JEKYLL ISLAND, GEORGIA | The Outdated Man’s final golf course has been introduced again to life by two younger architects alongside the ocean dunes of coastal Georgia.
The separate design groups of Brian Ross and Jeff Stein collaborated on a venture to revive the surviving 9 holes of Walter Travis’ practically century-old Nice Dunes Course and flesh it out with 9 reimagined holes impressed by the Outdated Man’s work on the Jekyll Island Golf Membership.
The results of their painstaking and ingenious work reopens to the general public on Nov. 1.
“Brian, Jeff and the Jekyll Island Authority have renewed and reinvigorated that spirit with this restoration and renovation bringing Travis again to life within the dunes and within the forest, with a mission of selling and preserving Travis’ legacy,” stated Kevin Murphy, an government committee chairman for the Walter J. Travis Society.
Travis was a local Australian however a naturalized U.S. citizen after shifting to the States for work when he was 23 and marrying an American. He took up golf in 1896 when he was virtually 35 and regretted all of the years he spent with out the sport in his life. His friends referred to as him “the Outdated Man” owing to his late begin within the sport, however the previous man caught up shortly and have become the nation’s finest novice champion.
Travis received the U.S. Novice in 1900, 1901 and 1903 and completed runner-up within the 1902 U.S. Open, the place he claimed low novice 5 instances in six profession begins. In 1904, he turned the primary American to win the British Novice in his solely begin throughout the pond.
As a journalist, Travis based The American Golfer earlier than turning the sport’s pre-eminent journal over to Grantland Rice. As an architect, he had robust opinions about strategic design and integrated them into his work at locations akin to Backyard Metropolis (New York), Ekwanok (Vermont) and Canoe Brook (New Jersey). His affect was mirrored at a few of America’s biggest programs in session work with fellow architects C.B. Macdonald (Nationwide Golf Hyperlinks), Donald Ross (Pinehurst No. 2) and George Crump (Pine Valley).
Jekyll Island’s Nice Dunes turned out to be the Outdated Man’s ultimate venture. The island was a personal winter playground for households with names akin to Rockefeller, Vanderbilt, Morgan and Pulitzer. The well-heeled membership members had been enjoying golf on Jekyll since 1899, however they invited Travis to have a look and commissioned him to tear up what was there and construct them a real 18-hole links-style course proper alongside the dunes and seaside.
Travis designed Nice Dunes, however he died in 1927 earlier than the course was accomplished and formally opened in 1928 – a 12 months earlier than the inventory market crash began resulting in its virtually quick neglect and eventual closure in 1942. Its publicity to the ocean and winds left the 9 beachfront holes susceptible to storms and erosion that reclaimed them. The state of Georgia acquired the island in 1947 and reopened the remaining 9 holes in 1948 to the general public because the Jekyll Island Golf Course, the place a spherical value simply $1.
That unique 9 endured, however through the years its Travis options have been steadily shrouded and buried below a century of overgrowth.
The Travis-inspired journey that Ross and Stein take you on from the maritime forest to the ocean and again hits its stride on the par-3 third gap, with a inexperienced website that stands out as an island surrounded by sand with contours impressed by Travis’ distinctive twelfth gap at Backyard Metropolis.
Uncovering the unique Travis 9 and increasing it to 18 holes utilizing half of the adjoining Oleander course inbuilt 1963 by Dick Wilson was an train in forensics and imaginative design by the crew of Ross and Stein. They scoured archival photographs of the course and studied Travis’ articles and different tasks to not solely restore the uncooked coastal options of the unique Nice Dunes 9 however incorporate Travis components from the misplaced holes and elsewhere to mix the dunescape into the coastal woodland terrain of the Oleander website.
The primary three holes are rebuilt with some Gilded Age components put in on the previous Oleander, such because the three bunkers to hold on the left nook on No. 2 that have been lifted from archival photographs of the misplaced fifteenth gap on the unique Nice Dunes.
The Travis-inspired journey that Ross and Stein take you on from the maritime forest to the ocean and again hits its stride on the par-3 third gap, with a inexperienced website that stands out as an island surrounded by sand with contours impressed by Travis’ distinctive twelfth gap at Backyard Metropolis.
They utterly cleared out a thick wall of pines, vines and palms behind the third that separated the Oleander from the Nice Dunes, making a beforehand non-existent view all the best way to the horizon that serves because the transition to the restored Travis holes (now Nos. 4-12).
