Design Notebook: For Whom Should We Renovate?

In this edition of Design Notebook, we discuss the implications of East Lake’s planned renovation, the results of Gil Hanse’s work at the Country Club in Cleveland, the rumors of more changes at Inverness Club, and the importance of excellent public courses like Soule Park refusing to get complacent.

The East Lake renovation and the moving target of golf course stewardship

Jon Rahm is commonly, and correctly, recognized as one of the best interviews on the PGA Tour. One reason for this, I think, is that he is good at understanding and respecting points of view other than his own. This ability makes him something of a unicorn in elite competitive golf, a game that attracts self-interested types.

An example of Rahm’s broad-mindedness: when he was asked before this past week’s Tour Championship what he thought of Andrew Green’s upcoming design changes to host venue East Lake Golf Club, he made clear that he was skeptical, but he added that his perspective wasn’t the only—or even the most important—one.

“If it was up to me,” he said, “there’s not much that this golf course needs changing. With that said, the golf course does belong to the members, so the members should do whatever the members think is best for the golf course…. I think it’s great the way it is right now, but if they want to make it member-friendly, I am nobody to object against that.”

(H/t to Geoff Shackelford for highlighting this quote in his Quadrilateral newsletter.)

PGA Tour players are obviously entitled to their opinions on the playing fields where they compete. But when they weigh in on design matters, they should keep in mind that tour venues are also public or member courses; they see far more play from normal amateurs than from tour pros. Justin Thomas and Webb Simpson, to call out two of the Tour’s most self-confident architectural pundits, don’t always seem aware of this reality; Jon Rahm does.

In fact, I wish all tournament-hosting courses would print out Rahm’s words and post them permanently in the general manager’s office or green committee’s meeting room. Members and regulars should be reminded to think of themselves as the primary constituency for design changes. Trying to accommodate an elite men’s field is a losing battle. The requirements shift with every new driver and ball release. Twenty years ago, 7,000 yards was enough. Today, 7,500 feels insufficient. In 2040, the baseline might be 8,500. So unless you have Augusta National-like resources to buy up surrounding neighborhoods and rebuild golf holes every few years, you might as well focus on something else—like, for instance, creating a course that challenges and delights average players. If doing this means the pros will drive every par 4 and shoot 60, so be it. That’s their (and the governing bodies’) problem.

I’m not saying major hosts and PGA Tour venues won’t or shouldn’t attempt to test top golfers in creative ways. We’ve heard, for example, that East Lake will experiment with varied, unpredictable fairway widths around the landing zones for tour pros’ tee shots. What effect this ploy has remains to be seen, but hey, it’s worth a try.

In general, though, Andrew Green’s planned alterations at East Lake are geared toward the desires of members, not the ever-shifting needs of the Tour’s longest drivers. Green’s inspiration will be a 1949 aerial photograph that shows wide fairways, sporadic trees, and far fewer bunkers than exist on today’s Rees Jones-redesigned course.

A 1949 aerial photograph of East Lake Golf Club

According to the club’s general manager Chad Parker, as quoted by Derek Duncan in Golf Digest, the main goal will be to “recapture more of the feel of the golden age of East Lake.” Green’s restorative work at two other Donald Ross designs, Inverness Club in Toledo and Wannamoisett Country Club in Rhode Island, will serve as a model for the changes to East Lake’s bunkers and greens. While the club has not detailed its plans for tree removal, we can assume that the course will enjoy greater air and light circulation by the time the 2024 Tour Championship arrives.

Andrew Green's bunker work at Inverness Club will be a point of reference for his upcoming bunker work at East Lake

(Also, the lake inlet in front of the practice tee will be filled in, fixing one of the most wasteful—albeit funniest—driving ranges in golf.)

“The club will work with the PGA Tour and solicit input when needed,” Duncan reports, “but no significant concessions are being made to the design for the Tour Championship (including no additional tees)…. The emphasis, smartly, will be on improving member experience.”

This is the right attitude. Golf courses can do very little to prevent an in-form Viktor Hovland from going low, so they might as well concentrate on attainable objectives: preserving the great architecture of the past and providing fun, thought-provoking golf for the 99.9 percent of us who will never sniff 180-mph ball speed. In an ideal world, all PGA Tour players would understand this logic as well as Jon Rahm does, and would further appreciate the need to re-scale the professional game to fit the golf courses, not the other way around.

But I’m not getting my hopes up. -Garrett Morrison

Inverness angling

Speaking of the things golf courses do to remain viable candidates for men’s majors, Inverness Club, which commissioned an excellent renovation by Andrew Green in 2017, is trying to find more length. The green on 482-yard par-4 14th will be pushed back, and back tees will be added on a few other holes. It’s worth noting that the course already stretches to 7,730 yards.

