Quite busy at the moment, with restoration work and design work for new courses.
Restoration the following:
- Hardelot Les Pins (Simpson). Patrice Boissonnas and I did the front nine work last winter and we will do the back nine this upcoming winter. Lots of tree removal, exposing sand, creating new tees, restoring the bunkers back to the lace edge Simpson style, expanding fore greens and greens back to their historic sizes. Will post pics later in the year when it has grown in a bit more.
- le Touquet La Mer (Colt). After having had to wait for a extensive ecological investigation, we can now move ahead with the work of restoring the courses original routing between holes 11-17, extensive tree removal, exposing sand, restoring the Colt sand face bunkers and widening fairways.
- Tandridge (Colt). Finishing the restoration of all the bunkers and green surrounds of the whole course with the last 4 holes, namely (14,15,16,17).
- Broadstone (Colt). Expect that Jeff Stein and i will be doing more work at this beautiful and impressive Colt heathland course this winter.
- Tyneside (Colt). Will be tackling 2 holes this year, and be further developing a new alternate hole 2, which is currently part of the practice range.
- Swinley Forest (Colt). Will continue the low profile restoration work we started last year, restoring the left green bunker on hole 4 (the right bunkers were done last winter), the green bunkers on hole 5 and further significant rhodo clearance.
- Amsterdam Old Course (Alison/ Colt). In the process of completely rebuilding this late Alison design in Amsterdam. Because it was built on pure peat it always was very wet. We are nog excavating 5 m deep and filling it with 7-8 m of good soil, so the restored course will be 2 m higher than before and a lot dryer. All the historic greens have been surveyed and will be rebuild exactly. Non original greens have been changed to Colt style greens inspired by greens at R Hague and Eindhovensche
- Royal Spa (Simpson). Will finally start the restoration of the famous 6th hole, La Fortresse, this winter.
- Toxandria (Colt/Morisson) . Two new holes 5, 6 will be built to replace two holes that were added some 30 years ago but never really blended with the other holes.
- Malaga (Colt/Simpson). Very exciting restoration project in southern spain of a original links course designed by Colt and later expanded by Simpson. Waiting for funding to come through. Could become one of the best courses in the south of Spain.
- Hoge Kleij.(Pennink). Continue the process of tree removal, fairway widening and heather regeneration. Is starting to be serious competition for Hilversum and Rosendaelsche
Expect to be able to announce 2-3 more exciting UK projects in the next two months