The Club at Golden Valley: Golden and modern

The renovation of The Club at Golden Valley, formerly known as Golden Valley Country Club, in Minnesota, has been driven by a desire to modernise the course’s infrastructure while also respecting its history.

Golden Valley opened in 1914 as a nine-hole layout by Tom Bendelow. In 1924, AW Tillinghast redesigned and expanded the course to 18 holes. Aside from the removal of some bunkers in 1937 and a bunker renovation in 1990, the course has remained largely unchanged since Tillinghast’s day.

In 2020, as the club neared the centenary of Tillinghast’s work, Kevin Norby was hired to oversee a renovation to modernise the course and improve playability. “Greens had shrunk and become round circles,” he says. “Trees had grown, fairway corridors narrowed and bunkers had lost some of their relevance and Golden Age character. The club also wanted to replace the old poa turf in the tees, fairways and greens with newer bentgrass, and rebuild greens.”

Duininck Golf executed the first phase of construction in 2022, which involved renovating bunkers, regrassing and laying the groundwork for larger scale projects. “After this phase the club realised that they had something pretty special and overwhelmingly supported a second phase,” says Norby.

“In addition to modernising playing conditions, I wanted to restore and enhance Tillinghast’s original design philosophy by widening playing corridors and reinstating some of the strategic fairway bunkers that had been removed.”

Norby, working with Tillinghast experts Philip Young and Brad Klein, studied the architect’s original routing plan from the 1920s as well as historic photos from the late 1920s and 1930s. “The plans were critical in helping us understand what he envisioned for fairway width, bunker placement and putting surface shape and orientation,” says Norby. “The plethora of historic photos were also helpful in understanding the shape and character of the bunkers and support mounding.”

The team developed a plan to adjust bunker locations and reinstate more Golden Age character. “The depth of the greenside bunkers ranges from four to eleven feet,” says Norby. “The bunkers had flat floors and steep grass faces, which often left golfers with downhill lies. We were reluctant to change the depth and character of them but one of the club’s primary goals was to improve playability and access. Therefore, we increased the slope of the faces and recontoured the floors. Also, by lowering the leading edges, we made the bunkers more accessible, more visible and easier to maintain.

“For the fairway bunkers, we focused on repositioning them to better challenge the modern golfer. We also emphasised Tillinghast’s ‘master bunker’ concept and, on many, eliminated the rough cut between the bunker and the fairway.”

Seventeen new bunkers were also built, with many restored to the design following their elimination in the 1930s to reduce maintenance.

One of the biggest changes came at the 574-yard par-five eighteenth, where Norby reinstated four fairway bunkers and added six new ones. “The new bunkers are consistent with Tilly’s design philosophy and something he might have done if he was here today,” says Norby. “One of his trademark concepts was ‘the great hazard’, which he first crafted when he oversaw construction of Pine Valley. Often these crossed the entire width of the fairway. However, at Golden Valley, we incorporated a complex of bunkers that jut into the fairway as Tillinghast did on the third at Fenway and the holes nine and ten on Bethpage Red.”

Over the years, the corners of greens had generally become more rounded off. “The putting surfaces had slopes of four to six per cent and the surrounds still had their characteristic perimeter mounding and sharp falloffs,” says Norby. “However, many of the corners had been lost and the tie-ins had become hinged and disconnected. We didn’t want to lose the distinctive steep slopes and false fronts, but we wanted to restore the edges and soften select areas enough to create new pin positions.”

The most significant green renovation came at the 209-yard par-three eighth. “The green was GPS mapped and moved 50 feet to the left,” says Norby. “The putting surface was also enlarged by nearly 800 square feet. We relocated the complex to reduce the likelihood of errant balls landing on the ninth tee. Furthermore, the green also sat in the floodplain for Bassett Creek, so we had to design the changes to offset and mitigate the risk of flooding that this spot is prone to.”

Golden Valley reopened for play in June 2024.

This article first appeared in the July 2024 issue of Golf Course Architecture. For a printed subscription or free digital edition, please visit our subscriptions page.

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