Army Navy Country Club in Washington, DC

Army Navy Country Club is a private facility of more than 2,000 members. They have their choice of playing 27 holes at a site in Fairfax, Virginia or another 27 holes at a site in Arlington, Virginia. The mission statement for the project was to update the facilities of Army Navy to minimize maintenance costs and maximize the club’s position in the D.C. marketplace. The Club hired me to develop a Renovation Business Plan for all 54 holes and develop a phased construction process which would allow for eighteen holes to be open at each facility throughout the process. The simple answer to close nine holes at a time as they lay on the scorecard would have been a logistical nightmare and added expense and time to each phase of the project. Instead, I developed a plan that called for construction in different zones of each property. This was a major selling point to the membership in their decision to approve our Renovation Business Plan and subsequent construction phasing by a vote of 79% in favor.

All fifty-four holes at Army Navy were run down and in need of an identity. The putting surface grasses were outdated, tees were too small, bunkers had no character and were maintenance nightmares, and overgrowth of trees had rendered many holes strategically irrelevant. In other words, they were runways. Another element of the project was the need to restore a watercourse known as Daniel’s Run at the Fairfax site. The Renovation Business Plan and construction drawings addressed all of these needs and laid out a logical and cost-effective construction phasing process. I made no major routing changes on the courses with the lone exception of reversing a par-three at Arlington to improve playability, visibility, pace of play, and golfer circulation.

I established an identity for each golf course through the sand bunker styling. The Arlington site is the older property of the two and although no specific architect is credited with the design, I chose to create a golden-age look for the bunkering. Robert Trent Jones was the architect of the original eighteen at Fairfax, so I chose to develop a flashed-sand bunker style similar to RTJ for that site, but with some minor design and construction adjustments to minimize washes (a major issue previously).

As of January 2008, we completed nine holes at Arlington and the Daniel’s Run stream restoration project at Fairfax. We worked in conjunction with the U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service to restore the original streambed of Daniel’s Run, re-capture the bank edges, and institute a wetland planting plan. The Club is slated to begin work on nine more holes at Arlington and the first nine at Fairfax this August.