CONSTRUCTION UNDERWAY IN CANADA AT GOODWOOD, TORONTO
The project at Goodwood is an example of good things coming to those who wait long enough. This project which started life so long ago under the auspices of Donald Steel & Company (which carried out the layout and detailed design), is now finally under construction. Ground was broken in March of this year, and, at the time of writing, the first seed is being put down. The course is working out just as well as envisaged and will offer something a little different in the Toronto area, which is so rich in the quality of its golf courses. Gordon Stollery, the owner of the land, wanted something more traditional than is generally found in Canada which prompted the initial approach to a British company.

Allan McDonell trying out the par 5 18th

The site for the course has some dramatic valleys and hill top ridges which provide the ideal terrain. The course is planned to have a natural look with long fescue grasses in the rough making an attractive framework for the holes.

Looking down into the valley of the 14th hole

The construction visits have allowed Martin Ebert to see a number of the courses in the area. It is always useful to see new courses and those at Devil’s Paintbrush and Eagle’s Nest impressed very much. The treatment of pathways at Devil’s Paintbrush was interesting in this ‘land of the buggys’. The main cart paths were loose stone but there were some other attractive ‘sheep’ tracks to tees and pathways through the rough to fairways.

A pathway through the rough at Devil’s Paintbrush

One of the reasons for visiting the courses was to look at the possibility of using fescue for the fairways rather than the generally accepted bent grass. The philosophy for the course at Goodwood is to allow running shots to be played into greens and, most importantly, around greens. It was felt that fescue would offer a good surface for this but, for a number of reasons, bent grass has been selected for the main 18 holes. The sandy nature of the subsoil will mean that the course can be kept dry and firm so that the playing characteristics can be as desired. However, the project also has a third loop of nine holes which will probably be constructed next year. These fairways will be seeded with fescue so there will be the opportunity for a fascinating comparison between the two surfaces.

Sketches of the 12th and 17th holes provided courtesy of Mr. Tony Harris

Gordon Stollery, the proprietor, also owns and operates the amazingly successful Angus Glen complex which has 36 holes and will host the Canadian Open in 2007. It would be easy to imagine the Canadian Open coming to Goodwood in years to come. One final piece of news about the project is that the Club at Goodwood will be linked with the Club at Askernish on South Uist in the Outer Hebrides. The report on the classic links terrain of Askernish can be downloaded click here.

The arrangement will allow reciprocal rights for the members and is an exciting development for both Clubs. Askernish now has its permission from the authorities to start work on the creation of the course and this is likely to begin in the early part of the New Year after the sheep have grazed the fairways down to a more manageable height!

Q HOTELS, FOREST PINES HOTEL, GOLF AND SPA

Mackenzie & Ebert has been appointed to advise Q Hotels who have recently added Forest Pines Hotel, Golf and Spa in North Lincolnshire, England and Westerwood Hotel in Cumbernauld, Scotland to their rapidly expanding portfolio of hotels. This is their foray into golf.

Their plan is to extend Forest Pines to create two eighteen hole courses of equivalent standard and address a safety problem with their practice ground. The new land is of similar woodland character to the present courses, being a mixture of commercial plantation and better structured beech and larch wood. The planning application is being processed and the tender drawings are close to completion.

“The expansion of Forest Pines will build on the undoubted strengths of the present facilities and will create a 36 hole complex to rival the best inland golf destinations in the country” said Tom Mackenzie of Mackenzie & Ebert.

A NEW COMMISSION AT PAYMOGO, SPAIN
Mackenzie & Ebert received a further boost with the commission to design an 18 hole course in Spain, on a beautiful site which lies close to the border with Portugal some 40 minutes inland from the southern coast. This came after a competition with the likes of the Arnold Palmer Group, Tom Fazio, Robert Trent Jones and Perry Dye.

The developers want to provide something different in an unspoilt area of Spain. They feel that there is a good market for a development which is closer to nature and which does not suffer from the same over development of some coastal regions of Spain. They searched far and wide for the right site and they made an inspired selection. The 650 hectares at Paymogo is one of the best sites for golf away from the sea, having long distant vistas in all directions and undulating terrain which will give rise to many dramatic holes. Even so, the course will be easily walkable, which is a priority for all of our layouts, although one that is not always achievable.

