84 REPORT The renovation of The Club at Golden Valley, formerly known as Golden Valley Country Club, in Minnesota, has been driven by a desire to modernise the course’s infrastructure while also respecting its history. Golden Valley opened in 1914 as a nine-hole layout by Tom Bendelow. In 1924, AW Tillinghast redesigned and expanded the course to 18 holes. Aside from the removal of some bunkers in 1937 and a bunker renovation in 1990, the course has remained largely unchanged since Tillinghast’s day. In 2020, as the club neared the centenary of Tillinghast’s work, Kevin Norby was hired to oversee a renovation to modernise the course and improve playability. “Greens had shrunk and become round circles,” he says. “Trees had grown, fairway corridors narrowed and bunkers had lost some of their relevance and Golden Age character. The club also wanted to replace the old poa turf in the tees, fairways and greens with newer bentgrass, and rebuild greens.” Duininck Golf executed the first phase of construction in 2022, which involved renovating bunkers, regrassing and laying the groundwork for larger scale projects. “After this phase the club realised that they had something pretty special and overwhelmingly supported a second phase,” says Norby. “In addition to modernising playing conditions, I wanted to restore and enhance Tillinghast’s original design philosophy by widening playing corridors and reinstating some of the strategic fairway bunkers that had been removed.” Norby, working with Tillinghast experts Philip Young and Brad Klein, studied the architect’s original routing Golden and modern Photo: Patrick Jacobsen Kevin Norby has completed a centennial project at Minnesota’s Golden Valley, to modernise infrastructure and restore much of AW Tillinghast’s design philosophy. At the par-five closing hole, Kevin Norby reinstated four fairway bunkers and added six new ones consistent with AW Tillinghast’s design philosophy
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