77 identity via planting, rebunkering or reshaping greens.” “Parkland had so many holes that went left to right, there were four or five that were practically the same design,” says Letsche. “The biggest changes came at the fifth and twelfth. The fifth has been redesigned to play as a driveable par four, which they did not have before. It will be a very strategic hole, almost similar to hole ten at Riviera in terms of risk and reward. “The twelfth has changed to the point that it looks nothing like it originally did. Fairway bunkers were eliminated and trees have been planted. It has a completely different visual and stands out tremendously well compared to what it was.” Letsche has also tried to strike a better balance between playability and difficulty. “We have achieved this through the judicial use of bunkers, placing them in strategic areas for the better players,” he says. “The original design had an extraordinarily large amount of bunkering, close to 140,000 square feet. With the summer rain, that amount of bunkering proved to be detrimental maintenance-wise with a lot of hours put into fixing washouts. The project completed a few years ago reduced the sand square footage to 40,000 square feet. Although it made sense to do that, they had dumbed down the bunkers and lost a lot in terms of aesthetics and the playing experience.” Letsche has added about 50,000 square feet of bunkers to reintroduce more strategy and reshaped or relocated existing hazards while also creating a new aesthetic to Parkland. Capillary Concrete was installed time minimise the time required for maintenance. Each green has also been redesigned to create more pinnable area and opened up for ground-game approaches that were limited on the previously perched greens. “It used to be pretty penal around greens, with balls rolling off into deep bunkers, but now it is more fun for all levels,” says Postel. Image: Greg Letsche New bunkers were a key part of Letsche’s plan, in order to add more strategy to Parkland
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