[Jeff_Mingay]

Some of you might recall that I contributed the first "In My Opinion" piece on the pending restoration of my home club - Essex Golf & Country Club -  to this web site back in 1999.

Well, nearly seven years since Bruce Hepner devised a restorative-based plan for the course, work at twelve holes is complete (with the remaining six to be finished this fall). The green surface expansions are the highlight. We enjoyed some STELLAR hole locations that couldn't have been cut had the greens not been expanded to their original configurations during the annual Member-Member tournament this past weekend.

So many golfers would rather see bunkers redone. But at the old classics, like Donald Ross' (Canadian) Essex, it's the green surface restoration and related adjustment to fairway mowing patterns (and tree removal!) that make a shrunken old layout so much more interesting again.

I should really write a follow-up to that first "In My Opinion" piece...  

[Mike_Sweeney]

Jeff,

Just curious, why now? Did anything specific happen or was it an evolutionary process?

[Jeff_Mingay]

Mike,

The green surfaces had simply shrunk since 1929, when the course opened for play.

Reclamation of the outer edges of the green surfaces allows for some very interesting holes to be cut behind bunkers and contour previously covered by longer grass, and near surrounding slopes.

It's a subtle change many golfers can't appreciate until the holes are cut in spots they couldn't have been prior to green surface reclamation. In fact, a guy who I was playing with Friday said: "When they said they were going to make the greens bigger, I thought the course was going to become easier. That's not the case, is it."

Nope  

[TEPaul]

Jeff:

Funny---at my course the green expansions were the most popular element by far and right out of the box of our restoration plan and restoration. Still is. I can't remember a single person in the club not supporting that element.

Down at Columbia the other day the green expansions are well under way. Steve McCormick, Columbia's super, is just mowing out gradually. Pretty much the same grass, I guess. Lot of poa but he says the club likes it that way, always has. His predecessor, Merrill Frank was apparently known as the King of Poa Annua, whatever that's supposed to mean.  

[Yannick Pilon]

Jeff,

We are doing similar work at Islesmere and Richelieu Valley and it can be tough, but rewarding.

One problem I encountered was the fact that the new irrigation system that was just put in around the Islesmere greens followed the shrunk green contours....  We could only expand the greens to the limits created by the new sprinklers.  Otherwise, we would have got sprinklers in the greens...

I have seen catch basins in greens at Gleneagles King's, but I wasn't about to try it with the sprinklers!

How about posting some pictures of Essex?

[Jeff_Mingay]

Yannick,

As I'm sure you know, that's one of the biggest mistakes: installing a new irrigation system before consulting an architect about restorative-based work. That backward approach results in the type of very unfortunate limitations you mention. Too bad.

I'd post some photos of Essex, but I don't know how  

P.S. I haven't been around Windsor much this summer. I regret not having taken more photos when you could clearly see the areas where the greens have been reclaimed. Unfortunately, those lines are starting to disappear already.  

[David Sneddon]

Some of you might recall that I contributed the first "In My Opinion" piece on the pending restoration of my home club - Essex Golf & Country Club -  to this web site back in 1999.

Glad to hear that it is almost finished, Jeff.  I remember you pointing out where some of the changes would be when we played last year.

If we could only do the same down the street.........

[Wayne_Kozun]

I'd post some photos of Essex, but I don't know how  

You can't post the photos directly to this site - you must post them somewhere on the web and then link to them.  You could post them on your own web site and link to them in this thread.

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