72 SEMINOLE GC safely above the water table. Along the way, many of the fairways were subtly reshaped to recapture the initial ground contour that had been slowly lost in the intervening years. The work is not yet over, as there are plans for a third phase next summer which will involve some tweaks and refinements. But now that the major restoration effort has been completed, Seminole is closer to the historic vision of Ross’s original design than it has been in over half a century. It is also now structurally more sustainable. Three factors drove the work. First was the rapid deterioration of the bunkers following initial work in 2018-19 that did not hold up. Second was the need to address the growing vulnerability of the golf course surface to water incursion, via a rising water table, coastal flooding and/or stormwater inflow from the surrounding community. In any case, the ground was too vulnerable and had to be addressed. That included upgraded drainage throughout plus stabilising the deteriorating pond edges that had to be reinforced. Finally, the realisation, once the course was ‘opened up’ to construction, that over the years there had been significant migration away from the original Ross greens in terms of size, slopes and integration with surrounding bunkers. The club, as it turned out, was playing on greens entirely rebuilt by Dick Wilson in 1957-58. It wasn’t just that two greens – on the third and eighteenth – had been moved significantly downfield. That had been well known and documented. What concerned club officials far more was the altered shape, size and overall configuration of the putting surfaces and consequent loss of subtle – and not so subtle – swales, hollows, platforms and rolls. In fact, as the greens got cored out and cross-sections of the infrastructure were exposed, it was possible to see evidence of Rossera slopes that had been flattened or altered by some (undeterminable) combination of redesign and the impact of erosion, top-dressing, mowing and perimeter retreat. Seminole’s front nine went under the knife in the spring of 2025 and reopened in November of that year. The work was met overwhelmingly with praise from members as well as the community of informed golf course critics. The restored nine played firmer, faster and with more diverse shotmaking and roll-out than ever before; more so, as well, than the back nine. The success of the work encouraged club officials to be at least as bold, if not bolder, as they approached the back nine in 2026. That work, which began on 20 April, saw the greens rebuilt and sprigged by 16 June, with bunkers following and the rest of the course sodded by late August. In some respects, the most recent Aerial imagery from the 1930s revealed differences between Ross’s plans and what was actually built “ As the greens got cored out and cross-sections of the infrastructure were exposed, it was possible to see evidence of Ross-era slopes”
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