Golf Course Architecture - Issue 59, January 2020

39 offerings prior to renovation. The second was a mostly blind tee shot over a hill with a pretty nondescript green setting along an existing pond. We took the hill down several feet and doubled the width of the fairway, adding a central bunker that now demands some thought off the tee. From the right side of the central bunker, the green angle is straight at you so it’s easiest to hold a longer shot, but you have to carry the pond. From the left side of the fairway, the front of the green is more open but the approach and green surface slant from left to right towards the water, and there is a bunker guarding the left side that cuts into the green a bit, so it’s a demanding shot. Positioning off the tee will be paramount to scoring. The third hole is a shorter one that used to have a front green slope that was extreme and overly difficult if speeds were up. We’ve extended the hole a bit with a back tee at about 165 yards. The green is also new and now slopes from front-right to back-left. It has a Redan feel to it, because you can use a kicker slope at the front right to access the back-left around the greenside bunker, but the entire back side of the green is also flanked with containment mounds, which can be used to draw a ball back onto the putting surface. So, a variety of ways to access a tucked pin. And what were the highlights of the earlier phases? The seventh and eighth on the Player’s nine were two holes that have received the most dramatic changes. We took two very difficult and under- performing holes and created two fun holes by flipping them from a par four and three, to a par three and four. This allowed us to move an existing lake and solve a drainage issue while also expanding the range. This occurred in phase one, so we’ve seen and played the results and it has been a huge hit. The project began in 2017, with work on the Player’s nine