“How are you going to get the 2 distinct golf programs, one from the ’20s and one from the ’60s, and make that work?” stated Ross of Jekyll Island’s major issues. “This was a very crucial level in that course of – letting the eyes observe all the best way out to the dunes and likewise bringing them slightly bit nearer with recreating Travis’ fashion right here on the inexperienced. I consider we’ve created a seamless connection between the 2.”
There isn’t any higher introduction to the Travis holes than the par-5 fourth – which again within the much less politically right Nineteen Twenties was dubbed “Mae West” for the 2 giant dunes that flank the doorway to the elevated inexperienced that overlooks the Atlantic Ocean. It takes a daring man to go for the slender little bit of cleavage between the dunes and never lay as much as arrange a wedge.
The architects dug down by way of natural buildup to the native grade and rebuilt all of it the best way out to the unique corners based mostly on archival photographs.
From there, the Nice Dunes expertise continues for 9 holes because the centerpiece, with a comfortable par-3 fifth parallel to Beachview Drive. The par-4 sixth and twelfth share adjoining teeing grounds overlooking the sandy backside expanse. After the lengthy par-3 seventh right into a prevailing wind, the par-5 eighth reaches all the best way to the southeast nook the place the inexperienced is hid by a dune ridge that cuts throughout at a diagonal, making it reachable with a well-placed method that may tumble over the crest of the ridge.
The inexperienced on the dogleg tenth is tucked into the dunes with a wooden-plank bridge recreated above the inexperienced that appears similar to the unique that goes to the again eleventh tee. The brief par-4 eleventh presents a tantalizing problem to go for one more inexperienced sitting up on the dunes with hassle lurking lengthy and left.
From 13 inward is the remainder of the reimagined Oleander course that comes with the maritime forest and a number of other lakes. The inexperienced on the par-5 thirteenth that bends round a freshwater lake was inventively recreated from one of many misplaced Travis greens that’s now someplace beneath the beachfront Vacation Inn Resort.
On the entire, the brand new Nice Dunes gives a superb combination of holes with a few brief par-4s, reachable and unreachable par-5s and a variety of par-3s.
Nice Dunes is the one golf course in Georgia to make use of a brackish water irrigation system, a pioneering sustainability function that reduces reliance on recent water, curbs chemical use and minimizes environmental affect with salt-tolerant seashore paspalum grass. The architects eliminated greater than 70 acres of turfgrass on the location to not solely improve the sandy options beneath however additional scale back water utilization. The remaining 52 acres on the previous Oleander course is being transformed right into a conservation space that can grow to be a wildlife hall connecting habitats from the marsh to ocean sides of the island and offering public nature trails.
Together with the just lately renovated Pine Lakes ($95 together with cart) and Indian Mound ($75) programs, the reopened Nice Dunes ($135) offers Jekyll Island Golf Membership 54 holes of high quality golf out there year-round to residents and guests at approachable costs, making it one of many largest public course operations within the southeast. Nice Dunes is one among solely three Travis programs publicly accessible – together with Grover Cleveland (Buffalo, New York) and Grand Mere (Quebec, Canada) – and stands alone as the one one which’s restored.
“As a result of it’s a state park, they need it to be inexpensive,” stated Stein. “The general public entry is so vital however so is the value level. Pebble Seashore and Kiawah are public, however not at this value level. We’d prefer to see it keep at a stage to maintain what we’ve constructed.”
It’s a formidable crew effort from Ross and Stein, who pooled their separate formative experiences at locations akin to Oregon’s Bandon Trails (Ross) and Georgia’s Ohoopee Match Membership (Stein) right into a profitable long-shot bid to reinvent Travis’ legacy at Jekyll.
“We have been the strongest bid due to how a lot consideration we have been paying to the historical past of Travis and bringing the impressed 9 into the Nice Dunes 9,” stated Stein, who stated he and Ross independently created the identical routing plan which made sense as a result of the identical 9 Dick Wilson holes from the Oleander have been typically initially mixed with the Nice Dunes.
“It was form of at all times meant to be,” stated Ross.
The Outdated Man can be happy.
Prime: An aerial shot of Nice Dunes at Jekyll Island, which opens to the general public this Saturday after a reinvention. Images Austin Kaseman, Courtesy Jekyll Island Resort
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