Golf Course Architecture - Issue 63, January 2021

71 Most of what it takes to make a project work takes place behind the scenes, quietly, during a protracted planning process. At Congressional, Green worked closely with Wendt, club chief executive Jeffrey Kreaf le and director of golf Jason Epstein, as well as the board and a specially designed Master Plan Committee. Together they updated the membership, including a full reveal at which Green walked folks through the entire plan. The last thing anybody wants is for there to be surprises – especially because the changes proposed entailed a different kind of golf course, with the standard tree line to tree line maintenance of a parkland layout giving way to something more open and more natural. It probably helped ease concerns that at least the Gold Course would be kept open throughout – though no one could have anticipated the extra demand for golf once the pandemic hit in March 2020 and left many members homebound and looking for recreation. Before construction could begin in October 2019, the club had to secure extensive permitting from county, state and federal authorities. This covered everything from water quality and erosion control to caliper-for-caliper tree mitigation as per local mandate. To satisfy concerns about potential runoff the club agreed to build a staggered series of retention basins, five of them at least an acre each in size, three of them half an acre Above, the fifteenth (centre) and eleventh (foreground), now with its green the other side of the creek. Green is returning the course to the more open landscape of its past, as seen in aerial imagery from 1940 Photo: Congressional CC/James Lewis Photo: Congressional CC