Two visits to the site have already been made, which is so large and so gifted in natural attributes that it has been a hard task to determine where the course should lie. To the east, there is a superb lake with many bays and promontories which that are ideal for holes. In the end though, it was decided that the course is best located to the west over land which, overall, will lead to a better course. However, the possibility of two courses has not been ruled out. The intention is to dam a river valley on the eastern side of the site in order to provide additional feature to the course and valuable wildlife habitat.

The beautiful lake to the east of the site was thought to provide the best course initially but the overall attributes of the land to the west (below) have led to it being the preferred location

TSADA GOLF CLUB RENOVATION MAKES EXCELLENT HEADWAY

Work on Tsada Golf Club’s ambitious expansion and renovation plan is proceeding ahead of schedule this summer and is all set to be ready for a soft re-opening in December of this year. “It is encouraging that work is progressing so well because it is such a huge project for our Club” says Stelios Patsalides, the Club Manager and mastermind of the whole project.

14th Hole - Before	14th Hole - After 'Visualisation'

The creation of new 14th and 15th holes is nearing completion with the 14th, pictured here, a dramatic short par four across a natural valley cloaked in native Cypriot plants. Natural rock walls have been built to define the edge of the golf and to retain as much of the natural habitat as possible. The severely sloping 11th and 12th fairways have been completely reshaped to offer a fair golfing challenge and a valley cut through the ridge on the 6th, eliminating the blind approach shot. As well as a new 8th green, every tee and bunker is being rebuilt. All of the drainage ditches are being relined and faced with stone and the cart path system is being overhauled.

A new irrigation system is being installed, work which should be complete by early September, weeks ahead of schedule. Once this is done, virtually the whole course will be reseeded with the best of the modern cultivars of golfing grass.

Tom Mackenzie of Mackenzie & Ebert Ltd, international golf course architects, is delighted with the way that the team has worked together.

“Our team of John Greasley, Irrigation Control and the Cypriot wall builders are working extremely well together and it is exciting to see holes come together so quickly. The 14th is a spectacular hole and it may well become the hole by which people remember Tsada Golf Club.”

The greenkeeping team headed by David Ashley now face a hectic few months to bring the course on to opening.

The clubhouse is to receive similar attention with plans to expand the bar, restaurant, proshop and locker rooms. The drawings are being prepared now and work will commence shortly.

Contact the Club to try out the new design. It will be so different to what was there before.

Stelios Patsalises, Tsada Golf Club. Email: golfers2@cytanet.com.cy

THE OPEN AT HOYLAKE
The changes to the course at Royal Liverpool were carried out by Donald Steel & Company when Martin Ebert was intimately involved with the design and implementation of the new greens, tees and bunkers with Donald. Hence, it was very satisfying that the course was so well received by all parties involved, especially the players. The satisfaction was even greater bearing in mind the vitriolic piece written by Ron Whitten, in a US golf magazine before the event. He said that the R&A should never have considered taking the Open back to such an antiquated venue and called it ‘Royal Out of Bounds’.

Seve, on his return to the Open, playing to the new 5th green

It was amazing to see how brown and fast the course was even at the start of the week. The Open is probably the only event where these conditions could be entertained without severe criticisms of the organisers and greenstaff and it was great to see such a stand being made by the R&A and the Club. What better way can there be to educate golfers that courses do not have to be green to be good? It was exciting to see the varying strategies adopted by the players show that firm and fast provides the very best test of golf - and how wonderfully Tiger passed that test.

The bunkers at Hoylake made thinking the most important part of the game at the Open

KILLEEN COURSE AT KILLARNEY GOLF CLUB, COUNTY KERRY, IRELAND

The majestic backdrop to the revamped 4th green on the Killeen Course at Killarney

The Killeen Course at Killarney re-opened on June 1st 2006, some 14 months after a complete reconstruction commenced, which has to be something of a record for a project where the areas were re-seeded rather than returfed. The work was helped by an unusually dry summer, warm autumn and the excellent performance of the contractor, SOL Golf Construction and the club’s dedicated greenstaff.

