When Gil Hanse renovated and restored Southern Hills Country Club during 2018-2019, course builder Heritage Links was there to help the architect realize his vision for this 1936 Perry Maxwell original.
Over the course of 9 months, Houston-based Heritage Links rebuilt each green, bunker and tee. Further they regrassed nearly every bit of playing surface and oversaw construction of a new, PGA Championship-worthy practice facility; the firm also rerouted several creeks that had been removed or lost over time.
As such, few people in golf are better equipped to preview this week’s PGA than Doug Wright, vice president of Strategic Planning at Heritage Links, who served as project manager at Southern Hills CC. [Wright and Heritage also know the Hanse style pretty well, having built his designs at Doral’s Blue Monster in Miami, Mossy Oak Golf Club in West Point, Mississippi, and the new PGA Frisco course to open north of Dallas this summer, among others.] was there to help the architect realize his vision for this 1936 Perry Maxwell original. Over the course of 9 months, Houston-based Heritage Links, a division of Lexicon, Inc., rebuilt each green, bunker and tee; it regrassed nearly every bit of playing surface and oversaw construction of a new, PGA Championship-worthy practice facility; the firm also rerouted several creeks that had been removed or lost over time.
As such, few people in golf are better equipped to preview this week’s PGA than Doug Wright, vice president of Strategic Planning at Heritage Links, who served as project manager at Southern Hills CC. [Wright and Heritage also know the Hanse style pretty well, having built his designs at Doral’s Blue Monster in Miami, Mossy Oak Golf Club in West Point, Mississippi, and the new PGA Frisco course to open north of Dallas this summer, among others.]
Refurbished the greens but preserved the green contours
1) When you hear that Hanse & Co. refurbished the greens but preserved the green contours, believe it.
“We worked with a company owned by Scott Pool called GreenScan3D, which has become the industry standard,” Wright says.
“Essentially this system allows us to survey a green and accurately record the exact elevation of every spot on the putting surface to .001 of an inch. It allows us to demolish the greens, rebuild the subgrade, then recreate every existing contour on that putting surface, exactly as it was — with the exception of the collars and peripheral areas where Gil expanded the putting surfaces to get more pin locations. (He also lowered fringes that had previously propelled balls onto the green surfaces.) It’s a pretty amazing technology. It’s what they used to perform the same exercise on the greens at Baltusrol and Winged Foot.”
See video :Three things to know about Southern Hills, the course we’ll all be watchingthis week
