Texas’ TPC Craig Ranch, home to the PGA Tour’s CJ Cup Byron Nelson event since 2021, will undergo a major renovation by area resident and former PGA Championship winner Lanny Wadkins.
Located in the northern Dallas suburb of McKinney, TPC Craig Ranch was a 2004 Tom Weiskopf design. In its four editions hosting the PGA Tour, scoring has been extremely low, but course owner Invited, formerly known as ClubCorp, has playability for all in mind with the re-do.
The Wadkins-led renovations will completely overhaul the existing course, incorporating new turf varieties that will enhance turf conditions and durability, bringing them on par with those seen at the nation’s top facilities. In turn, this will significantly elevate playability for TPC Craig Ranch members, delivering premium conditions for the course year-round that can challenge the world’s best players, while also maintaining a member-friendly golf experience. Some bunkers will be added and others relocated closer to greens. Several holes will be lengthened, stretching the 7,438-yard layout to roughly 7,600 yards.
Wadkins, a long-time design partner for Invited, and his Wadkins Design Group team will lead the redesign on select holes. Wadkins won the Byron Nelson in 1973, when it was played at Preston Trail Golf Club.
"I am excited and honored to be doing the redesign of Craig Ranch," Wadkins said. "It is a great site for world-class golf with gently rolling terrain that features Rowlett Creek which meanders through the property and provides great strategy for multiple holes. My goal is to build a golf course that will challenge the best golfers in the world for the CJ Cup Byron Nelson, but more importantly be a great club for the members to call home the other 51 weeks of the year. The new course will include entirely redesigned bunkers, green complexes, new irrigation, drainage and improved turf varieties."
The course’s zoysia fairways, tees and rough will now feature TifTuf Bermuda, which is a sturdier grass that stays green deep into the winter months and re-greens earlier than other varieties. TifTuf can be maintained to ensure a firm, fast course that is both challenging and exciting to play.
The conversion of the roughs to TifTuf will create thicker, denser grasses for players to navigate, while also creating greater flexibility for course management. During the CJ Cup Byron Nelson, the fairways can be mowed narrower to challenge the game’s best players, while they can be mowed wider throughout the year for member play.
The greens will be converted to ultradwarf Bermuda, which will deliver consistent speeds throughout the year and reduce fluctuations in play. The new greens will offer firm, fast approaches with strong collars, and they are resilient in the Texas heat, eliminating the need for hand-watering and fans.
Most prominent of the design changes will occur at the par-4 18th, where the hole will be lengthened and the green moved down to the edge of the creek. Formerly an easy birdie, the hole will be intended to play as a demanding par 4.
Additionally, the existing 20-year-old irrigation system will be replaced with 2,000 new sprinkler heads and a more efficient pump station that maximizes the amount of water distributed in a shorter period of time. This will reduce water usage and ensure consistent playing conditions throughout the year. A revamped drainage system will ensure more playable conditions and fewer cart path-only days.
TRILOGY IS BACK ON THE RISE
Dormant for two years, Trilogy Golf Club at La Quinta is rising again in the California desert near Palm Springs.
Recent years have not been kind to the course, which achieved must-play status in the early 2000s after hosting The Skins Game from 2003 to 2006. However, its assets were sold to various owners, and a series of financial troubles and mismanagement led to hard times. The course, renamed Coral Mountain Golf Club, closed in 2022, but that’s all in the past.
Earlier this year, the residents of the Trilogy at La Quinta community voted overwhelmingly to purchase the golf course, clubhouse and restaurant. They’ve reverted the club back to its original name, Trilogy Golf Club at La Quinta, and have invested in a multi-million-dollar renovation to modernize the facilities to bring them back to their former glory.
The homeowners have even brought back the original management team from BlueStar Resort & Golf to oversee the renovation and manage the club. Work is underway and come November, Trilogy Golf Club at La Quinta will reclaim its status as a must-play, daily-fee golf course in California’s Coachella Valley.
