Marty, Niall:
I started consulting at NB about a year ago. The initial report was very concise, focusing mostly on mowing lines, and the odd feature we would like to restore and/or renovate back to its former glory.
Kyle Cruickshank and his team have started to make progress on de-shrinking the fairways and greens, but some of that work will have to wait on an updated irrigation system and increase in green keeping staff.
The order of work has really been dictated by where Kyle has wanted to focus his renovation needs. Last year we worked on the 17th cross-bunker. That bunker had become a really narrow trench, with its floor chasing hard towards the face of the bunker. Once a bridal way, we broadened the floor of the bunker, but stopped short of connecting it all the way through to the beach and reinstating the wooden sleepers (which we found.)This year we've worked on the 10th tee, removing the artificial path through the centre, twisting the right face to improve the backdrop to the 9th (and hide the shelter), while nestling the tee down slightly to sit more in the dunes. There was a lot of heavy clay used to build up that tee once upon time! Also, the 6th tee, consolidating the two back tees and growing the tees more forward, lowering both sets to sit more easily in the landscape while preserving the view of the quarry. As part of this work we removed the mound at the back of the 5th green, introducing green in its place - that's quite an intimidating shot now that there's nothing artificial holding you in.
The Redan bunker faced similar issues to the 17th, though it had perhaps shrunk even more, with the face well detached from the green edge. Unsurprisingly there are quite a few historical photos of The Redan, but we were guided most by the three photos here, with the goal(s) of:
- recapturing its original scale and height
- recapturing the hard, tight edge and corners to the green
- climbing the bunker floor to the face so that while still intimidating and 6ft deep, the bunker was a little more playable.
I think what we've ended up with is pretty close to what was once there, though I decided to retain the native roll-over in the back-left corner rather than climb (and waste) revett and sand line high into the back-left corner where it is out of sight from the tee.
The most satisfactory part of the work might have been lowering and shifting the 16th tee to the left a little, so that we could expand green back into the back-left, and see more of the wall from the 15th tee again.As the article notes, Chris Haspell is the club's consulting agronomist and has played a big part in the construction. As has Reece Haspell, Rory Paul and Kyle's team.