Golf Magazine's top 9 best course renovations of last 5 years

[V_Halyard]

Look at little Cedar Rapids besting Winged Foot and Pinehurst #4! Congrats Vaughn.

Ryan, your National Member Packet is, as always, at the front desk.
To be clear...
None of this happens without Klein first goading us into cutting trees and “Draining the Swamp” followed by the inquisitive GCAers, specifically Craig, Shelman, Crisham, Topp, Doak, Andriole and Ran doing drive-Bys to see if we actually pulled it off.

The true story hilarity of Tom casually strolling in off the street: “Hi, I’m a golf architect, heard good things about the Reno,  mind if I look around, My name is Tom Doak”
The bag shop calls the assisstant who calls the pro.  (previously an assistant at Seminole so he absolutely knew of Doak)
He calls me and rip-snaps: “I’m off property but the shop called” he continued, “we assume it’s one of your pals in here clowning us, pretending to be Tom Doak, are you messing with us right now?”
Took 5 min to get him to stop scolding me about the time wasting banal obscurity of “golf geek pranks”. 


Shit flew when I finally convinced him yelling, “I didn’t do this, it likely really was Tom f——g Doak and get back there and show him the ****k around.” Note: In presentations, Ron Prichard specifically expresses that he is quite grateful to Tom for not only stopping but evangelizing.


Point being, without GCA, the Mashie and the festive visits from new friends in the GCAer Rater/Panel community, we remain obscure. (Ryan, Jimmy F, Rudo, Andy T, and more)

Pre GCA, nobody gives zero f—-s about a Ross in Iowa (is that outside of Boise?...)

[V_Halyard]

ha Does Seminole even care?

More than you'd think.  (Ask your pro.)  You should have been around years ago when Shadow Creek jumped into the GOLF DIGEST top ten.  The president of Seminole penned a heartfelt letter to the editor about how places like that didn't belong in elite company, and cc'd everyone he thought was important in the golf business.  He might not have gotten so worked up over a course in Iowa, though.

I don’t think Seminole President J knew very much about “The Iowa Ross” before pro came here. “ You’re leaving Seminole to go where?” He must have blessed the move. I have not heard of any letters.

[Matthew Rose]

Surprised Inverness isn't there.

As for Congressional, I'm curious what the plans are for "restoring" it. Does that include the new 10th?

I thought of an interesting idea the other day for Congressional - if they wanted to put the old par-3 18th back to the way it was, they could do so and simply omit it from the championship routing by building an alternate par 3 hole elsewhere in the routing to use in events, like Kingston Heath does. I haven't really thought it through logistically in terms of where to put it, but it might be a way to allow the 17th to be the 18th in tournaments without sacrificing the original 18th or tying up holes on the other course.

[A.G._Crockett]

This topic still annoys me because there is no consensus on what they are trying to measure.


GOLF DIGEST just dropped their rankings of "best new renovations" precisely because they couldn't figure out what they were rating.  They had just been using the final rating score for each course that had done enough work to be considered a "renovation", which is a stupid way of doing it IMO - but certainly, if you were doing that, then Winged Foot would be higher on this list along with Seminole and Portrush and Turnberry.



If the rankings are supposed to be about "improvement", then I will stand by my argument above that some of the famous courses just don't have that much room to improve, and should not make this list.  But the famous courses would have been peeved . . . even the Winged Foots of the world want validation for their sacrifice of closing the course and changing things around.


The sad thing was that GOLF DIGEST had plenty of data of old scores to go by, so they could easily have done rankings based on the Delta between the score before renovation and afterwards, but they didn't want to do it that way.  They said it didn't make sense to compare the before-v-after scores because they came from different voters.  As if that were not the same flaw in the whole rankings exercise generally!

Tom, I agree with you 100%; my first thought when I saw this list was that it was actually nothing more than a list of highly regarded courses that had more or less major work done.  It seems sort of a "lazy" list, at least to me, in that it could be done from an armchair and a laptop, rather than site visits to a lot of lesser known or more lightly regarded courses that had actually been "renovated" and then compiling a true list of best renovations.

[corey miller]

Of the nine, I wonder the extent to which they implemented all the suggestions (architectural/maintenance) of the consulting architect. 


