Dozens, perhaps hundreds, of courses have been through a restoration project since the movement began to gain traction 40 years ago.
But mostly restoration is a once-and-done thing: it is pretty rare for a course to be restored and, only a few years later, go under the knife again.
Donald Ross came to eastern Iowa in 1915, early in his illustrious career, and extended the Cedar Rapids course, which had originally been nine, to eighteen holes. By 2010 though, as the centenary of Ross’s work approached, the course was in a mess. Like so many older American courses, it was choked with tree growth, and it had been for so long that the members knew nothing else.
One year, the course emerged from winter in very poor shape. The greens were bad, and the fairways were infested with fungus and moss, a consequence of the poor light coverage caused by the tree growth. There was no consistency of bunker styling. New general manager Tom Feller realised the scale of the problem and effectively said to the committee: ‘Engage a golf architect for a masterplan or you will need to find someone else to do my job’. Supported by a small group of activist members, he drove the recruitment of veteran architect Ron Prichard, who, using his decades of experience on Ross courses, devised a restoration plan, which was implemented in 2015.
That project was rapturously received, but Prichard now admits that he was, to an extent, flying by the seat of his pants. “We really had no clear understanding of how Ross bunkered this golf course,” he says. “No drawings. No photography. The 2015 plan was me using considerable experience of studying Ross’s drawings and restoring several dozens of other Ross courses – I bunkered the course on the 1915 plans and on the ground based primarily on instinct.”
And then, on 10 August 2020, everything changed. A derecho, a straight-line windstorm of similar force to a hurricane, developed in the Midwest over South Dakota. By late morning, the storm had reached its peak strength and moved into the Cedar Rapids area, passing through the city with gusts of 130-140 miles per hour. It left 1.9 million people in the region without power, and it caused the Duane Arnold Energy Center, Iowa’s only nuclear power plant, to be shut down permanently (it was scheduled to be decommissioned later that year and restarting it for a few months was judged to be uneconomic). And it effectively destroyed the Cedar Rapids golf course, felling about 700 mature specimen trees, mostly oak and sycamore (thousands of smaller trees also went). For months afterwards, the course resembled a logging camp, as crews struggled to remove all the fallen trees.
General manager Tom Feller was at the golf course when the balloon went up. “We had a large golf outing that day, so I was helping close down the beverage station on the sixth hole before the storm hit,” he says. “As I dropped off the bartender at the clubhouse, I went to park my truck in the parking lot and got stuck in the storm. It lasted roughly 40 minutes, then I ran to the clubhouse immediately after. I raced out of my truck, and my initial response was, ‘Oh my God, what just happened? I hope everyone is safe.’ As I walked out of the back of the clubhouse to look out over the golf course, I was lost for words. It was a disaster.”
Architect Prichard returned to Iowa three weeks after the derecho. He was initially despondent. “I was absolutely speechless when I saw the golf course,” he says. “The damage was far more substantial than I had anticipated. And in addition to the winds knocking down what appeared to me to be 90 per cent of the once-standing trees, every tree that still stood had massive damage to its remaining limbs and branches. I was so overcome that I could not initially imagine a solution. But during the next day or two I began to piece together what I felt was a proper approach and felt prepared to return to my drawing table and develop a plan.”
The principal element of Prichard’s plan – which, though it respected Ross’s original design, was not largely restorative – was to rebuild the fairway bunkers. “What I observed in the day or so after my return following the derecho was that even though most of the architectural features, in particular the bunkers, were still in place, the scale of the bunkering was that it no longer had the proper visual impact on players,” he says. “Although the members I discussed this with might not have had the experience to spot this, they trusted me to provide the answer and do what I felt best. My response was to rebuild and expand almost every hazard, with the primary attention being to fairway bunkering.”
Compare the post-2015 photos of Cedar Rapids with today’s course and this is easy to see: the fairway bunkering is massively larger, and hence in sync with the much larger visual scale that is created by the far more open property. Cedar Rapids is now a course of long views, in a way that it never previously was, and so the new hazards make visual sense in a way they never previously would have. In addition, the fairways were widened – again to match the new visual scale of the property, and a second, alternative green was built for the sixteenth hole, a homage to the lost original double green on the opening hole.
Prichard provided the club with drawings of the new hazards and compared them to the previous ones. Naturally, the excavation of these radically larger bunkers created a substantial amount of fill material, and finding a way to use this was an important part of the project. “We added some long angular mounding where it fit and created additional meaningful obstacles which captured wayward play,” the architect explains. The course’s infrastructure has also been significantly improved, enhancing its ability to get rid of water in the event of a flood.
Although the project was not, in essence, restorative, it would not be a Prichard job without trying to put something back. The green of the uphill par-four eighteenth has been restored to its 1920 dimensions and shape – and it shows; its slopes are severe! But the most dramatic restorative work is the recreation of the remarkable punchbowl green on the par-five ninth hole.
The approach to the hole is blind; it plays over a hill crest about 100 yards short of the putting surface. Old photos suggest that Ross built a punchbowl green to help contain these blind shots, but the right side of the punchbowl was lost at some point when a maintenance road was created on that side of the hole. This created a difficult situation where shots hit to the right side of the green would run away down a steep slope and across the road. The green had not been addressed during the original restoration on grounds of cost, and difficulty finding the fill to rebuild the bowl, but Prichard now realised he could make a significant improvement to the hole. “It occurred to me that we could improve the hole dramatically by regrading the area from the ninth fairway and in front of the tenth tees to capture shots and I could use all the accumulated excess fill to build a very bold punchbowl green. And the best thing is that everyone smiles when they see it, and loves how it plays!” he says. Given that the green is immediately below the clubhouse terrace, it is a triumphant decision, creating perhaps the most memorable feature on the entire golf course in full view of everyone having a post-round drink!
The work at Cedar Rapids is nothing short of wonderful. From disaster has come triumph, and everyone involved, from architect Prichard to Tom Feller and all those at the club, should be very proud of it. And Prichard – who loves to tweak his friends – will not, I am sure, be hurt when I say that perhaps getting two bites at this particular cherry enabled him to do even better work!
This article first appeared in the October 2024 issue of Golf Course Architecture. For a printed subscription or free digital edition, please visit our subscriptions page.