The Quarry course may be the headliner at Black Diamond Ranch in Lecanto, Florida, but the Ranch layout is now making its own noise. With a renovation by Tripp Davis now complete, it has gone from reliable understudy to a star in its own right.
Black Diamond Ranch has 45 holes of golf by Fazio Design – the 18-hole Quarry and Ranch courses and the nine-hole Highlands layout. The golf club is the centrepiece of an 800-home development that also includes a variety of amenities.
In spring 2023, owner-operator Escalante Golf appointed Davis to lead a two-phase renovation of the Ranch, 35 years after it first opened, with the aim of addressing course features to fit modern play.
“The brief was to enhance the design as necessary infrastructure work was being completed,” says Davis. “The club needed to install new irrigation and regrass the entire course, and the bunkers were beyond their effective lifespan. This scenario gave us an opportunity to look at enhancing the design to be more interesting to play in the modern game, to be more visually appealing, and more efficiently maintained.
“The Quarry is meant to be the tougher of the two courses, so our work was to make Ranch more strategic, fun and interesting to play. We removed bunkers that didn’t really impact the better players, but unnecessarily impacted the average to higher handicappers, while adding bunkers in places to maximise this approach to hazards.”
This work, along with new irrigation, was completed in the first phase of the project in 2023.
“One of the unique design elements was how the bunkers were built to be more maintainable on the site’s really sandy soils, as well as factoring the heavy rainfall the area sometimes experiences,” says Davis. “The sandy soils had made it tough to maintain the edge of the bunkers without turf loss or minor erosion in heavy rains, so working with golf course builder Bobby Holmes we used Zeon Zoysia to stack a six-to-eight-inch edge that holds moisture better and maintains turf quality better right along the edge. We then used Bunker Solution liner and designed the drainage so it will drain well, but still hold enough moisture to keep the density of sand in the most playable condition. The bunkers are now much easier for the club’s staff to maintain in a visually appealing condition, with a much better playing quality.”
Once the irrigation system was installed, Davis moved on to a second phase; reshaping fairways, rebuilding greens and rethinking teeing areas. Tees, fairways and rough have been regrassed with TifTuf bermuda, while greens now feature TifEagle bermuda.
“With rebuilding the greens, we focused on more subtle movement, but it is constant, so the better players still have to have good control with approach shots to find makeable putts,” says Davis. “There will be fewer three-putts, but matching line and speed to make birdie putts will be interesting. We also focused on giving greens a bit more room for running shots, while we added hole locations that can be tough to get at through the air. It is a matter of course setup, as the Ranch has the flexibility to be a lot of fun, but we can also tuck hole locations in tougher positions when warranted.”
The new teeing areas (including five new back tees and 20 new forward tees) now offer more options and angles, and allow the club to spread wear and tear more evenly.
The Ranch course reopened in December 2024.