[Frank Pont]

Frank/Patrick,

My first thought was, oh no not another tree attacking thread...(of course I'm kidding and this was not a thought in my head at all as you well know). Great work! The bunkering indeed looks quite ominous, just when I thought our upcoming France visit was complete you guys go an make this a must see. Glad I'm only a couple hours drive away.

Can I ask how many bunkers you added, because they are now all visible it looks like a lot. That would be my only critical thought, don't get me wrong I love the natural looks of the bunkers but would have to play the course to get a feeling as to weather I thought there may be too many. If there wasn't many added it seems many had really grown in so bringing them back was certainly key to this renovation. It looks like a completely different course.

I wish I could impart both your visions on tree removal and overwatering here in The Netherlands. :-)

Really great work and I can't wait to pay it a visit.

In total 11 bunkers were added and 4 were closed, which leads to a net addition of 7 bunkers. By far the biggest contributor was hole 13, the flat par 5, where we added 5 bunkers because we felt the hole needed it for visual and strategic reasons.

1    0
2   -2
3    0
4  +1
5    0
6   +1
7   0
8   0
9   0

10  0
11  +1
12  0
13  +5
14  0
15  +2
16  -2
17  0
18  +1

So most of the bunkers you now see were already there, but you just did not see them because they had grass faces....

[Frank Pont]

Very nice, Frank.

Hardelot was a favourite of mine so looking forward to getting back.

Tell me, what is the short term / medium term / long term expectation with those open sand areas such as to the right of 11 fairway and before 16 green / 17 tee?

Are they getting planted / stabilised? If so, what with?

Good question. For now we are leaving it as it is, and see how it develops over this summer. No big danger of erosion since it is fairly well sheltered, and we expect a lot of pine cones and needles to fall in those areas (you can already see that at work in the middle area below the pines on hole 15). If we do not like the development we will have another look at it, maybe plant some fescue. Its a pity there is no heather on the course, that would also fit in nicely.....

[Patrice Boissonnas]

Frank and Patrice,

The course looks fantastic, well done.  Was there any work done to the greens?  After playing a few Simpson courses around Paris last summer, I really am interested in seeing more of his courses. Do the greens possess bold contouring?  I really like the look of how the green seemed to really interact with the bunkering in the old photo.  It does seem as thought there are some areas that still could use some tree removal.  I guess it is tough to take too many at once as it may be a bit of a shock to some of their members.   

Thanks for the great post. I was looking to play there this fall, is it already open for play?

Joey, yes the course is open for play. Although they have members, it's mostly a pay and play product, so feel free to call and book your tee time!
Amazingly the course re-opened end of March which was hard to believe several weeks before considering the mess we made...
Special tribute to Ken Strachan (Director of Hardelot) and his team who really put in a lot of work to get the place nice and tiddy in no time.

[Patrice Boissonnas]

Gents,

Aesthetically outstanding but in terms of further tree removal and fairway lines, would you not like to be able to open the course up still further?

Pushing the fairway lines further out it also part of the plan.
In essence, we want to bring back all the elements of the original architecture : less trees, larger putting surfaces with shortly mown runoff areas, bigger bunkers in typical Simpson lace edged style and of course wider fairways.

Interestingly, widening the fairways could be one of our most controversial change.
With only 5900 meters from the tips, Hardelot is not always considered a stern test of golf and we hear comments that wide fairways would make it even less difficult. We believe on the contrary that wide fairways help reveal the subtelties of the architecture, yielding to strategic choices for the better player and less lost balls for the higher handicaps. The renovated hole 15 is a great example of that: so many places to aim at from the tee, but where is the ideal landing area?

More generally speaking, Hardelot is a much more challenging course than it looks on the scorecard. Hole 8 is a perfect illustration of the false feeling of comfort you can experience on the course: 310 meters max, downwind, no green bunker, but trust me, 4 is a very good score on this hole.
For 2013 PQ1 (qualifications for the European Tour), the winner was only at -12 after 4 rounds and anybody in the par would be in the top 25 and qualify for PQ2. FYI, the course played as a par 71 for PQ1.
Faster and firmer soil will only bring more difficulty (although making the course play slightly shorter).
On top of that, we brought the original par 73 down to 71 by converting holes 2 and 16 into par 4s (Simpson's routing had no less than 6 par 5s!) For major events like PQ1, officials are considering to lower the par to 70 with hole 10 being played as a par 4.

[Patrice Boissonnas]

One more thing about bunkers:
More than once, Frank and I had to resist the temptation to add more of them and it was a very interesting process to ask ourself if we really needed them?
If you look at green n°1 for example, there is a big hump short right which is crying for a bunker but we thought 3 things:
1. if Simpson did not build a bunker there, he must have had his reasons
2. for the sake of variety, it's good to not always have bunkers everywhere they would nicely fit in
3. let's not be to nasty on the 1st hole and keep it easy on the players.

