I played Maketewah Country Club in Cincinnati for the first time in seven years while I was in the area for the PGA Championship. Since I worked as a PGA Golf Management intern there in 2007, Maketewah has made several changes to their facility.
Most notably, the club built an amazing new practice facility and upgraded their golf range. The new facility includes a very large indoor putting green, hitting bays, a Cobra Puma Golf fitting center, locker rooms for the Xavier men's and women's golf teams, several greens complexes to work on pitching, chipping approach and bunker play, and food & beverage areas. The facility was recognized as a GRAA Top 50 Private Facility in 2013.
Furthermore, the course has undergone a few changes. I noticed that some very distinctive trees were removed since 2007. I didn't get a chance to ask the PGA head professional, Dave Bahr, about it while I was there, so I'm not sure if they were removed for strategic/design reasons (increase airflow and sunlight to greens) or if they were lost to disease (I know many Cincinnati clubs recently struggled with ash borer). In any event, the holes that I did notice were missing trees looked and played much better, in my opinion. Hole No. 8, for example, appeared to be missing a large tree just to the left of the green. Not only did the hole look much better and more stunning (and arguably more intimidating because the severe drop-off behind the green is now more apparent), but it allows more shot options, especially if the hole is cut on the lefthand side of the green. I also noticed that some trees along the righthand side on No. 18 were gone; again, this hole looked much cleaner, in my opinion. Does anyone have any insight to why the trees were removed? I think it's a great improvement, whether it was planned or not.
Also, the course redesigned a couple of holes substantially. No. 10's green was moved back and to the left, a bit up the hill. This design seemed a bit out of character from the rest of the course; the green is now a fairly flat, tabletop design and doesn't really match the severe back-to-front Ross-style greens the rest of the course has. Although, I will say, that i found the approach shot much more though provoking than before, of course, this was the first time I was seeing the hole too.
No. 4 also changed. It used to be a short par-5 with trees lining the left side of the fairway. Only the longer, high-ball hitters could really go for the green in two. It's now a long-ish par-4 and many trees along the left side of the fairway have been removed. Also, the cluster of bunkers which used to be at the left inside corner of the dogleg have been changed...one deep bunker near the dogleg and one slightly shallower bunker in the middle of the fairway. The (from what I can remember) deep greenside bunker that guarded the front of the green has been removed, allowing golfers to run the ball up onto the green. Three bunkers have been added to the left side of the green. The green and right side chipping area looked largely untouched and much better matched the rest of the course. I found No. 4 much more of a treat to play as a more open par-4 as opposed to a one-dimensional par-5. Futhermore, I looked back online for aerials and it appears that today's No. 4 more closely resembles the original design (see below screen grabs).
I would love to hear what others think about the changes at Maketewah, especially those to No. 4.
No. 4, 2014:
https://s3.amazonaws.com/GRAA/mak-14.jpg No. 4, 2004:
https://s3.amazonaws.com/GRAA/mak-04.jpgNo. 4, 1956:
https://s3.amazonaws.com/GRAA/mak-56.jpg