By Design - Spring 2020

22 | By Design were being considered. None of them retained a golf component. Most ambitious was a radical repurposing that would eliminate golf and substitute a massive mixed- use project. It would have included a multipurpose indoor arena, an outdoor whitewater park, an adventure park and a blend of hotel, office, retail and residential space. In the spring of 2019, following a series of public meetings, the Henrico County Board of Supervisors agreed to hold off implementing any plan that involved repurposing Belmont that didn’t include golf. As the Richmond Times-Dispatch reported: “Belmont Golf Course is safe for now, but Henrico can’t promise it will always be a golf course.” As always in life, Love is the answer. Enter Scot Sherman, ASGCA, lead designer for Love Golf Design. Together with Davis Love III and Davis’s brother Mark, Sherman has joined forces with the First Tee of Greater Richmond to take a course with the real possibility of being decommissioned and repurpose it into something that will benefit the greatest number of people possible. On December 10, 2019, the First Tee of Greater Richmond won the bid to assume management of Belmont with a $4 million plan that would alter the makeup of the existing golf course and add significantly to the number of potential users. The course closed down in January and is expected to reopen in late spring 2021. Purists won’t be thrilled that the 18-hole PGA Championship course will be reduced to 12 holes, but there are other reasons to get them to smile. When The First Tee approached Love Golf Design and proposed 12 holes and plenty of practice options, Sherman and the Love team were engaged from the start. “We all chimed in very quickly and said that not only does The First Tee aspect interest us,” said Sherman, “but you’re checking all of the boxes that golf is begging for. Start with a fast-playing course—12 holes does that for you. Lots of practice. Next, an entry-level facility—the putting course we’re building is as entry-level as you can get. And the six-hole short course we’re crafting is the very next step up to the big course, which will have 12 Tillinghast golf holes. It’s a way to GOLF REBORN When Steve Wynn built his eponymous sequel to Shadow Creek, he knew it might not be a forever proposition. In 2005, he said of his soon-to-open, Tom Fazio-designed Wynn Golf Club: “My property is worth 10 to 15 million an acre. I’ve got a billion and a half dollars of real estate under that golf course. It better become a top destination, or else goodbye golf course. There will be no more golf course. It’ll be filled with buildings.” Fast forward to December 2017. Wynn’s prognosis was on target. His golf course closed to make way for a planned hotel addition, convention space expansion and a 20-acre lagoon to be called Paradise Park. Alas, as the course sat abandoned, the buildings never materialized. Fazio and his son Logan were summoned to repurpose the course. Yardage was shaved from 7,042 to 6,722, eight entirely new holes were constructed and ten others were remodeled. Modified contours, wider landing areas, altered bunkers and a new 6,500-square- ft. putting green adjacent to the first tee have changed the layout’s look and playability. Wynn reopened in October 2019. Welcome back! Wynn Golf Club Las Vegas, Nevada Golf course architect: Tom Fazio, ASGCA Photo: Brian Oar