15
Location:
Rockbridge, Ohio
Architect:
Michael Hurdzan, ASGCA
Hurdzan Golf Design
Project summary:
The Glenlaurel resort in Ohio
wanted a fun, unique golf
experience for its guests. Hurdzan
Golf Design provided them with an
eight hole ‘sand green’ golf course
reminiscent of the late nineteenth
century, cut out of a pasture
with minimal application and
maintenance requirements.
G
lenlaurel is an intimate resort
billed as ‘a Scottish Country
Inn’, offering accommodation,
a spa and dining. Wanting to add a
very low cost, but unique and fun-
to-play golf course, the owner Greg
Leonard approached Ohio-based
Michael Hurdzan, ASGCA to provide
a solution.
Hurdzan’s answer was a course
with grassless tees and greens, cut
out of a pasture. To keep costs as
low as possible, irrigation, drainage,
bentgrass, rootzones and golf course
paths were eliminated. Chris and
Michael Hurdzan laid out the course
and Leonard constructed it himself, by
mowing fairways and coring tee and
green wells, which were then filled
with sandy loam and compacted.
The course was then ready to play.
It consists of eight holes of between
45 and 218 yards and the resort rents
early twentieth century wooden-
shafted clubs and half-distance golf
balls for those wishing to experience
it the traditional way. Players use a
mold for shaping a mound of moist
sand from which to play their tee
shots, and the scorecard has a ‘stymie’
ruler and hole with names rather than
numbers and yardages but no par.
Michael Hurdzan explains: “The
entire golf course was constructed
at a small fraction of the cost of a
single golf hole on a conventional
golf course with grass greens, and
maintenance is similarly fractional.”
He adds: “By the way, Major
champion Tom Lehman learned to
play golf on a sand green golf course,
just like Glenlaurel.”
“The entire golf course
was constructed at a
small fraction of the
cost of a single golf
hole on a conventional
golf course”
The eight-hole course was
simply cut out of pasture
GLENLAUREL
Photos: Glenlaurel