The project represents another milestone for Killarney. The updated Killeen follows the same layout as the original Carroll’s Irish Open course but every green, tee and bunker was rebuilt, streams and ponds reshaped and new drainage added. Angling of the new greens and reshaping of fairways with fairway bunkers has allowed the playing characteristics of many holes to be altered considerably. The original design proposals were made by Donald Steel and Company and, in order to maintain continuity, Mackenzie & Ebert Ltd completed the project, under the control of Tom Mackenzie who was closely involved from the start.

“This project is a great example of what can be done to transform a course that has become a bit stale and outdated, all for relatively small sum compared to the cost of new course construction.”

The course was officially re-opened by the Minister of Art, Sports and Tourism on June 30th 2006. “The verdict” according to the Irish Examiner “was 100 percent favourable and to such an extent that Killeen, although a venue in the past for two Irish Opens, a Curtis Cup and a whole host of other major events, has been improved out of all recognition”

VILASOL PROJECTS
The Vila Sol group, which has been so successful with its flagship development on the Algarve, are been planning expand operations with a number of new, exciting projects. Plans for the wonderful coastal site on the Algarve, Ancao, were developed in the life of Donald Steel & Company and Mackenzie & Ebert have been asked to produce plans for courses on the new sites at Benavente (near Lisbon) and Palheta (near Evora). Both of these new sites are very attractive with the distinctive cork trees at Benavente and the oaks at Palheta providing an ideal framework for the holes.

The wildflowers will be a beautiful feature at Benavente in the Spring	There are wonderful distant views from parts of the site at Palheta

COSTATERRA RECEIVES ITS PLANNING PERMISSION AT LONG LAST!
The tremendously exciting project at CostaTerra, to the south of Lisbon in Portugal, has finally received planning approval and generous public support from the Portuguese Government after some 10 years of negotiations! The layout for the course was developed by Donald Steel & Company but Mackenzie & Ebert are now proceeding with the detailed design.

The site is very close to some beautiful beaches and is made up of the second highest dunes in Europe and hence is all sand. This offers a tremendous potential for the creation of a true links course but the other marvellous discovery is that heather is recolonising the former pine tree plantation. As a result the philosophy is to attempt to create a links / heathland course.

The heather is returning over the sand dunes at CostaTerra

One of the big issues has been the choice of grasses for the fairways. The major considerations have been water consumption, links like playing characteristics and the colour of the grass during the slightly cooler winter months when warm season grasses can go dormant and brown. The advice of two agronomists, David Stansfield and Stew Bennett, was taken in this regard and the decision was to proceed with paspalum. Figures from Abaco in The Bahamas, where paspalum was used, show major water savings compared to bermuda grass and low cutting heights ensure that the bump and run shots are quite feasible. The one question will be whether the grass will go dormant for a short period in winter. To gain some more information on this some trials are planned in conjunction with Estoril Golf Club before the construction starts.

Trials have already commenced at Estoril Golf Club regarding the use of paspalum – In this photo the left half of the green is in paspalum and the right half in bent grass. In order to assess the grasses available, a visit was made to a very impressive nursery in the Algarve

VUOSAARI & TUUSULA GOLF CLUBS, FINLAND
Advisory visits have recently been made to the Finnish courses of Vuosaari and Tuusula, both near Helsinki, and further visits will be made in the coming months. Green reconstruction will be carried out at both as well as the construction of new bunkers and the filling of numerous old ones.

It has been a lot of fun working at Vuosaari, achieving the right shapes for the bunker surrounds. The original concept for the course was to create a links like course so the aim of the rebunkering programme has been to achieve a random, hand made rather than machine made look to the surrounds. This project has shown the importance of following up initial course reports with visits during construction.

Working to get the hand made look for the bunkers at Vuosaari

A VISIT TO ONE OF THE MOST NATURAL OF COURSES AT YELVERTON GOLF CLUB, DEVON
A most enjoyable visit was made in August to the superbly natural moorland course at Yelverton in the south west of England. The rough and rugged shapes of the old tin mining features coupled with those manufactured by the architect, Mr. Herbert Fowler originally, and construction team, provided food for thought in terms of the style of shaping of modern courses.

One of the distinctive craters to the left of the 16th green at Yelverton

 

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