Finally!
We got the approval last week just before our big Member Guest (hence my radio silence working 19 hour days!). There were HUGE celebrations. This has been a long, hard process but we are very proud of the way we have worked alongside the local authorities and national organisations; to reach a compromise that gives us some stunning new holes and protects the valuable primary dunes land that we have on our property was always our goal. Other current projects in our country quite rightly made the authorities very protective.
The layout is going to be phased but Tom's guys will be running the show with their unique ability to perform golfing alchemy with what nature has already provided. Paul Seago and his crew already have the course in incredible condition. Our members played Carnousite, KB, Turnberry, Prestwick and Muirfield in the past 10 days and said we are in better condition. We also had an assisstant pro over from Troon and he thought it was incredible.
All credit to the greenstaff. We had very high winds 2 weeks ago and a huge tree flattened a car with 3 of them in it as they were driving home. They came away with their lives but were all injured, That reduced our staff by 30% for the last 2 weeks and still with 7 guys the course is top notch.
I still feel it is Tom's place to talk about the routing but as the plans are out there I can say we will put it all into play in 2013. We also break ground on the clubhouse on August 1st so exciting times indeed. The two years should give the grasses time to mature and not be too far off the current playing conditions on the rest of the course.
The first 3 will sadly go but be retained as part of a world class practise facility.
4 thru 11 will be 1 thru 8.
Then we have a par 3 going towards Fife,
an incredible 4 along the cliff,
a drop shot par 3 for the 11th,
a long uphill 4 for the 12th (from the middle of the current 12th fairway to the current 13th green),
14 becomes 13,
15 becomes 14,
then we have a par 3 in the area we have cleared between 9 and 10 as the 15th,
16 will be lengthened to be a reachable 5,
17 and 18 will be as they are.
Par 71, 5 par 3s, 4 par 5s
That is my boss' end goal but there may be changes and certainly phases to this. An option I like personally is retaining 1-3 and just changing out our current 12 and 13 for a 3 and a 4 on the water. Then play 14 from the now 13th tee thus making the hole angle change completely.
This will no doubt be phased in a way that has very little disruption to current play. Its fantastic that virtually all the current greensites will be retained in one way or another. The transition should be seamless as we will just change to the new routing overnight once the new holes have grown in.
I underline that the course we have now is outstanding. I think it is vastly underrated due to how little we try to expose it and how little outside play there is. In an ideal world everyone would play it- it is what it is though and these new changes will raise its profile even higher. I truly hope that people are not so focused on the changes that they forget what a great job Tom and Don did in the first place. It is a world class course today, it will be even better by 2013.
S