"The course has great bones. You can see all the characteristics that made it one of the best in the region," said Mark Reider, president of the TLQMA board of directors. "It has a tremendous setting and a very playable, enjoyable design. It just wasn’t cared for properly for a very long time. Now, crews are out there every day putting it back the way it should be. We’ve got a great team on this, and we can’t wait for our community and people from the surrounding area to be able to enjoy this golf course the way it was when it hosted The Skins Game."
The ongoing work to restore the course to its original design is extensive. All greens have been re-grassed, and the collars have been resodded. The greenside irrigation heads have been replaced. The pump station was replaced, and the entire irrigation system is being audited to ensure exceptional playing conditions.
Working with Gary Brawley, who was part of Gary Panks’ original design team, several bunkers have been reshaped with lowered bunker noses to enhance playability, and all bunkers have been completely rebuilt with new drainage, new liners and a new 50/50-blend Emerald sand.
As an added feature for players, when Trilogy Golf Club at La Quinta re-opens, the club will make the original Skins tees available for play, allowing players to experience the course the way Tiger Woods, Fred Couples and Phil Mickelson did back in its heyday.
In addition to the golf course work, the club also is renovating the clubhouse, which includes a full-service golf shop and its signature restaurant. The design and décor will be heavily influenced by the Coachella Valley’s famed mid-century modern aesthetic.
THE SOCIAL ASPECT
Over the past few months, we have been methodically crafting the Master Plan for Longmeadow CC, MA (Donald Ross, 1922). The property boasts incredible ravines that would make Shoreacres blush and we can’t wait to bring this one out of the darkness and into the limelight. Ross… pic.twitter.com/XQ7PHa2RFU
— Tyler Rae (@TylerRaeDesign) July 3, 2024
GOLFPLAN'S EAST RENO READY AT KASUGAI CC
The venerable East course at Japan’s Kasugai Country Club is expected to reopen in October after a renovation by Golfplan. Designed in 1964 by leading Japanese architect Seichi Inouye, the parkland-style East is one of two 18s at the club.
"This was originally a single-green course that reverted to a two-green system due to management concerns," Golfplan architect Kevin Ramsey told GolfCourseArchitecture.net. "While the routing was relatively solid, strategy and options were minimal. Also, shaping and bunker character were nondescript, leading to a course with a lot of missed potential."
Renovation work began in December 2023, with primary emphasis on the putting surfaces. "Kasugai had roundish greens with tilts back to front and rounded edges with putting surface areas not exceeding 3,230 square feet," said David Dale of Golfplan. "The surrounds were gently concaved or slightly elevated. There was little challenge and made for a pedestrian and mindless playing experience.
"We decided to transform them to have a more classic, Golden Age character with some plateau greens and collection area surrounds to create a variety of short-game recovery options. The surfaces are now capable of hosting national championships."
The new greens offer much more variety in terms of potential hole locations, putting the onus on proper tee ball placement so as to maximize the angle of attack considerations on the approaches. "Our design strategy is more about providing variety, interest and options for a better playing experience," Ramsey said.
Besides the ho-hum green complexes, also gone from the East course are more than 1,000 trees, including a profusion of pines and cedars that were impeding vistas and breeze circulation. "Holes were completely encapsulated by a wall of trees," Dale said. "Now, we have opened up the course to have distant mountain views, vistas of the city of Nagoya as well as views of adjacent holes, lakes and valleys. The atmosphere of the layout has been completely transformed."
Golfplan also coordinated the drainage and irrigation upgrades, installed new grasses and cart paths and lined bunkers with the Better Billy product. Next on the agenda is Kasugai’s West course.
"The West has more width than the East with both sited on beautiful rolling land with holes routed on ridgelines and valley floors," Dale said. “The West will be equally dynamic in architectural approach but with green sites that gather and funnel the ball to various hole locations with better undulation within the green surfaces. The bunkering will have its own contrasting character to the East and an emphasis on ball position as a priority from the tee."
