Pascuzzo/Pate Golf Design has completed a redesign and renovation project at the Nemu Golf Club in Shima, Japan.

The firm drew up a masterplan and construction drawings with the aim of improving the course to the level that allowed it to hold events hosted by the Ladies Professional Golfers’ Association of Japan (JLPGA).

Plans included significant changes to six holes and the introduction of a new practice range – something necessary if the course were to hold a tour event.

It was decided that the site of the course’s tenth hole would be the best location for the new practice range. To compensate for the loss of this hole, plans called for the nines to be reversed.

What was previously the par five seventeenth hole was redesigned to create two separate holes. These would comprise a par three hole with a drive over a small pond, and a ‘drive and pitch’ par four hole, with a green that sits just beyond a wetland area.

The latter would be the course’s former ninth hole, which will now play as the new eighteenth. This hole received a complete bunker overhaul and the introduction of a new green.

Other elements of the project included the lengthening of the sixteenth hole. The green on this hole has now been moved closer to the top of a bluff, and will now be a par five.

Every bunker across the course was rebuilt or renovated as part of the project, as were many of the course’s tees. Issues around trees and cart paths were also addressed.

Pascuzzo/Pate collaborated with Hiromi Kobayashi – the current chairman of the JLPGA and a prominent LPGA Tour player in the US and Japan – for the work. Sumitomo Mitsui Construction carried out the construction element in 2015, with the course now open for play.