Wicker Point opens in Alabama designed by Coore & Crenshaw
The first Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw-designed course in Alabama, Wicker Point Golf Club, has opened for member play. Wicker Point is located on Lake Martin in Alexander City, 70 miles southeast of Birmingham, and is the centerpiece of a 1,500-acre development called The Heritage created by Russell Lands.
The Coore and Crenshaw Trail winds partly through densely wooded terrain, primarily hardwoods and pine, and along the fingers and bays of Lake Martin. Parts of nine holes will edge the water. The front nine has pronounced elevation changes, while the back nine mostly circles around the shoreline.
“The lake has so many inlets that it creates hundreds and hundreds of miles of shoreline,” Kaur said during construction. “I’ve heard there’s as much water frontage on Lake Martin as there is in all of California. But it’s all in and out, and it’s very, very beautiful. The shoreline is very broken, with coves and inlets and peninsulas.”
Built on red clay, the course features Zeon Zoysia turf for the approaches, tees and fairways and TifEagle Bermudagrass on the greens.
Go social
Our new course @cottenfields It won’t make its official debut until the spring of 2024… So, what a treat it will be to play all 18 holes today with the core group that made it all happen: Bill Green, Mark Hughes and Jimmy Laird, thanks. pic.twitter.com/NFp6sSHZSd
– Jeff Mingay (@jeff_mingay) September 23, 2023
Nathan Grace oversees Hampton Hall Reno
Hampton Hall recently reopened its Pete Dye-designed venue after a renovation led by Nathan Crace. Located in Bluffton, South Carolina, a few miles before the bridge to Hilton Head Island, Hampton Hall is a residential course designed by Dye in 2004. The par-72, 7,503-yard layout has long been affected by soil and drainage issues . Following the coronavirus-affected increase in gaming and shopping cart traffic. The club has retained the Crace for refurbishment, restoration and rebuilding.
“After my first visit, we realized that in addition to the fairway drainage issues, there was a need to rebuild the bunkers and redesign the greens with a newer part of Bermuda,” Chris told Golfcoursearchitecture.net. “We developed an improvement plan with a 100-day construction period, and Landscapes Unlimited broke ground in April 2023.”
Crace and Landscapes Unlimited restored the greens to their original sizes, eased some of the slopes to accommodate modern green speeds and replaced the old Tifdwarf with TifEagle. They also added new front tees and bunkers.
“All the bunkers are now visible and feature classic Pete style,” Chris said. “When the course was originally built, Pete was undergoing cancer treatment, so he wasn’t able to make as many on-site visits as he usually does during construction. Once the course opened, Pete commented to Superintendent (Matt Sapochak), who still works at Hampton Hall, He said he wished he had added a fairway bunker on the left side of the third par-5. To honor his wishes, we added that to that bunker.
“I also made a slight change on the 18thy To remove the pile that was blocking the view of the waste area Pete added on the right side of the closing hatch. This is now visible from the tee.
The $2.9 million project was completed on October 1.
The classic golden age is being refined
One of the greatest heathland schemes of London’s Gilded Age, St. George’s Hill, designed by HS Colt, has retained a multinational team to plan the future of the course. A crew from Michigan-based Renaissance Golf Design, led by Brian Schneider, and designers Clyde Johnson and Angela Moser are collaborating with Chris Haspel, who will serve as agronomist, building consultant and historian Jasper Meiners of Evalu18 Ltd. Who will manage the project. Collectively the team has experience in 32 of the world’s top 100 courses.
St George’s Hill is located in Berkshire, Surrey, England, southwest of London, and is the first ever example of a golf residential development. Carved out of dense woodland in 1912, this 36-hole appeared as a 27-hole design in 1913. Tom Doak once considered it the best of all the moorland courses, including Sunningdale, Wentworth and Swinley Forest, and even today, Critics rank the front nine courses of tournament layout (the red and blue nines) among the best in golf.
“We completed the strategic review in the summer/fall of 2021 and concluded six pillars,” general manager Philip Worthington told Golfcoursearchitecture.net. “We set ourselves several goals regarding Colt, five points we wanted to take into consideration. However, the key question was to test Colt for the golf course: Would he live?
“We want a 27-hole master plan that looks at the entire property as one big picture, including the training grounds and conservation facilities. We want to maintain Colt’s design principles, as we are all custodians of an iconic golf course.
“We are not looking for a new architect for the golf course. We have one named Harry Colt. We are looking for a team of architects who can review, reconsider and restore his work to the modern-day standard that the club and its members see fit. What prompted this decision was not an accident “This has been a culmination of factors including the pandemic, a review of course use and playing habits, and a full review of our assets and our responsibility to maintain and improve them. It is a natural evolution, and we hope to have options and considerations to take to members later this year.”
