Addition, Renovation, Restoration
New practice range complements old Ross Bunkers
by Bob Labbance
Perhaps the last course designed by Donald Ross, the Raleigh Country Club in North Carolina was drawn by the legendary Architect in March 1948; Ross died 100 miles south in Pinehurst on April 26 of the same year.
Several renovations have been launched over the decades; the most recent being a 1993 bunker and green overhaul by David Postlewaite. However, the members sought a better practice facility for the private club and also wanted to return the bunkers to their Ross heritage. They called on golf course architect Richard Mandell, a 12-year veteran in the profession with offices in Pinehurst, just down the road from where Ross plied his trade half a century earlier.
"I was brought in and asked to develop a master plan for the golf course and completely redesign their practice facility," says Mandell. "They had purchased an additional 14 acres to expand their practice facility. Previously, you couldn't hit more than seven or eight iron on the driving range, and that went back toward the road, so it was inefficient and dangerous. Phase one was the practice facility; we designed and built it last fall, and it opened on May 6."
This is no run of the mill driving range -- quite the contrary. "We built five new USGA spec greens--one is a new putting green adjacent to the first tee, three are 3,500-square-foot target greens in the short game area and one is an 18,000-square-foot Himalayas green," notes Mandell. The huge and interestingly contoured Himalayas green also includes, "a part of it that is called a stroke green, which is a dead flat surface where you can really practice your putting stroke. Overall, the short game area is about 2 acres with three bunkers and nothing but humps and bumps and mounds and rolls and swales. There's not a shot on the course that can't be found on the short game area."
As happy as Mandell was with the short game area, his passion for understanding the work of the great architects of the past and restoring and enhancing it made the bunker renovation his foremost interest. He started by doing the research. "I had the original Ross routing, and I also had aerial photography from 1949, 1954, 1965, and 1971," details Mandell. "I also had the existing base material, so what I did was overlay Ross, the 1954 aerial, and the existing topography. The other aerials were for reference only. In the 1949 aerial the course was still under construction, so that didn't help much."
It was the 1954 aerial that served as the "as-built," showing all the original features and that the routing hadn't changed, save for a slight adjustment to the 18th hole. " The original had the same bunkers that Ross had designed, but there were a bunch that were never built that we put back--or actually built for the first time."
Mandell also modernized the challenge by selectively adding a few more hazards. "We only added four bunkers that were not part of the original design, nor were ever built previously. They were all in the landing areas of the ninth and 10th holes," says Mandell. "That was the result of making the golf holes a little more difficult, based on the advances in technology. The ninth hole is a short par four that they could just blast away with the driver, so we added bunkers on both sides of the landing area, in addition to the four bunkers that are already there. On the 10th hole, we lengthened the hole and added bunkers on both sides of the landing area."
Most of this work was done while the course remained open, thanks to a talented superintendent. "From the get-go, we knew we'd be having play with this going on, so I told them my goal was to keep the playing surfaces--the tees, fairways and greens--as clean and in as good shape as possible," says superintendent Micheal Shoun.
On board at Raleigh since January 1999, Shoun manages "a staff of 20 and that includes a mechanic, horticulturist and an assistant horticulturist. I have a very good staff," he adds. Everything has gone well during the bunker project, except the weather. "Things have gone very well; we've had a little problem with weather but not anything major. I think the changes have made the golf course better," says Shoun. "You had the normal messes that you always have with any kind of construction, but the company we've got doing it has done a fabulous job of trying to keep the rest of the course open and in play without disturbing much at all."
Malphrus Construction of Hilton Head, S.C., is the builder, with Ben McGinnis the on-site project manager. Malphrus has been involved with major construction projects throughout the Southwest since 1940 and building golf courses since constructing Sea Pines Plantation on Hilton Head Island in 1956. Their work at Raleigh CC was neat and tidy, confined to one or two holes at a time. That was not the problem.
"The biggest problem I've had is the weather we've had," says Shoun. "We did a lot of sodding in Bermuda and Myers zoysia on the bunker faces--and normally our weather in the spring is good growing weather for Bermuda and zoysia starting in April. Normally, you're able to get that sod to tie in and start growing--but we're still not to that point yet (in early June). We've just been very cool. Normally, by this time of the year, our average highs are in the mid-80's. We've only had a couple of days this entire year in the mid-80's. I have heavy clay soil, and it'll probably take at least 8 to 10 days of good 85 to 90 degree weather to get the soil temps up to where we're growing Bermuda, but we'll deal with it and do what we can until we get to that point."
The clay soil also factored into architect Mandell's plans. "The subsoil is clay; you need 2 or 3 percent drainage from where it starts to exit. We put 4 inch drain tile, and we also put Sandtrapper on the bottoms and the faces of the bunkers," says Mandell. "The bottoms of the bunkers were concave, so that helped facilitate drainage to the center. We put in 4-inch drain tile in gravel trenches and ran the drainage out into non-play areas or connected it to existing drainage."
Mandell feels that the wrong bunker sand was chosen at the last remodeling. "One aspect of the project was clearly, 'lets get the right bunker sand in there,'" says the architect, who has addressed that problem with all new sand. "We also added a bunch of grass hollows. Some of them were originally shouwn on the drawings, such as the one on the seventh hole, which was a huge grass hollow and swale complex. And then, we added 16 other grass hollows throughout the golf course--some around the greens, some in fairways--most of them to make the greens complexes more challenging. The areas they were in were previously just flat dead areas, so we put subtle hollowing in there that are only 2 to 3 feet deep in places." Mandell used Bermuda 419 for all the grass hollows and the bunker faces are zoysia--everything was sodded.
Grassing was a consensus of the principles, including adding zoysia to the course for the first time. "That was a decision between myself, and the architect and the owner of the club," says superintendent Shoun. "One of the reasons that we went with zoysia is that our owner wanted the new bunkers to have almost a framing effect. We went with three passes around with Zoysia, and it will have a little different color and texture and it almost frames every bunker. Now, i know there are a lot of maintenance nightmares with zoysia, but there are a lot of courses in the area that have it, and I've spoken with other superintendents on what they do to maintain it. We're yet to see, we're just getting started on this."
Architect Mandell, who grew up playing and studying the great courses of Westchester County, N.Y., before migrating south doesn't think he's changed the playability of the course all that much. "Another goal of the project was, 'Let's try and preserve as much Ross as we can.' In researching this, it was obvious there wasn't much of Ross physically left," says Mandell. "The bunkering that was there had a little bit of Ross flavor, but it was not accurately shaped. Some of the bunkers were not in the right spots, so we had to finagle that, and we restored the original size and shape--and in the majority of the situations, location. The bunkering got 6 inches to a foot deeper than what was there before, so that's going to increase the challenge a bit. We added new tees and increased the length (about 85 yards), so that will increase the slope a bit. We'll probably add another 200 yards when we redo all the tee complexes that we haven't touched; that's tentatively scheduled for this fall."
When all the work is completed, Raleigh members will not only have a course that pays homage to Ross, it will also have an area to practice those pitch and run shots he has confounded golfers with for more than a century. That should make even the purists happy.
Originally featured in the July 2005 issue of Turf South magazine.
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