Beau Welling revives Stowe Country Club in Vermont

Beau Welling Design began a major renovation of Stowe Country Club in Stowe, Vermont, in the spring. Welling and his lead design partner, Chase Webb, are leading the work, which will focus on the club’s 18-hole golf course as well as practice facilities.

“As a design team, we are collaborators at heart and are excited to work with Stowe Country Club to breathe new life into one of the region’s finest golf courses,” said Welling. “This project will make the golf course more accessible to the average player while maintaining the exact challenge that members and guests have enjoyed for 70 years. We are honored to play a role in renewing this historic club for current members and future generations to enjoy.”

Improvements include:

> Renovating all greens to accommodate modern speeds and improving approaches and surroundings to encourage creativity and fun;
> Design and regrading of fairways;
> Replacement and modernization of all fairway and greenside bunkers;
> Replanting the tees, fairways and greens with bentgrass and introducing a mixture of Kentucky bluegrass and fescue for the roughs;
> Adding length and width to improve the approach angle value;
> Develop a long-term tree plan to ensure consistent turf conditions throughout the property and to further enhance long-distance views and the movement of the site;
> Spread of fescue stands throughout the property;
> Improve drainage on each hole, focusing on known problem areas;
> Securing the water supply and sustainability of the golf course by replacing the irrigation system, a new pumping station and the addition of an additional river pump.

The renovation will be done in two phases to maintain play, with construction on the front nine holes in 2024 and the back nine in 2025. Welling and his team are simultaneously assisting Stowe with campus planning, which includes a new golf course, practice area, expanded facilities and a future residential community.

“It’s an exciting time for our members,” said Michael Harger, general manager of Stowe Country Club and its nearby sister club, The Club at Spruce Peak. “So many of us have a personal interest in this historic golf course and it’s been an exciting process to lay the foundation for the next generation of golf enthusiasts in the Stowe community.”

BROOMSEDGE PREPARES FOR A SOFT OPENING
Broomsedge Golf Club, a joint design by Kyle Franz and Mike Koprowski in Rembert, South Carolina, began greening the golf course in May with an eye toward an unofficial opening this fall.

Broomsedge’s design and construction team has chosen Tifway 419 Bermuda grass for the fairways and tees. The greens will be planted with another variety of Bermuda, TifEagle. The course will have no manicured rough, as the fairways will transition into natural areas where the club’s namesake broom grass and other plants grow. Turfing and planting of all 18 holes is scheduled to be completed by August, so the course will be ready for the first round of play in October.

“We are excited to begin the growth phase and bring even more life to the course,” said Koprowski, co-architect and co-owner of Broomsedge. “This is an important time for the project and we are pleased to have Club Superintendent Shawn Fettig leading the process. His extensive professional experience with Bermuda grass at well-known courses in the South, including the Old Town Club in Winston-Salem, makes him the perfect person to ensure we stay on schedule for our planned fall opening.”

Broomsedge is located in the Sandhills region of the Palmetto State, 30 minutes east of Columbia. Amidst a setting reminiscent of North Carolina’s famed Pinehurst Resort and the aforementioned Old Town Club, Franz and Koprowski set out to embrace the tenets of classic golf course design practiced and perfected by masters such as Donald Ross, George Crump and George Thomas. Inspired by these three legends of Gilded Age architecture, Broomsedge offers a flexible design that will test the country’s best amateurs while remaining entertaining for players of all skill levels. But regardless of a player’s index, strategy will always be of paramount importance.

Blessed with an exceptional soil profile, the club’s 235-acre site features unusually dramatic elevation changes for the Carolina Sandhills. A variety of valleys, ridges, ridges and ravines make it even more unique. These characteristics allowed Franz and Koprowski to move a minimal amount of soil when creating playing corridors and green spaces across the course’s 156-acre site.

Koprowski, who discovered the land in 2021, was so convinced of its immense potential for great golf that he bought it himself before having co-investors. He and Franz are focused on capitalizing on its enviable natural features with a routing reminiscent of bygone days of course design.

“There is an increasing emphasis on maximizing size and scale in new construction, but our project deviates from that trend,” Koprowski said. “For example, players will be able to see no less than 15 different green spaces from the first tee. We are creating something that is a little smaller than what is currently popular in golf design and that reflects the way golf courses were designed and laid out 100 years ago.”

SERGIO GARCIA TORRE COURSE STAYS AT THE SPEED
The Torre course in Terras da Comporta, Portugal, a new design under construction by Sergio Garcia, is scheduled to open in June 2025. The resort’s first course, the Dunas (“Dunes”), designed by David McLay Kidd, is scheduled to open in 2023.

The 6,500-meter course will be set on a sandy surface surrounded by pine forests, rice fields and sea views, as well as views of the Serra da Arrabida Natural Park. “In terms of the complete design, this is my first project and we are very, very excited about the course,” Garcia told golfcoursearchitecture.net. “It’s something I can really put my stamp on. The site is set in stunning scenery, just a couple of kilometers from the beautiful beaches of Comporta, and the land has all the ingredients for a spectacular golf course. It’s a beautiful location for a golf course and we’re building it using the best sustainable methods.”

Golfers are greeted with numerous options, narrow fairways and small greens, with Spain’s Valderrama having a significant influence on Garcia’s design philosophy.

“We tried to make the course fit into the landscape as naturally as possible to give guests the feeling that the holes were shaped by time together with the surroundings,” says Garcia. “Players will find large, sandy waste bunkers along the not-too-wide fairways.

“The Torre course will generally favour precision and stroke technique over length and power. It will be challenging but also very playable as we want the people who play the course to keep coming back. With six tee positions on each hole, the course is suitable for all levels of golf, from beginner to professional and from young to old.”

Planting of the tees, fairways and greens was completed in April and the course will continue to be developed over the next 12 months. “It is being built on another fantastic piece of land (like the Dunes course),” said Rodrigo Ulrich, Director of Golf at Terras da Comporta. “But although the terrain is similar, the essence of the Torre course will be a little different. Sergio has done an incredible job on the design and we couldn’t be happier with the course’s progress. Next summer can’t come soon enough.”