Inverness has made no secret of its ambitions to host a U.S. Open, and the next available slot is 2036. Given what the championship would mean to the city of Toledo, I hope the club’s bid is successful. I’m just a little stunned that a 7,730-yard course would need lengthening to firm up its credentials as a major venue. I mean, good lord. Roll back the damn ball. -GM with Andy Johnson

Gil Hanse’s Country renovation and the elusive final step

Before the Country Club (in Ohio, that is) hired Gil Hanse, the course was already one of the best in Cleveland. It had seen significant tree removal and bunker renovations in 2002, courtesy of Brit Stenson. When I visited in 2017, the William Flynn design impressed me. It did not cry out for restoration.

Many American clubs find themselves in a similar situation: their courses hover at about 75 to 80 percent of what they could be. Few clubs reach their full potential, which requires an all-hands effort from the membership, an architect, and the maintenance team. It’s uncommon for these three to align. Sometimes the architecture is merely average. Other times, misguided maintenance or a meddling green committee interferes.

At Country, as it’s often called, Stenson’s architectural work was fine—far from being as problematic as Rees Jones’s redesigns—but it deviated from Flynn’s original work.

In the late 2010s, Country began scouting for architects to carry out another round of changes. In 2021, the club settled on Gil Hanse. Hanse’s team, deeply familiar with Flynn’s designs, also collaborated with Flynn historian Wayne Morrison. Together, they brought the Country Club back to Flynn’s vision. Three elements especially stand out: the bunkers, the expanded greens, and the widened fairways.

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Country’s defining feature is its stunning topography. Traversing ridges and valleys, the course never feels monotonous. Before Hanse stepped in, the bunkers failed to match the grandness of the property. They were too small to stand up to Country’s epic slopes. Now Hanse has restored the scale and drama of Flynn’s bunkers, amplifying and showcasing the course’s topography.

Similarly, expanded fairways underscore the grandeur of the land. The extensions have also enhanced strategy; players can now use the edges of the corridors to gain approach angles into greens and avoid the treacherous bunkers. One critique I have, though, is that the restoration could have further broadened certain fairways. Of course, expanding a fairway always poses the question of how much short grass you really want to maintain.

Finally, Hanse expanded 17 of Country’s 18 greens. These expansions reclaimed many dynamic pin positions in the corners. A prime example is on the par-3 sixth hole, where a restored front-right position is now one of the best on the course.

All in all, Country’s renovation is a good case study for the many well-to-do golf clubs that have improved in recent years but haven’t reached their peak. Moving from 40 to 80 percent of your potential is more difficult than garnering that last 20 percent, yet far more clubs have done the former than the latter. -Andy Johnson

Soule searching

Soule Park, three-time host of Fried Egg Golf’s Boomerang event, is one of my favorite affordable public courses. In the years since Gil Hanse’s 2005 redesign, however, mowing lines had crept inward, marooning many bunkers in a sea of rough. Recently, under the guidance of Hanse’s researcher and visual artist Tommy Naccarato, Soule Park rectified this problem. The latest Google Earth shots show the widened fairways, pressed beautifully against Hanse’s Billy Bell-inspired bunkers.

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Kudos to Naccarato, who continues to bolster his résumé as a champion of Southern California golf architecture, and Soule Park’s lease-holder and manager Keith Brown. It’s one thing to carry out an excellent renovation. It’s another to maintain that excellence for decades and to prevent the course from regressing. -GM with Cameron Hurdus

Big fish

A little Catnip, so to speak, for golf-architecture nerds: Trout National – The Reserve, an under-construction private club in New Jersey headed up by 11-time MLB All-Star (and zero-time playoff-game winner*) Mike Trout, released hole-by-hole details of its Tiger Woods and Beau Welling-designed golf course.

Our first impressions: lots of short grass, lots of sandy waste areas, and lots of parallel holes. -GM

*Apologies for the gratuitous violence. Garrett is a frustrated Angels fan.

Another course we photographed recently

Kirtland Country Club (Willoughby, Ohio)—designed by Charles Hugh Alison in 1921, restored by Ron Forse and Jim Nagle in 2008

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Quotable

“Do what we will, in golf we cannot ignore the lure of the sea. The true links have an intimacy with the waves; they are much on the same level, in close relation, almost cousins and part of the ocean if you can imagine the sea turned into land or the land suffering a sea-change into something rich and rare. After all, the wind is answerable for the foaming undulations of the sea as it is for the convolutions of the desert or the thin borderlands of the links, those sandy and grassy wastes, often only a few hundred yards wide, which represent a transformation, as it were, into another material and color. It is indeed not inappropriate to regard the greens as worthy symbols of the bluer undulations beyond.” –H.N. Wethered

If there’s something (course, project, rumor, person, trend, etc.) you think belongs in Design Notebook, send an email to garrett@thefriedegg.com.