Jim Wagner and Rusty Mercer discuss Kinsale design and build

Kinsale Golf Club near Naples, Florida, is nearing the end of its debut season.

The club, which opened in November 2024 and has just 250 members, was founded by Detroit native and long-time southwest Florida businessman Anthony Soave.

Gil Hanse and Jim Wagner designed the course, built on 174 acres of undeveloped land, to pay tribute to Golden Age architects Seth Raynor and Charles Blair Macdonald.

“The routing process took quite a bit of time and several renditions to finalise,” said Wagner. “The property is very intimate; lacked topography and has a large environmentally restricted preserve along with a setback for an eagle’s nest, which limits freedoms but did create unique options. The biggest challenges that required larger scale edits were the engineering requirements to control the water from onsite but also a ‘pass through’ system from offsite development runoff.

“With such limited property, we wanted to utilise classic routing techniques to create a linksy environment especially on a windy site that is so close to the gulf. So, the first and eighteenth run next to and parallel, albeit in different directions, with the prevailing wind being an intricate factor. The opener is a medium-length par five that plays downwind as a gentle opening hole that scores more like a 4.5, while the eighteenth is a longer par four that, when played directly into the wind, plays like a stern par five.”

Hanse Golf Design’s build team, Caveman Construction, handled shaping; Total Turf Golf Services was the contractor; and the Soave development team served as the on-site general contractor and handled much of the early earthworks supervision and permitting compliance. Alex Aloisio, the golf course superintendent, oversaw the course’s grow-in.

“Since the site was devoid of any natural features and dead flat – in some cases less than flat, if that is possible – we needed to create a design inspiration that would allow us start the creative process,” said Wagner. “Raynor and Macdonald have some great ‘flat courses’ so their philosophies became talking points. Our process was not to create template holes or copy specifics, rather use how they handled flat ground to create inspiration and our own twist.

“For example, we have a Punchbowl green [at sixteen], albeit as a short par three that rests just below the clubhouse, but more importantly, within the earthwork of the clubhouse. We needed to raise the clubhouse some 12-plus feet to get out of the floodplain and allow for storage, so we used this elevation change as the foundation of the green site, which also creates a fun atmosphere for club viewing.”

Director of agronomy Rusty Mercer added: “The golf course, in its entirety, was built much like a California green complex. After raising the entire site to its desired elevation, we went back in and excavated 18 inches of fill material that matched the contour maps that the architects had prescribed.

“We tested multiple sand sources to find a high percolation sand and used that to fill in the excavated play corridors. Rather than using a lot of drainage pipe we relied mostly on shallow drain channels dug into the floor of each playing corridor and allowed the sandcap material to fill these channels as we went along. Being that this was a straight, sterile sand growing medium we felt that the soil amendments used would be crucial to our success, we passed on the old standard of using a peat source to buffer the rootzone and chose instead to use a relatively new zeolite material I have had success with on other projects. One year after completing the project, we feel like the playability is exactly what our architects had in mind.”

The course will be open from October to early June each year, and then will close while the club’s greenkeeping team perform annual maintenance.

“Our main goal in taking the project was to create something different and unique in the Naples market for the ownership and members,” said Wagner. “We envisioned architecture being from the Golden Age with a classic feel that was easily walked, intimate, natural, fun and thought provoking, similar to the ‘second’ or ‘summer’ clubs of the northeast.

“One of the major design desires was to create firm and fast play conditions that would enter into shot selection, strategy and fun. The firm and fast conditions were realised early on when the ownership hired Rusty. He is a big proponent of firm and fast golf on sand-based playing surfaces. His dedication and knowledge played a big role in convincing the ownership to spend additional funds to import local sands that helped create the personality of the golf course as well as aid its playability.

“Once this was in place we started to focus field edits on feature placements to engage players thought process and develop hole strategies that can change daily. One of the major design elements is the ‘through yardage’ and gauging how far shots will run and where they will end up in relations to the hazards.”

Richard HumphreysRichard Humphreys

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