I also worry that once they are "complete", what policies  are in place to continue to "maintain" or "improve" as they move forward.


Will this era be any different than others where work is done and then those "smarter than" folks in club leadership (includes Supers BTW) go forward on their own?


Does an "ongoing relationship" really matter if the club never implements all the initial suggestions? Or the consultant comes yearly and is forced to talk the members out of "new stuff"


Let's check back in another five years and see which of these clubs is better in 2025 than in 2019.  Call me pessimistic. 


 

[J_ Crisham]

In June 2020 Beverly will be unveiling a completed master restoration. From what I have witnessed a very good course will now be transformed into a great course. The greatly increased scope of bunkering, green expansions, short grass extensions etc is amazing. This will firmly cement Beverly into the top 5 of Chicago area courses.

[V_Halyard]

Of the nine, I wonder the extent to which they implemented all the suggestions (architectural/maintenance) of the consulting architect. 


I also worry that once they are "complete", what policies  are in place to continue to "maintain" or "improve" as they move forward.


Will this era be any different than others where work is done and then those "smarter than" folks in club leadership (includes Supers BTW) go forward on their own?


Does an "ongoing relationship" really matter if the club never implements all the initial suggestions? Or the consultant comes yearly and is forced to talk the members out of "new stuff"


Let's check back in another five years and see which of these clubs is better in 2025 than in 2019.  Call me pessimistic. 


 

I can speak for Cedar Rapids.
All of the changes were to architect plan.
Current and future changes are specified as having to be architected by the architect of record or an equivalent contemporary recognized and well versed specifically in Ross restoration.
The changes we have made since the 2015 relaunch (Added Bunkering, green expansion, additional Corridor and tree management) have been to plan in direct consult and collaboration with the architects, and in fact, continue to make the course better.
Have you done a restoration? If not, I might suggest your pessimism may be a tad insular and perhaps ill informed.
If you have done a restoration, perhaps your pessimism is colored because it was done wrong.
Either way, happily, your skepticism has little to do with our project.
(Edit: Seems your restoration turned out pretty well. Lol)

[Tommy Williamsen]

It's pretty ridiculous to be making up your mind about the best renovation for two years from now - if you are actually judging the wuality of the work and not just fawning over one architect or another.


Also, agree that this list is comparing apples and oranges . . . and chocolate cake.



I have not seen Moraine but it seems like the work done there was more significant than, say, Winged Foot.  How much higher in the rankings are courses like Winged Foot and Seminole really going to move up?  But I suppose the raters (and editors) care more about being on Seminole's good side.

ha Does Seminole even care?

Like every club there will be members who don't care at all and others who care a lot. They always care the most when they come out on top.

[JC Jones]

This topic still annoys me because there is no consensus on what they are trying to measure.


GOLF DIGEST just dropped their rankings of "best new renovations" precisely because they couldn't figure out what they were rating.  They had just been using the final rating score for each course that had done enough work to be considered a "renovation", which is a stupid way of doing it IMO - but certainly, if you were doing that, then Winged Foot would be higher on this list along with Seminole and Portrush and Turnberry.



If the rankings are supposed to be about "improvement", then I will stand by my argument above that some of the famous courses just don't have that much room to improve, and should not make this list.  But the famous courses would have been peeved . . . even the Winged Foots of the world want validation for their sacrifice of closing the course and changing things around.


The sad thing was that GOLF DIGEST had plenty of data of old scores to go by, so they could easily have done rankings based on the Delta between the score before renovation and afterwards, but they didn't want to do it that way.  They said it didn't make sense to compare the before-v-after scores because they came from different voters.  As if that were not the same flaw in the whole rankings exercise generally!

The GOLF DIGEST rankings are, at present, a total disaster.  Lists they do outside of their Top 100 are compiled by emailing panelists and asking them to just email back their thoughts.  They are then compiled by Steve Hennessey and god knows what happens after that.

[Tim Martin]

It's pretty ridiculous to be making up your mind about the best renovation for two years from now - if you are actually judging the wuality of the work and not just fawning over one architect or another.


Also, agree that this list is comparing apples and oranges . . . and chocolate cake.



