Featured Golf News
Forse Restoring Ancient Ross Design
When members of LuLu Country Club (CC) in North Hills, Pa., realized they were playing golf on treasured ground – an early design by famed course designer Donald Ross – they decided to restore it much like an art lover restoring a Van Gogh masterpiece.
"This is vintage Ross, much of that 'vintage' hidden below the surface and behind trees," said LuLu Green Committee Chairman John Filmyer. "One goal is to improve the bunkers, which are in bad repair. The larger goal is to restore much of what had been lost over time, to the original Ross design and features. Everyone is extremely excited about how this is going to turn out."
Jim Haynie, chairman of the Restoration Committee, said that excitement began when he was club president a decade ago when a member and our green superintendent discovered aerial photos of the course taken in the 1920s and 1930s. That enthusiasm led to engaging golf course architect Ron Forse to draft a master plan to restore LuLu CC to its old self.
"When the long-range plan was done, it made sense to get someone of Ron's capabilities to interpret Ross's original design in terms of today's technology," Haynie said.
Forse, whose Forse Design in Hopwood, Pa., has restored or renovated 30 Ross courses from Maine to California, said LuLu CC is "a defining project for us, even though we've worked on many great courses. 'Defining' because of the course's authenticity, the quality of the original design and the desire of the club to return to that look.
"Also, LuLu was Ross's first Pennsylvania course, and we have had a long friendship with the people here – a special relationship."
Sitting across the street from highly ranked Manufacturers Country Club, LuLu CC is not on any "best-of" lists. But Forse Design architect Jim Nagle said, "There is no reason, once it is restored, that LuLu shouldn't be among the Top 100 Classic designs."
LuLu's original nine holes were opened in 1912, with Ross adding a second nine in 1919. "And," said Forse, "it is loaded with great, quirky, rugged design elements." Among these, a 70-foot-wide bunker with an 8- to 9-foot-high berm hiding the sinister Punch Bowl 8th green; shapes and mounds that are far more irregular than Ross created in his later years; "chocolate-drop" mounds; a "great quarry hole"; and the 15th hole that is so desert-like that was called "The Sahara."
"LuLu's variety is so astonishing," Forse said, "that when bidding contractors walked the course, they said they would not have believed me if they had not seen these features with their own eyes."
Course superintendent Todd Struse, Certified Golf Course Superintendent (CGCS), called the restoration "largely a bunker and tree removal project."
Many trees have grown or been planted over the last 90 years, obscuring many of Ross's design features, Struse said, adding: "Back in the 1930s or '40s financial difficulties led to removing a lot of the bunkers and mounds that cost money to maintain. The club also added fairway traps that flew in the face of Ross's work. In today's golf, those bunkers are obsolete.
"Ron Forse is returning those Ross features to play where they belong with today's equipment. The main thrust is to make the course more enjoyable, not difficult." Forse called it "a very involved restoration."
The dozen aerial photographs that Haynie referred to were found at the Hagley Museum in Wilmington, Del. Shot between 1924 and 1939, they document the entire course and have been valuable tools during the whole restoration process, from design to construction. Some 94 bunkers spot the fairways and green surrounds in Ross's original layout, and many of them were, oddly, never filled with sand, he said.
"Many of LuLu's great features were covered over or removed," said Forse. "Some of the bunker imprints are still there to see. Others, we know of from the photographs."
Struse said the original bunkers were grass-faced and over the years the sand became flashed high. "Every time we have a storm, it pollutes the sand," he said. "We should see a major improvement in maintenance once the bunkers are rebuilt and drainage added."
The rebuilt bunkers will also be mostly grass-faced instead of sand-faced, he added. Haynie said 29 bunkers will be added, but he also stressed the importance of eight new tee areas. "Some are short and some long. They are being put in to give players of all levels the ability to experience some of the restored bunkers and other design changes to the course," he said.
And while the bunker and tee work will consume most of the time of contractor Country Golf of Traverse City, Mich., their crews will also be called upon to remove many trees and expand the greens back out to their original perimeters.
Forse also explained that, in some cases, greenside bunkers are eating into what were the putting greens. Construction is expected to begin August 18 and be mostly complete by December 1, although the course will remain open for play. Finish work will be done next spring. Haynie said future plans call for more green expansions and tee leveling and reconstruction.
