71 the kind of aerial power game that he and his chief rival at the time, Robert Trent Jones Sr, were championing across the country. When architect Brian Silva was brought on board in the late 1980s, he took a close look at the original Ross design plans and realised they bore little relation to what existed on the golf course. Because he was hired to oversee construction of the existing structures with upgraded mix and growing medium, no restoration effort was made. Contractor Ed Connor of Golforms simply cored out the existing top layer and built his new greens mix on top of the existing subgrade – the Wilson version, not the Ross plan. A similar approach guided Silva’s approach to the rebuild of fairway and greenside bunkers in the late 1990s. Reconstruction was the guiding principle, and it was authorised by club leadership. The work was largely undertaken in-house, with a local shaper used to reconstruct the existing Wilson shapes and positioning. Industry standards for such work have since evolved. Budget parsimony that the club exercised in an earlier day has given way to a more willing approach to invest ambitiously. The whole point of hiring Hanse and Wagner and the rest of the construction team has been to recapture the subtlety and brilliance of Ross’s original design. In that original Ross plan, it made a difference where you hit the drive to get the optimal angle into the green. The closer to a fairway bunker the better your angle in. There is now, on the completed front nine, ground-game access for the higher handicapper or for someone seeking the option of recovery from a wayward drive. There is also greater variety in any given hole given the wide range of hole locations now available. Pins can be tucked behind or adjacent to fall-offs and bunkers to maximise the risk of playing boldly. The greens restoration has added an average of 1,525 square feet per green, to an average of 7,918 square feet each – much closer to Ross’s original design. There is also far more fairway contour and rollout than had become the case by the 2000s, to add more elements of uncertainty and risk to everyday play. For example, Ross’s 1929 plan for the fourth green includes a four-corner structure to the putting surface and a central hollow traversing the surface. This had been lost following Wilson’s work, which has now been in play for decades, but is clearly identifiable in subgrade excavation and recaptured by Hanse’s plan. The scale of work undertaken has seen a virtual complete resurfacing of the golf course as well essentially new infrastructure below, including a new irrigation system. The scope of work needed in the name of sustainability might surprise those who are already impressed with Seminole’s lofty status in the golf world – close to the top of every golf course ratings list. The ultimate test will come this fall, when members get to play a reopened course. They just might find the front nine a lot more interesting, and the to-becompleted back nine comparatively tame, by contrast. They might just want to play the front nine twice – until summer of 2026 has passed and the entire course meets the new standard of restoration design for Seminole. In an effort to reproduce the scruffy bunker banks evident in this 1930s photo of Seminole’s ninth green, Hanse and Wagner have deployed bahiagrass on many high faces of their reconstructed bunkers SEMINOLE Photo: JSeminole GC
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