I have not seen Moraine but it seems like the work done there was more significant than, say, Winged Foot.  How much higher in the rankings are courses like Winged Foot and Seminole really going to move up?  But I suppose the raters (and editors) care more about being on Seminole's good side.

ha Does Seminole even care?

Like every club there will be members who don't care at all and others who care a lot. They always care the most when they come out on top.

Tom-The basis for a sermon might be contained in your last sentence but you probably already knew that.

[Peter Pallotta]

It's hard for me to imagine how anyone save for maybe 25 industry leaders-experts could do any more than rate the golf course itself, as they find it -- on the day they played it, not as it was a year ago or 30 years ago or when it was first built.
In other words, except for those 25 experts, I can't see how any regular panelist could realistically be expected to rate the qualities of the renovation as a renovation, or (even less realistically) to rate the 'relative merits' of one renovation compared to another.
Really: it does seem impossible to me for most folks to even conceptualize that kind/level of nuanced architectural insight, let alone meaningfully practice it.
But maybe I do experienced panelists/raters a disservice, and don't recognize how big the gap really is between them and me in terms of the level of insight and the ability to 'see' what I can't myself imagine seeing.

P

[Tom_Doak]

Of the nine, I wonder the extent to which they implemented all the suggestions (architectural/maintenance) of the consulting architect. 

I can only speak to Bel Air on that front.


When I made my initial recommendation for a full restoration, there was some concern at the board level about whether the membership would vote in favor.  One compromise I made - and I made it myself - was to leave the water feature / stream on the back nine in place, instead of returning that to a barranca, because I felt that taking out the two ponds on the front nine was more important, but getting rid of all the water might be politically impossible.  I also left a couple of holdover bunkers from the existing design, instead of removing them or restoring to the original position.


A couple of weeks before the vote, the member in charge of the process wondered aloud if we should consider keeping the pond on #8, to make sure the rest of the project was approved.  After a day of thought, he said no, they should put my recommendations in front of the membership, and let them vote yay or nay on the entire package.  It passed by a margin of 64%-36%, which is a bit closer than you'd like it, but certainly not a Brexit boondoggle.


Once we got to construction, the project chair and the greens chairman both encouraged me to restore the course to its fullest, and to be even more aggressive than what we'd said in the plan.  So, we tore down the landscaping on the hillside behind the 7th green and rebuilt it.  We didn't leave a bunker at the 10th green, as I had drawn on the plan, even though it originally had none.  And we took out the bunker at the corner of the dogleg on 18, which wasn't original.  [Actually, my associates did that after I left!]


So Bel Air was done 105% to my recommendations, and about 99% of the way to full restoration.

[Jeff Schley]

And we took out the bunker at the corner of the dogleg on 18, which wasn't original.  [Actually, my associates did that after I left!]


So Bel Air was done 105% to my recommendations, and about 99% of the way to full restoration.

Ah ha.....I remember that bunker as I have played it both pre Reno and just this past summer.  Was in that bunker first time and this time was not and was thinking hmmmm ok gone.  I lipped out what would have been my first and only birdie of the day on 18.


What I was shocked to hear is that Bel Air is apparently tearing down their clubhouse totally for a year and building a brand new structure as per our host in August. Huge new structure for around 50 million and I believe they are starting now or soon. Not sure why they didn't do it when the course was torn down.  A busy couple years of assessments or perhaps they had a healthy capital fund.

[Mark_Fine]

Talk about a crazy ranking, this is almost impossible to “get right”.  There are so many courses that go from a Doak 3 to a Doak 5 or 6 which essentially moves them past thousands of courses in terms of quality and improvement from their renovation.  Where do those fit it? 


All these rankings make for good discussion but they should not be taken so seriously.  That goes for the Top 100 rankings as well.

[corey miller]

A course that goes from a Doak "3" to a Doak "5" and passes thousands of course does not FIT IN. 


There are clearly two components...does the renovation get the most out of the property and does the finished product rise to level "worth discussing". 

[Mark_Fine]

Corey,
Not exactly sure what you meant by does not FIT IN but the far majority of course renovations are in this category.  Should they be discussed by the major golf magazines, maybe not, but this kind of work is what is impacting golf far more than the work done on the elite courses. 
Mark