FORT WORTH, Texas — Before revered golf course architect Gil Hanse was signed on the dotted line to lead a massive $20 million overhaul of Colonial Country Club, longtime member and Colonial advocate Ryan Palmer sat in a room with Hanse to hash out a few details.
Players typically serve as advisors on these projects, but according to Charles Schwab Challenge Tournament Chairman Jim Whitten, this was more of a polite debate than a straight strategy session. Palmer and caddie James Edmondson, who has won the Colonial club championship five times, talked through a few of the holes they’ve seen in other places, some of which they haven’t been particularly fond of.
“That was a turning point. There were a lot of people bitching about the money and some other things,” said Whitten, who was driving around the course on Friday in his Tartan plaid members coat. “This was an airing of grievances about some of the stuff he’s done across the country. At one point, Ryan said, ‘Tell me what you did on 17 at TPC Boston. Tell me what your explanation is, what you did with that green. I hated that hole.’ Gil explained why he did some of these things and both he and James went, ‘OK, I get it now.’ And then Gil explained what he wanted to do here at the club, so they kind of went back and forth.”
Soon after that meeting about a year ago, the paperwork was signed and Hanse agreed to help revamp the acclaimed club, which was designed by the duo of Texas’ John Bredemus and Oklahoma’s Perry Maxwell, and opened in 1936. The course ranks 85th on Golfweek’s Best Classic Courses 2022 list.
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The project still needed the club’s support and to help garner favor Hanse set up a number of open meetings for club members to attend and poke holes in the plan.
After the meetings, which Palmer and Edmondson took part in, 85 percent of the members voted in favor of the plan, even with the hefty price tag.
“You can’t get 85 percent of the people to vote on what’s black and what’s white,” Whitten said. “So we were very happy with that kind of support.”
Palmer took part in the final walkthrough of the plans with Hanse and Tour officials in advance of this week’s event. The four-time PGA Tour winner said the end result will put a shine on a golf course that has been a stern test for Tour players for decades.
“It’s going to be spectacular,” Palmer said. “We kind of put our little stamp of approval, I guess you could say, of being a Tour player. I was able to talk about different shots we wanted to see, what we don’t do and don’t want you to do to the golf course.
“The plans are going to be unbelievable. This will be the best golf course in town easily, I think, after it’s all said and done. Just the way it plays, it stands up to the game’s greatest each and every year, and this course shows. I think it’s going to get harder for us, and I’m excited for the membership and for the city of Fort Worth.”
A much-needed revamp
Although the course is among the shorter on the PGA Tour, the reason for the redesign had little to do with adding length. In fact, that wasn’t even on the task sheet for Hanse, according to Whitten, who has been a member at Colonial for 31 years.
“We had significant drainage and irrigation problems. And our greens, depending on how bad the summer was were really getting stressed out,” Whitten said. “Our greens are thirty-something years old and they were having layer after layer fixing and this and sanding and all this stuff, so they got bigger. And when you do that, it creates an area that holds moisture in it, which isn’t good for the green and it needs to get in and out of the green. So holding moisture was a problem and so when it was all said this golf course has not been looked at in many years.”
Although a few greens were redone two decades ago, many of them had been untouched for much longer and so the plans call for adding a hydronic system about a foot below the putting surface which can circulate warm or cool water to alter the temperature of the soil.
Colonial members decided to stay with bentgrass and maintained much of the green complexes, but let Hanse work his magic in other areas.
Positive reaction from players
That has some, like Jordan Spieth, eager to see what the 2024 version of the tournament will be like. Shovels will go in the ground to start the renovation as soon as a winner is crowned on Sunday.
“I always thought courses like this, Hilton Head, these classic courses that stand the test of time, it’s like what are you going to do to these places? I think that’s kind of everyone’s first response,” Spieth said. “Then I saw them, and I was like, wow, this looks really, really cool. It looks like it maintains the character of what Colonial is while creating some excitement on some holes that maybe could use a little bit of adjusting.
“So changing a few of the tee lines where, instead of as much of a straight shot, you kind of see more of working the ball into a fairway. I’m not sure how much is public, but I know the idea of flipping the nines and making the 8th hole into the 17th, I think that might be the biggest change on the course from what I’ve seen. It looks like it might be a great par 3 to bring more of the creek and the river into play. So I’m always a proponent of that.”
Spieth said a recent Tour stop highlighted what can happen when a historic track is refurbished, while keeping history and the original designer’s intent in mind.
“Last week at Oak Hill you saw a renovation that was done extremely well and very highly regarded by, it seems, critics and players alike,” said Spieth, who missed the cut this year, but has plenty of success at the Charles Schwab, including a win in the 2016 event. “Change is sometimes better, sometimes not necessary. I think here Gil will do a really good job of maintaining the integrity while adding even some more character and modernization to it.”
