Delaware has 2 new courses opening:
Odessa National- originally a Gil Hanse project, this course will open sometime this summer:
Odessa on track to open this summer
Public course's grow-in stage almost complete
By BRAD MYERS
The News Journal
Joe Gulotti is certainly doing more than just sitting back and watching the grass grow, but the heavy lifting is finished at Odessa National Golf Club.
Gulotti is a golf course superintendent for Evergreen Turf, the company handling the course's grow-in stage. He said the public course, located off Fieldsboro Road about two miles south of Odessa as part of the Odessa National housing development, is on track to open this summer.
"We're pushing for a July 4 weekend opening, but sometime between July 4 and Labor Day is probably more realistic," Gulotti said Wednesday. "All of the turf is in -- the greens, fairways and tees. The rough is a little spotty, but it's coming along. We just basically have some touch-up work to do."
The course was designed by architect Joel Weiman and built by McDonald & Sons, a Jessup, Md.-based golf course construction firm that has done renovation work on many of the nation's most prestigious courses, including Augusta National, Congressional, Merion, Oakmont and Winged Foot.
Gulotti also worked through the grow-in stage at The Club at Patriots Glen in Elkton, Md., in 2001 and at Glen Riddle Golf Club, another McDonald & Sons project in Berlin, Md., in 2006-07. He said the Odessa National course will be unique to the area.
"It's an excellent layout. It's very different from the other courses here in the Middletown area," Gulotti said. "It's undulating, has some nice changes in elevation, and it's got a lot of trees. We've got an eagle's nest on the 15th hole right now. There is a lot of wildlife out here."
Rock Manor as mentioned above is a Lester George project. It opened yesterday in bad weather:
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