Located in Springfield, New Jersey, Baltusrol Golf Club has a history that few clubs in the world can match. The Upper and Lower courses, designed by AW Tillinghast, have hosted 19 major championships and will stage the PGA Championship in 2029. “In 1918, the club hired Tillinghast to develop the first dual courses in America – which are now our Lower and Upper golf courses,” said Matt Wirths, co-chair of Baltusrol’s restoration committee. “It’s been very important that Baltusrol maintains that legacy and leadership within golf.” It was the need to protect this history that led the club to take the step of restoring both courses, returning them to the original vision of Tillinghast’s design. Gil Hanse was appointed in 2018 to create a long-range masterplan for the restoration, while Greg Boring, director of grounds at Baltusrol, took the lead on delivering the project. “We’d lost that true AW Tillinghast design and feel,” said Boring. “Everybody that was involved, and every piece of technology we put in the ground, was extremely important to us as we aimed to reclaim the designer’s original intent.” One of the most important elements of the restoration identified by the club’s membership was the installation of a new, modern irrigation system. The existing system for the two courses was only capable of supplying 1,800 gallons of water per minute, which was insufficient to maintain the conditions the club was aiming for. “Irrigation is really the backbone to having a properly conditioned golf course,” said Wirths. “It’s something we felt was critically important to the success of both the Upper and Lower restorations.” To achieve its conditioning goals, the club wanted to supply more water to the courses, remove satellites and satellite houses to create a clean look, and to have the ability to diagnose any issues quickly and easily. “In the new system, we were looking for something that was going to be easier to use, provide us more flexibility and be more efficient,” said Shawn Haverdink, superintendent of golf courses at Baltusrol. Those requirements led the club to choose Rain Bird as the supplier of its new irrigation system. The system is capable of reliably delivering up to 4,200 gallons a minute to anywhere on the courses. RAIN BIRD Conditioning history Baltusrol has installed a Rain Bird irrigation system as it restores its historic Upper and Lower courses to their original vision. 12 The Rain Bird irrigation system can be managed by the grounds team via a smartphone or tablet Photo: Rain Bird
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