Delray Dunes hires Scot Sherman for Dye restoration
Delray Dunes Golf & Country Club in Boynton Beach, Florida, has hired golf course architect Scot Sherman to restore its Pete Dye-designed course.
“We have all been so familiar with restoration of courses by Ross, Tillinghast, Raynor, and others over the years, but now it is time for the next generation’s courses, which includes Pete’s work, to be restored after multiple renovations and lost character,” said Sherman.
Delray Dunes was the first layout that Dye designed in Florida and, since opening in 1969, has been tinkered with by Dye and others.
“It has lost much of its Dye characteristics, so we are studying its past and trying to reintroduce Pete’s fingerprints on the ground as best we can,” said Sherman. “Similar to the older restoration projects, we are using photographs, aerial images, club documentation, and member testimony to accomplish the task.”
“Many of the greens have lost their interest, so we will be tweaking most, if not all, of those over time,” said Sherman.
Sherman’s project will begin this summer and will be completed in phases over the next few years, working on a few holes each time. “The idea is to not close the golf course while we do the work, it will be more surgical and targeted,” said Sherman.
Preliminary sketches of the third, fifth, seventh and eight holes indicate that bunkers will be significantly reworked into a Dye style, tees will be added, and some greens will be expanded.
At the 183-yard par-three seventh, for example, Sherman plans to enlarge the bunker in front of the green, introduce pot bunkers, add a forward tee at 125 yards and expand the green to the edge of the lake bulkhead.
“It’s hard to believe 50 years has passed, and we are now working on courses built during the boom times of the sixties,” said Sherman. “Time marches on as they say, and I am grateful to be working here. Pete and Alice have had such an influence on my career that I feel honoured to be entrusted with this task – I only hope we can produce a course that would make them proud.”
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Work will start in the summer (proposed revisions to the fifth, pictured)
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John Dodge, one of the founding members of the club, and Dye, on site in 1969
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Sherman says this 1990 image of the eighteenth hole shows a style more typical of the original course
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