Golf Course Architecture - Issue 62: October 2020

36 TEE BOX Davis recaptures Maxwell and MacKenzie style at Oklahoma City Tripp Davis has completed renovation and restoration work at Oklahoma City Golf & Country Club, a Perry Maxwell and Alister MacKenzie collaboration that opened in 1929. The focus of Davis’ work was rebuilding the infrastructure of the course, using that process to restore the original design intent in the way the course looks and plays. The rebuilding of the infrastructure included a new irrigation system, improved drainage, new green, tee and bunker structures, and new grasses in the greens, tees, fairways and rough to produce higher quality playing surfaces. “When you are rebuilding pretty much everything on a golf course anyway, you have the opportunity to make a significant impact, which in this case was focused on restoration and preservation,” said Davis. “We worked to restore old angles with wider fairways and tree removal, restoring the intent and style of the bunkers, preserving and restoring unique bumps and rolls in fairways and in the approach to greens to make the ground game more integral to play, and preserving and restoring the character of the greens.” The bumps and rolls Davis refers to are something he believes were a MacKenzie influence. “There were still a lot of bumps and rolls tee to green that we carefully protected, and my shaper Jason Gold and I carried this into other parts of the fairways. Jason and I took a lot of pride in making these very authentic and strategic.” As much as Davis and Gold worked on being authentic tee to green, Davis felt the work to the greens was the most important ingredient in the project. “The greens were 75 per cent what Maxwell had left,” he said. “We preserved the interest and restored what had been lost – original size along the edges and hole locations