73 Interlachen’s bunkers are now a flashed style, as seen on the ninth (foreground) and eighteenth green When the Joe Lee-designed Interlachen course near Winter Park, Orlando, was built in 1985, 1.5 million cubic yards of earth were moved across the low-lying 270-acre site. Forty years later, Fazio Design moved some more. Lee’s original design for the private club involved the excavation of numerous lakes – water is in play on almost every hole – to create fill that he used to contour the course. Fazio Design was hired by the club in 2024, and Tom Fazio and senior design associate Tom Marzolf created a masterplan that would see the entire course raised by around a metre. “The land the course sits on is very gentle and relatively flat,” says Marzolf. “We listened to the members, who asked for drier, firmer conditions, on a site prone to seasonal hurricane flooding and slow-to-dry soils.” Indeed, as the club was preparing to move ahead with the renovation, Hurricane Helene hit the southeastern United States. Winter Park escaped the worst of the devastation, but there was flooding across Interlachen’s course and a strong reminder that raising levels would help the course withstand future extreme weather events. The seventh hole alone had over a metre of standing water. Construction foreman Alec Klotz from Total Turf Golf Services and his crew enlarged the lake to the left to generate the required fill and created several catch basins to a new drainage network. Similar work has been completed across the course, with lakes extended to provide the fill needed to raise landing areas and over 400 catch basins created to improve surface drainage, all helping to create greater separation from the water table. For Fazio Design, this is a familiar process, having worked on over 70 courses in the state. “In tropical Florida, so much of the work we do relates to drainage improvements,” says Marzolf. “At Interlachen, we worked with the local engineers to drop the lake elevations slightly, which helped to lower the water table in the soil. The drainage work is, however, just one aspect of the overall project at Interlachen. The entire course has been reshaped to a new design, and then regrassed – with TifTuf bermuda, TifGrand for approaches and surrounds and TifEagle on greens (see box). Extensive tree removal and undergrowth clearance has opened views and allows more sunlight to reach the turf. Interlachen’s out-ofplay areas now feature pine straw, adding a layer of aesthetic definition to the course. Vegetation has been removed in and around lakes, to be replaced with thousands of aquatic plants, such as canna lilies, that provide a burst of colour. Railroad-style bulkheads that previously lined the lakes have been Photos: Interlachen Country Club
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy NzQ1NTk=