Three courses ready to show off new greens

All of the Augusta area's golf courses will back in business within a month.

Belle Meade Country Club in Thomson and North Augusta Country Club, which have been closed for renovation work, will reopen by Oct. 1.

Belle Meade's scheduled opening date is Sept. 17; North Augusta Country Club hopes to reopen Oct. 1.

Both clubs nearly made their projected opening dates. Belle Meade was shooting for Sept. 3; North Augusta Country Club hoped to open sometime in September.

"We're opening Sept. 31; that's the joke around the club," said Bill Boswell, the architect in charge of the design work at North Augusta. "We think it will be Oct. 1."

So far, neither course has encountered any major obstacles during the work.

It also went smoothly at Augusta's Goshen Plantation Golf Club.

The course remained open, but on temporary greens from early July until the new Champion Bermuda-grass greens were ready for play Aug. 27, five days ahead of schedule.

"It was amazing - it really took 50 days from start to finish," said Goshen co-owner and head pro Spike Kelley. "We could have played on them in three weeks.

When Kelley and his partner, Richard Finley, brought Goshen in 2001 the original 1970 greens had a mixture of three Bermuda grasses - Tift Green, 328 and Tift Dwarf - on them.

They were replaced by Champion, an ultra-dwarf Bermdua grass, which is also what North Augusta Country Club planted.

Belle Meade is using Tift Dwarf .

"It's amazing how smooth they are," Kelley said of the Champion-grass greens. "It's the best by far the greens have been. I wonder why we didn't do it the first day (he bought the course).

"We've had nothing but rave reviews; everybody tells us they're the best greens in town," Kelley said. "Not just some of them, but everyone."

Belle Meade and North Augusta Country Club are just as excited about the changes they're about to unveil at their courses.

"The course is looking good," said Belle Meade head pro and general manager Gregg Hemann. "We didn't want to open until it's really ready. We want to make sure everything is really nice."

The semi-private Belle Meade course has been closed since January. All the greens were rebuilt and some redesigned and shifted slightly. They include green on the 15th hole, which was moved to the left, and the green on No. 16, which was dropped down closer to the water hazard.

"The effort was made to continue the follow the natural flow of the land," Hemann said.

At the private North Augusta Country Club, a new par-3 hole was created, 207 yards have been added to the course (it will play to 6,655 yards) and 10 greens have been relocated.

The course has been closed since June 27.

"It's even better than I thought it would be," said Boswell, the architect in charge. "Once you go from two dimensional on paper to three dimensional in the field it looks better. I think the members are happy because we've made more changes and improvements than they though originally."

In a nice touch during the work, North Augusta head pro David Usry has left six golf carts at the pro shop so members can check out the progress.

Reach David Westin at (706) 724-0851 or david.westin@augustachronicle.com.