I heard a whisper over the weekend that following comments made after this years Scottish Open that there are going to be some changes made on some of the holes at Renaissance and that Tom D will be back to do the work. I'd be interested to hear more. Tom ?
The work being done this winter is not very extensive. They are going to build a couple of new tees, raise a tee from the old routing so they can use it to lengthen the 12th hole in the new routing, and revet a handful bunkers that were not previously revetted.
[/size] Our client also pointed out that there were 3-4 back tees not used for the event that might have made some difference in the scoring, if they would just use them.[/size][/size]I am comfortable with the maintenance crew at the club making those changes in house; they of course are the ones that did all the revetting in the first place.There were some other things discussed. The Tour would like to add a handful of more penal bunkers, but they couldn't say where, exactly, and it wouldn't be easy to do because of visibility / drainage / etc. If they reach a longer-term arrangement with the club to host the event, which has been in discussion, we might try to sort out a couple of good places for that. Honestly, though I don't think it will be productive because the players will not flirt with a bunker that creates a real penalty, they'll just lay up or play around them.
My takeaway was that the one thing which might make the course tougher is tightening up around the greens and adding more bunkering there. The greens are fairly large and it seemed like the players could take the dangerous side out of play while still aiming onto the green and leaving themselves an easy two-putt. But, conditions were soft and there was no wind -- the scoring would have been pretty low if they'd played on the other side of the wall, too.