Here is a story from May from the Omaha World-Herald. Sounds like a place that would be great to check out.
OMAHA COUNTRY CLUB Omaha gem regains shine Country club gets $4 million facelift Course upgrades
BYLINE: Dirk Chatelain, WORLD-HERALD STAFF WRITER
SECTION: SPORTS; Pg. 03C
LENGTH: 1100 words
PGA Tour pro Scott Gutschewski arrived last year at Omaha Country Club's 18th hole, shoved his tee into the ground, coiled his hips and hammered a ball into the clouds. When it returned to Earth, he had only a pitch into the green. At the time, the 18th hole was 415 yards. Now it's 461.
"He isn't going to be doing that from this tee," said Paul Conley, OCC president, from a new patch of green grass beneath a towering bur oak.
One of Nebraska's classic golf gems has added a little polish since Gutschewski's last visit. A three-year, $4 million renovation project has neared completion, revealing alterations that modernize outdated characteristics and restore design elements that helped craft the course's reputation.
"We've got a 1928 golf course here," Conley said. "It's going to stand the test of time."
For decades, change at OCC came little by little. A few new tees here, a new green there. The result was a patchwork quilt: appealing, but inconsistent. This overhaul, administered by course architect Keith Foster, who recently renovated 2007 PGA Championship host Southern Hills in Tulsa, is seamless.
To the casual observer, all but a few changes are easy to overlook. That's OK, Foster said. A course's charm derives from subtlety, not flash.
"I think the great golf courses are understated," Foster said. "They feel like they've always been there."
OCC's course, scheduled to reopen June 23 after being closed since May 2006, has been a fixture among Nebraska's best layouts since it opened. In recent years, however, it had fallen from the state's elite. In 1999, Golf Digest's venerable rankings listed the course eighth best in Nebraska. The magazine's latest installment placed OCC fifth, behind Sand Hills, Quarry Oaks, Wild Horse and Firethorn.
Expect the club to vault up the rankings, perhaps as high as No. 2.
Acclaim would be a byproduct of change, Conley said, not the motive. In fact, the club's original focus was upgrading golf course infrastructure: cart paths, irrigation and drainage. Those plans turned into a comprehensive renovation, approved by members in spring of 2005.
"The principle," said Patrick Duffy, who chaired the renovation subcommittee, "was let's do it once and do it right. Don't cut any corners."
Foster came in and recognized immediately OCC's allure.
"If you're not from Nebraska, you have this perception of what Nebraska is: flatter pieces of property that look forever," said Foster, who lives in Kentucky. "You don't expect to see something like this: commanding vistas, wonderful trees, a magnificent frame."
Perry Maxwell, who designed Prairie Dunes and Southern Hills, and once helped renovate Augusta National and Pine Valley, had yet to assume legendary design status when he redesigned Omaha Country Club in 1952 just before he died.
As years passed, Maxwell's reputation had grown, but his touch at OCC had been obscured.
Foster, a Maxwell disciple who's made renovation of classic courses his passion, sought to make Maxwell's features prominent again.
Of OCC's 18 greens, only eight were original Maxwell designs. The club duplicated those, softening the contours in a few places to make them more suitable for today's green speeds. The other 10 greens were altered to create a cohesive style.
Club officials found a 1950s photo of the 16th green. The slopes looked unfamiliar -- they had dramatically changed when the club rebuilt the green in the '60s. Now it will play the way Maxwell intended, with a tier separating the front and back.
Foster handled bunkers the same way. He added several, most significantly off the fairway at No. 14, but redesigned them to look like Maxwell's. Many have a steep face, so OCC ordered from Ohio 15 rail cars of new sand that won't collapse in the bunker wall.
Fairways at No. 1, 6 and 9 were slightly re-graded, enabling them to better hold tee shots. Tees were reshaped in a uniform rectangular style. OCC has plenty of teeth, Foster told Conley during the renovation. Don't get too concerned about yardage, which stood at 6,460 yards.
But the club wished to make the par 71 course harder for the expert. It added 286 yards from the back tees -- almost 100 of which come on the final three holes -- without making the course more difficult for average members.
Long par 4s like No. 8, 12, 17 and 18 received the greatest boost, but No. 7, a 194-yard par 3, underwent the most significant change, Duffy said. Stacked bunkers now guard the green's front left side, setting the putting floor up on a shelf.
"It went from a very plain, simple par 3 to a much more difficult, aesthetically pleasing par 3," he said.
Other notable changes:
No. 4, widely perceived as one of the state's best par 4s. The fairway was moved 10 feet into the hill, and there's a new small bunker guarding its left side. Before, Foster said, the hole played almost straightaway. Now it feels like it turns right.
"But more importantly, it turns with the ground," Foster said. "That's what Maxwell really, really did well. He turned holes to match ground. That's what I believe Omaha Country Club now has."
No. 10, a short par 5 that drops off the tee, then rises over a creek to the green. Foster moved the hole right, clearing out trees and re-grading the fairway. He moved the creek slightly away from the tee and added a cluster of bunkers near the green.
No. 11, a downhill par 3 that was one of the weaker holes on the course. Foster redesigned the green and flanked it with bunkers at every corner.
One of more subtle changes to the entire project was deforestation. It sounds egregious, but "it doesn't look like we had a wholesale massacre of trees," Conley said. Foster cut out superfluous trees in the hopes of highlighting the most dramatic, especially mammoth bur oaks that dot the property.
Foster and Conley recently sat outside the clubhouse, overlooking the 18th green. Before the renovation, they wouldn't have been able to see the green -- a line of honey locust trees concealed it. The trees are gone now.
That wasn't the only tweak. Through the years, mowing patterns had shrunk the green little by little, a few inches at a time. During the renovation, Foster noticed a patch just off the putting surface that looked an awful lot like old green structure. Sure enough. Now 18 has a new back pin position.
It had been there the whole time; Omaha Country Club just didn't know it.
Course upgrades
Omaha Country Club's $4 million overhaul strengthened an already difficult course from the back tees.
Before renovation
Yardage: 6,460
Course rating: 71.9
Slope rating: 135
After renovation
Yardage: 6,746
Course rating: 74.3
Slope rating: 135