Same debate about the hill on which the 8th green is located. Why not a bunker in there? We even have an original Simpson sketch of this hole showing a bunker short left of the green but it seems it never got built. After discussing together we decided the hole would be much stronger without green bunker and somewhat harder too for the good players who has to face temptation to drive the green.

In the end, we were extra careful to only add bunkers when it was hyper relevant, the most visible additions being the fairway bunker on 4, the fairway bunkers on 13 (the only way to spice up this overwise rather bland hole) and on 15 to get along with the strategy of the new split fairway.

[Andrew Bertram]

Patrice / Frank

stunning transformation, congratulations on a great piece of work

We experienced Hardelot 2 years ago and the difference is simply amazing

All the club members I had travelling with me enjoyed the course a lot however I have no doubt they would not recognise the course if I showed them these images as the changes are enormous

Great comparison of the old v new

What latitude did the committee / owners give you in what you could do?



Andrew

[John Connolly]

Frank,

Great work. Love the photography. Looks like you shoot using HDR technique. Yes? If so, could you briefly explain your technique. If not, I need to get my vision checked.

[Frank Pont]

Frank,

Great work. Love the photography. Looks like you shoot using HDR technique. Yes? If so, could you briefly explain your technique. If not, I need to get my vision checked.

John,

I shoot in RAW format with a Canon 50d, with 18-135 lens.

The RAW files I then import into Photoshop CC Camera RAW, make adjustments.
Most common I :

- first apply a graduated filter to the sky part of the picture
- warm up the white balance
- increase the shadows slider to bring out detail in the shadows
- decrease the highlights slider to bring out high lights in the sky
- increase contrast and clarity sliders
- slightly increase vibrance slider
- slightly sharpen the image

Then I move the picture back into Photoshop
There I apply the command

- image / adjustements / shadows-highlights where I open up the shadows and highlight the light areas somewhat more.

It is the last part that gives the pictures an HDR feeling

But the key part is making good pics and making them in RAW format, because that gives you much more possibilities to repair over or under exposed parts of the picture!

hope that was helpfull

[John Connolly]

Frank,

And then some. Do you shoot with a tripod, a small aperature and fast shutter speed?

[Frank Pont]

Frank,

And then some. Do you shoot with a tripod, a small aperature and fast shutter speed?

No tripod unfortunately, too cumbersome when walking the course, but I do use fast shutter speed.
Still you can see blur in the tree branches in the corners of the pics, thats where it shows I am not a pro

[jvisser]

Hi Frank,

Looks really good! I'll put it on my ever increasing list of courses to play!
Great to have all the bunker so much more in view and that you have
removed so many trees and intend to keep that up.

Cheers,
 Jan

[Paul Gray]

Gents,

Aesthetically outstanding but in terms of further tree removal and fairway lines, would you not like to be able to open the course up still further?

Pushing the fairway lines further out it also part of the plan.
In essence, we want to bring back all the elements of the original architecture : less trees, larger putting surfaces with shortly mown runoff areas, bigger bunkers in typical Simpson lace edged style and of course wider fairways.

Interestingly, widening the fairways could be one of our most controversial change.
With only 5900 meters from the tips, Hardelot is not always considered a stern test of golf and we hear comments that wide fairways would make it even less difficult. We believe on the contrary that wide fairways help reveal the subtelties of the architecture, yielding to strategic choices for the better player and less lost balls for the higher handicaps. The renovated hole 15 is a great example of that: so many places to aim at from the tee, but where is the ideal landing area?

Patrice,

You're preaching to the converted there. I'm currently considering how to break the same news to my club without completely alienating myself! Frank knows the course I'm referring to and has some very similar views.

[Pat Burke]

Frank,
I'm going to Hardelot on sept 13 with a student.
He is playing first stage of euro q school.
Looks amazing.  Cannot wait to see it.

[Frank Pont]

Pat, make sure you say hello to the Hardelot manager Ken Strachan, a real Scotsman, who can tell you the whole story, he was very involved in the whole process. You might also run into my French partner Patrice Boissonnas, who could give you the full guided tour.....

[Michael Wharton-Palmer]

How the hecjk did I miss this thread the first time?
Gorgoeus photography at times I can figure out photot or painting , simply marvelous.
Stunning bunkering, congratulations to both you and Patrice on the project I am even more keen on that France and Holland trip we talked about.......

[Sean_A]

Very fine.  So, is the other course going to get Pontificated?  What about Touquet?

Ciao

[Jeff Bergeron]

Beautiful! Well done.

