67 Renovation work in progress on the front nine (foreground) at Seminole in summer 2025. The back nine will be completed in 2026 the Covid era and the increasing stress from marginally higher average temperatures and the occasional more intense rainstorms, the bunkers started unravelling sooner than anticipated. Something had to be done. The second factor was the accumulating impact of coastal vulnerability on the Seminole property has been undeniable. The water table, from the outset an issue for the club given its proximity to the surface, has been confirmed by consulting engineers as measurably rising – a function of rising ocean levels and the impact of ever-expanding hard surface construction in areas outlying club property. The rising water table, even if only a few inches in some areas, complicates everyday drainage because surface water has nowhere to go. This forces storm water runoff onto golf grounds and has required the club to handle more water volume than ever. Club officials worried that if the problem was not addressed, the golf course would slowly, inevitably, decline into a kind of swampy miasma: at best, without the lively ground-game attributes that had always been prized at Seminole; at worst, a shadow of its former self, akin more to a poorly managed municipal layout only intermittently playable at all. Thirdly, as soon as the design team ‘opened up’ the golf course, so to speak, for a serious look at infrastructure, it became apparent that the architecture had changed dramatically since Ross’s design work of 1929. In some way, that’s not unusual. Greens often get rounded off and shrunk. Bunkers get a more formal look. Trees grow in. Fairways get narrower. The club obviously knew about the third green having been moved back 100 yards or so; and the eighteenth green having been swung Photo: JSeminole GC
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