[Mike McGuire]

Kye Goalby recently did some work on our Langford nine. We restored the bunkers around two green sites (2 and 8 ).

The work on 8 required substanial shaping as the bunkers were redone in a different style a while ago.

Kye had a drawing to work from but was allowed any lattiude he needed to ensure the job turned out as good as possible.

The work turned out spectacular and the concept of the architect on the machine is a great way to go. As a architect Kye can design with the best and being on the machine shaping allows him to create on the fly as the ground may dictate. The level of detail - and instant field changes - this arrangement provides can make the difference between a good and great job.

Recommended!

Mike

[TEPaul]

Kye can definitely shape with the best of them and I've just always found he has wonderful taste in golf course architecture, the big stuff the little stuff, all of it. We tried to do something together some years ago. It was out around a town called Syria, Virginia. I wish it had happened---to me that was one of the most fascinating sites for golf I ever saw. It could've offered the ultimate in what I called "courses within a course."

[Don_Mahaffey]

Who did the drawing?

[Mike McGuire]

William Langford

[Don_Mahaffey]

Are they Goalby bunkers or Langford bunkers?

[Mike McGuire]

Don -

WL would have approved.

Kye's approach was to make his work invisible - like it was always there.

[Phil McDade]

Don:

Here are some pics of West Bend; Mike may be able to fill in details of what exactly was done.

This is the approach to the 2nd green; I'm presuming the bunker left was filled in with sand (by the way, the drop-off on the backside of this green has to be seen to be believed -- one false move backwards, and you feel like falling off a house):



Here's the par 3 8th green at WBend (both photos courtesy of RJ Daley during the '07 (?) Langford/Moreau Cheesehead Tour):



Don, for comparison, here's a look at some bunkers from Lawsonia, probably the most faithfully maintained and restored Langford course around, in part due to Ron Forse's thoughtful work there:

Here's a look at a fairway bunker complex on the 6th hole, with the bunkering of the 6th green in the distance:



Here are the famous "en echelon" bunkers on the par 5 13th hole:



Note how on both holes at Lawsonia the sand in the bunkers lays flat, with the grassy face of the fronting mound coming all the way down to ground level. Compare that to the 8th at West Bend, where the bunkers have a somewhat "flashed up" look. I'm guessing the WBend bunker work eliminated the flashed-up look, and kept the sand level with the ground, with the bunker face extending all the way to the ground level. A faithful restoration of the WBend bunkers would make them more like those at Lawsonia.

[Mike McGuire]

Don:

Here are some pics of West Bend; Mike may be able to fill in details of what exactly was done.

May be able to fill in details ?

Phil you know me well enough to know I would be watching most of it!

Your assumptions on 8 are correct.

On #2 we just added the right side bunker. Image is of half done bunker. still need to sod the banks and finish with sand.

[Mike Nuzzo]

Very cool looking land forms.
I'm going to assume that Kye also suggested to remove that tree to the left of #2 green and widen the fairway up to the putting surface.
Please implement those recommendations too.
Cheers

[Jeff_Mingay]

Mike N., ol' buddy. You beat me to it.

The first thing that struck me is that the fairway approach needs to be expanded/wider. (I'm sure Goalby has made the recommendation.) Nice thought about the tree, too.

Glad to see Kye doing interesting work. This Langford stuff - everywhere I've seen it - is amazingly unique, and bold. Very cool.

Best,

[Ronald Montesano]

Why not transplant the tree directly in front of the green, making a blind approach shot?

[PCCraig]

Great to see another Langford being restored. West Bend really does look to have a really bold property that deserves some bold features!

Also, great point being made to having a GCA who is also a skilled shaper there actually doing the work himself.   

[Mike McGuire]

A few clarifications -

Ron Prichard is the author of our master plan.

We hired Kye to do the shaping. What I did not understand fully at the time was that we hired an architect as well as a shaper. The field adjustments will save us money on maintenance as Kye was able to anticipate issues as he went.

The attention to detail was equally as cool. For example we needed to route water away from a bunker for 20 ft. or so. Kye created the swale with a slight "S" curve to it so it looked like the water created it and it was there for a while. Almost no one would notice this and the additional time was nothing but that attitude is what gets you awesome stuff.

The tree and fairway expansion are things we have known about for a long time. Slow going at WBCC

[Brian_Sleeman]

This is certainly a good sign.  I know Craig Moore has implemented some nice, small, cheap changes to the Heritage Course at Marquette GC since he began as the head superintendent about four years ago, and I'm long overdue for another check on how that's going.  They acquired the original 18-hole Langford/Moreau plan a few years back and I'm sure would love to keep the work going. 

Change coming slow is certainly understandable but it's great to see some work being done! 

I don't know much about how the restoration came about at Lawsonia's Links.  Was that one massive overhaul or did they slowly modify things over time?

[RJ_Daley]

Brian, I'd say that Lawsonia is not a massive overhaul in terms of any earth moved.  It started with a few minor bunker tweaks, and a master plan by Messers Forse and Nagle to get after the mutlitude of trees that were planted in the 50s-60s.  Most were coniferous trees, and they just didn't fit the vision of the links in dairyland that L&M had conceived.  The other things done were bringing out the mowing lines on the greens that had shrunk over many years. 

As to how the Lawsonia project ball started rolling, my understanding was that Superintendent Mike Berwick and perhaps fellow super, Scott Schaller from another great historical course in the area, and maybe even Brian Schneider on the periphery of the discussion started to wonder about original intent of the archies, and contacted Mr Forse at one of the GCSAA events, and slowly they hatched the plan.  I hope that isn't too embellished or inaccurate.  But, if near accurate, it is a good example of sharp supers and archies knowing and communicating with eachother on possibilites to preserve and pay tribute to the old masters designs.   Schaller's Northshore, and Berwicks Lawsonia picked two different architect firms (Renassance and Forse's) but they both got excellent results at the same time period. 

As long as good archie firms and shapers like Hepner and Goalby are out there with vision and respect for the best intentions of the orginal archies they are restoring, one would hope that powers that be in these clubs along with their supers stay aware of the good work done, and to be done as possibilities for their own courses.

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