A $3.7 million project that started in August 2023 brings back the luster to course architect Donald Ross's original 1913 design...
Editor’s note: The First Call contributor Bradley S. Klein served as a consultant to golf course architect Gil Hanse on the Worcester Country Club restoration project. He provides an inside look at the project.WORCESTER, Massachusetts — At Worcester Country Club in central Massachusetts there is a sense of history everywhere. A plaque on the first tee, for example, reminds golfers that this private club 42 miles west of downtown Boston was home to the 1925 U.S. Open, the first Ryder Cup in 1927 and the U.S. Women’s Open in 1960.
Thanks to a restoration by Gil Hanse and his design team, Worcester Country Club can now lay claim to a golf course whose playing character befits its classical heritage. The work started in August 2023 and all but finished by the end of the year: new tees, completely rebuilt bunkering, fairway expansion, greens expansion and one entirely new green. What remains is only some tee reconstruction at the seventh hole following pond dredging that will take place later this year.
Total cost, inclusive of design fees, came to $3.7 million, paid for by a combination of on-hand capital and long-term borrowing, with no assessment or dues hike. The work took place without a complete shutdown of golf. Instead, parts of the course were closed to play sequentially, with golf variously limited to 15 holes, then 12, 10, seven, five and finally four by early November, when play would have effectively ended anyway. The few membership defections at the outset of the work have been more than compensated for by piqued interest and enrollments since.
It was something of a coup for the club to have landed the services of Hanse. He signed onto the job back in 2018 — despite a busy schedule of work at blueblood national championship courses worldwide — because “I was intrigued about the course and the possibilities of renewal. I saw some fascinating photographs of the place and thought we could make a major difference without blowing the place up.”
So, having worked on an artist’s oeuvre spanning three or four decades, as Hanse had, he had learned about subtlety and variety. When asked at an early interview at Worcester CC if he considered himself an expert on Ross, Hanse paused for a moment and then told the committee, “I’m an expert on what Ross did here.”
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