First phase of restoration works are completed at Camberley Heath
Camberley Heath Golf Club in Surrey, England, has completed the first phase of a planned multi-year restoration of its Harry Colt-designed course.
Dutch architect Frank Pont has led the works, with American shaper George Waters handling the construction work. Colt’s original bunker patterns have been restored at all four of the course’s par three holes, the second, eighth, eleventh and fourteenth.
At the second, Pont and Waters have restored Colt’s echelon of bunkers in front of the green, while course manager Nick Paris and his crew will oversee the extension of the putting surface to the right to bring the recreated right hand bunker back into play. Trees will also be removed down the right side of the hole to ensure the bunker – and restored area of green – are fully visible. Work on the eighth, one of Colt’s longest par threes at 235 yards, has seen the greenside bunkers rebuilt, and the green slightly extended and reshaped at the back left to create more pin locations and aid the flow of water off the putting surface.
Though Colt’s original routing remains largely intact at Camberley Heath, the course was extensively altered during a period of ownership by a Japanese group, with several greens being rebuilt and a pond added to the short par four sixteenth. Pont and the club intend to address these issues over the next couple of years.