[Frank Pont]

Very fine.  So, is the other course going to get Pontificated?  What about Touquet?

Ciao

Sean thx. For the record the work the work is a true 50/50 partnership with my friend Patrice Boissonnas, so maybe we should call it PontBoissonated 

We are only working on Les Pins, the other course Les Dunes is being renovated by a French architect called Corneillot.

Re Touquet, just returned  from a full day there with Patrice, looking at planning the works there for this winter. New greens and tees on holes 14-16, resurfacing green 2, rebuilding the left side surrounds at hole 10 and lots of tree management. Back nine greens were all destroyed in WWII, redone in the 90's but in a modern style, and we are now trying to restore the old Colt style.

[Scott Warren]

Frank and Patrice,

I've loved watching the process of you turn his already majestic course into something that looks even more special and fun to play.

A couple of questions, having played the "old" course and only looked at the pics of your works.

Did you add some length to #7? I recall it being only a flick with a wedge, even from the back tee.

Do you envisage taking more trees out on the 9th? I thought it needed plenty taken out both inside the dogleg (which you appear to have done to an extent) as well as on the ridge over the far side if the fairway. I thought when I played it (Sep 2010) that it was a shame you were blocked out if you fanned your drive right or hit it through the dogleg because it would be a good recovery shot to that green.

Are you pleased with how the split fairway turned out on the 15th? It's a drastic improvement on what was there, but from pics at least the right-hand option doesn't look all that tempting.

The 16th used to be a par five, didn't it?!

Once again, the finished product looks amazing. Congrats.

[Frank Pont]

Scott,

thx for the nice words, it has been a lot of fun but also hard work!

Hole 7 from the back tees is about 20 yards longer, about the same from the yellow tees. Also the tees are about 2 yards lower than they used to be before. It still is a wedge from yellow, but between a 9 and 8 from the back (or a seven for shorter hitters).

We did a lot of tree work on the back nines this year, but still have to do a lot of tree work on the front nine, and the 9th hole is no exception. I agree this needs to especially done on the right side of the fairway for the reasons you give. Also need to lose trees around the green for agronomical reasons.

I like 15 as it is, its a good match play hole at the right moment in the round, and it looks good. Funny enough it might be too easy at the moment, with most good players going via the right. We will first be lowering the tee of 15 (its kind of an unnatural high tee at the moment) and that will make the right side a bit harder to play. If that still isn't enough we will likely be adding a bunker in the right side fairway. Work in progress.

Holes 2 and 16 used to be par 5's, now long par 4 holes.

[Patrice Boissonnas]

Thanks Scott for your message.

I would add just a few comments:
Believe it or not but Hardelot's original design had no less than 6 par 5s for a total par of 73. Buy converting holes 2 and 16 into par 4s, the course now plays as a par 71. It is something we did at the request of the club members who where complaining about their playing handicap being too low.
Another thing I recently noticed : Hardelot has 5 par 3s and each one is and plays longer than the previous one :
hole 5 : 110m - PW to 9 iron
hole 7 : 135m - 9 to 7 iron
hole 12 : 145m - 8 to 6 iron
hole 14 : 160m - 6 to 4 iron
hole 17 : 165m - 6 to 3 iron
(all measures from white tees, but similar incrementation from yellows)
Don't know if Simpson did this intentionaly or ih he ever noticed it.
Can you think of other courses with a similar feature?

[Pete Lavallee]

Wow, what was I doing in May that I missed this thread!

First off, a huge shout out to Frank and Patrice; the work done here is absolutely stunning! For a course that I had a great interst in visiting it looks like it is much more fun to play after your work there.

The pictures are absolutely fabulous, possibly the best Photo Thread I've seen on GCA in my 12 years hanging out here. But the before and after pictures are unbelieveable! I would suspect that surely some other courses will be moved to undertake a sensitive restoration like this after viewing those pictures. Are there any other Tom Simpson courses in Europe in need of assistance?

Thanks very much for sharing this.

[Frank Pont]

Pete,

thx for the kind words.

There are many Simpson courses in Europe in need of similar restorations, especially of their Simpson style bunkers.

Sadly most clubs are going the exact opposite direction, in that they are simplifying their Simpson bunkers, taking the detail out of them, often using the argument that is saves maintenance costs.

We are already working at Spa, Hardelot and Blackwell, but we would love to work at more Simpson courses.....

[Scott Warren]

Patrice,

With five par threes, that's quite something.

Royal Cinque Ports' par threes are all subsequently longer than one another, but it only has three of them, so that's not as remarkable.

Pasatiempo goes close in the opposite direction: 2 > 5 > 8 > 15 but then 18 is a couple of clubs longer than 15. Bugger.

[Sean_A]

Burnham's four 3s are in ascending yardage order.

Ciao

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