Communication tool for renovations.....

[John Gosselin]

.... or any other project at your club.

As an avid lurker I have not added much to this wonderful site, but wanted to share what turned out to be an invaluable tool for our club during a lengthy renovation.
 
Our club, DuPont Country Club in Wilmington, DE, is in the final stages of a yearlong rebuild of one of our courses. As it turned out, communicating effectively with all our members (15,000 of which 5,400 are paying members) was one of the most difficult and time-consuming aspects of the project. Thanks to one of our members, who put up the website below, much of the typical club rumors and exaggerations were dispelled before they had a chance to develop. Please keep in mind the pictures on the site are meant for members of the club that are very familiar with the golf course and therefore may not seem that informative to you.

Quick background on the project. The course was opened for play in 1948. It was designed by Alfred Tull. Over the years it has gone through thee normal changes and alterations by well intended superintendents, architects, members, and company management. Some of the changes were great ideas at the time and served the purpose they were intended to serve. The course has held many events over the years most notable 18 LPGA events with 9 of them being the LPGA Championship. The course was suffering from an outdated infrastructure and had some obvious and not so obvious design issues. The decision was made to close down and solve all we could at one time to inconvenience our customers for the shortest period possible.

All playing areas were rebuilt reshaped and or restored. Extensive drainage was put in throughout the site and a full irrigation system was installed. All the blacktop cart-paths were removed and replaced with cement paths much farther from play. I won’t put the total number of trees removed, but let’s just lots. Or let’s just say we relocated them. The main driver on design decisions was to add interest and fun back into the course. This is where our architect exceeded our expectations.

Lester George is our architect and Landscapes Unlimited is our builder. Great combination.

I am sorry I can't provide more information and I probably won’t reply in a timely manner, but my time for this sort of thing is limited.
I hope some of you find this tool useful.


http://www.renovations.nissgolf.com/Index.htm

[Mark_Fine]

John,
Looks interesting and thanks for posting.  Tull did some fine work in his time with Travis and even some with Tillinghast but most with Devereux Emmet.  Was restoration ever considered?  
Mark

[mike_malone]

 John,
     How many pictures are you in?
   

[John Gosselin]

Mark, yes, it was a sympathetic restoration. Same routing, but a couple of new green locations and more bunkering. The course yardage was stretched to roughly 7200 and more importantly we added lots of forward tees so the course play as short as 5000.

[John Gosselin]

Mike, lets just say I don't now who the balding fat guy is....never looks like he is doing very much.

[mike_malone]

 Mark,
   As a person who grew up here, I am excited for old Uncle Dupie. John showed me around and I appreciate his desire to return the greens to contoured as they were originally. Now I don't know if it is the original contours or just sympathetic.

    To hear that the course did away with the contours within a few years of construction was shocking.


    Some choices were made that probably were seen as too costly originally. The decision to move #15 green to use the creek as a surrounding hazard may be an example.

    I think Du Pont was never at such a level where it needed to be restored.