Brandon and Urban,
Thanks for posting and update and some pictures, which I will add to my Eagle Bend collection, since I have so few. (with your permission, of course)
I have been writing brief descriptions of my recollections of each course I design as I have the time. I will use this as an opportunity to write this one, if that is all right.
Frankly, Eagle Bend is not one of my best courses. I didn’t have a contract with the city itself. My design contract was with one of those companies that sprung up to build public golf courses for small communities using junk bonds, when those communities couldn’t bond the projects themselves. As such, I had a limited contract, with little field supervision and no say on specifications.
Hence, some problems like narrow and poorly routed cart paths. Paths are never pretty, but when laid out in the field by amateurs and poorly thought out, then they really detract. Hence, some shaping problems. While the company did engage a very good shaper, without field time, or the contract right to order minor tweaks (doing it once made them more money) I wouldn’t say the details are quite what I would normally get. Hence, a few drainage problems. Always difficult on a flat site, I did do a drain plan, but the pressure was on to reduce cost and my normal 3% minimum slope became less than 2% to save pipe in some cases.
There were also design decisions such as putting a holding tank on the 5th fairway, blind to the tee, etc., which was a big surprise to me when I saw it.
Some other memories –
At one time, Jim Colbert and I looked at this together, but the first attempt at the deal fell apart. When it came back around, Jim paired with Wildcat construction and others to propose an upscale course. I had done a course in Azle, TX (Cross Timbers, about which I feel similar to this one – good routing, not so great on design detail) and they asked me to go in with them. They proposed a low budget and low fee course, which was what the city wanted, and we go the job. In fact, I got an email from a former council person just a few years back (and ten years after opening)
I used to joke that I had designed four public courses in Kansas, and they were ranked 1, 2, 3, and last. The city of Lawrence has had some dedicated crews and spend some money overcoming the original low budget ($1.6M at a time when my other moderate fee courses were at least $2.5M) and it has started to attract some state tournaments and better reviews overall. Still, not top ten in the state material.
My then associate John Colligan assisted me for the work on the routing, and from memory, probably came up with several for me to review, we tweaked on plan and field, and then settled on the final. The entire staff (I had 4 or 5 staff members at that time) worked on grading plans, as was typical in that 1997 period (course opened 1998). (His associate, who seems to work in about the same capacity for John) Trey Kemp posts here once in a while) John and I split the field work.
I recall that the routing came together fairly easily, with the flat ground and the cues provided by the Ox Bow river bed.
Most of the holes were graded for drainage, with greens and tees being the major focus of design. One that stood out to me was the 1st, where we used a fall away slope on the right. It started on the edge of the green and dropped off. The green was angled about 45 degrees, so you have to combine distance and direction to hit the green. I have used that concept, better executed on Colbert Hills 2, Lone Oak, TX no. 1 (NLE) and a few other places. Taking out the sand bunker front right of the green makes a good first hole, IMHO.
The 16th is the only hole I ever did a split fairway with trees in the middle, although it has been proposed a few other times. The few times I have played the course, I didn’t think the penalty was enough to guard the short cut.
17 was supposed to be a punchbowl green, but doesn’t quite work and looks a bit over cooked.
I recall wanting to save the swale in front of 18 green solely because the course was too flat.
2, 7, 10, 11, 14 all seem to be based on “target bunkers” on the outside of the green or fairway, which was a pretty common concept to us in that era. I still like it, but try not to repeat it as much as we did back then. We did have a limited number of bunkers budgeted, so we tried to make every one of them count visually.
The loop from 12-14 always struck me as the strongest stretch of holes. 9 was also a favorite, using the big tree left and a zig zag fairway in front of the green for placement interest.
We had some left over land near the clubhouse and proposed/built a short game/pitching practice area. Given this was built a year before Pelz got famous for his book on short game distance control, it seems slightly ahead of its time. I don’t think there was any reason other than we had the land.
Some other memories include a pet owner coming out to tell us she had buried her dog under a tree by the clubhouse, which we were luckily saving anyway, and a call from the FBI maybe ten years later, trying to solve a murder case. They had an informant tell them a body was buried out near the dam and wanted to know if we had seen anything during construction.
Perhaps the saddest memory is playing in the grand opening. I was supposed to have dinner with the President of the development company, Tim Burke, but he begged off saying he didn't feel well. Three days later he was dead, from a malfunctioning liver which seemed to come up quite quickly. I recall his Dad was well connected and big in the Catholic church, and was able to have an archbishop at the mass, and the funeral was quite a send off.
I stopped by a few times when building nearby Firekeeper back in 2008-9. I offered to do a master plan, but they declined due to cost. They did however, tout my visit and comments on tour as having consulted with me.