
n 1987, ASGCA Past President
Dan Maples took 170 acres of
North Carolina land and designed
and developed a golf facility that
included a clubhouse, driving range,
tennis courts and more. Longleaf
Golf & Country Club held its grand
opening in November 1998.
By 2015, U.S. Kids Golf Foundation
(USKGF)—the charitable arm of the
leading maker of golf equipment for
kids—was looking for what their
president Dan Van Horn describes as
“a living laboratory for growing kids
and family golf in a club environment,
implementing best practices in a
real-life situation.” They found this
laboratory at Longleaf, buying the
property and working with Bill
Bergin, ASGCA, to bring their vision
to reality. They renamed the facility
Longleaf Golf & Family Club.
A key feature of the redesign was the
conversion of the club’s traditional
four tee pads per hole to a new
configuration developed by USKGF.
Following extensive data analysis,
it was determined that on any given
course there would ideally be a total
of 600 yards of separation between
each tee marker option. Beginning
with 3,200 yards from the forward
tees, most golf courses can be fitted
with six, seven or even eight yardage
options to choose from. The gap
between markers on each hole is
about 30 yards, but that decreases on
par threes and increases on par fives.
With a broader range of tee
locations, every golfer, regardless of
skill, can play at a good pace, shoot
lower scores, and have more fun.
At Longleaf they settled on a seven-tee
system, following the principles set out
above but also factoring in the course’s
topography, choosing locations that
facilitated ease of construction.
Forty tee pads were constructed,
mostly related to size or conditioning
rather than location. Twenty-nine tees
were cut into existing fairways, of which
four had to be shaped and a few more
may be modestly levelled in future.
Because of the increased number of
tees, size-per-tee could be reduced, and
many existing tees could be reduced by
simply adjusting mowing lines.
The back tees and more heavily-
used middle tees may hold more
than one set of markers each, and
are respectively about 800 sq. ft. and
between 900-1,200 sq. ft. each. The
forward two-to-three sets of tees are
smaller, approximately 400 sq. ft. each.
With the tees in place, the next
challenge for Longleaf was to
effectively communicate to golfers how
to select the appropriate tees to use.
A crucial part of this is clear signage.
Case Study
|
Longleaf Golf & Family Club
Fun golf,
down to a tee
CASE STUDY
The redesign project completed by Bill Bergin, ASGCA, at the
Longleaf Golf & Family Club in Pinehurst, North Carolina,
includes multiple tees to make the game more fun and accessible
for golfers of any age, gender or skill level.
By Design
finds out more.
Every golfer
, regardless of skill, can play
at a good pace,
shoot lower scores
,
and have more fun