Rediscover Gordon Lakes

Three years ago, Gordon Lakes Golf Course quietly started offering civilian memberships for the first time.

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It was done without fanfare because the original Fort Gordon course, which opened in 1975, was starting to show its age.

An additional nine holes and half a renovation later, Gordon Lakes is back on track.

"We weren't ready to put our best foot forward (in the early 2000s)," said Jim Green, the director of Morale, Welfare and Recreation at Fort Gordon.

The first move toward making the facility relevant again was building a new nine, designed by Dan Schlegel, called Pine View.

It opened to favorable reviews November 2002.

"That was the beginning step," said Gordon Lakes member Steve Moody, a 10-time club champion.

Having the new nine gave Gordon Lakes 27 holes and allowed it to close the original front nine, known as Island View, for an $800,000 renovation. That side was shut down from April 2004-December 2004.

Next up, in November 2004, was the beginning of a $1 million renovation of the clubhouse/pro shop, which opens Monday.

In late 2004, a sprawling pavilion near the 10th tee was built for $80,000.

There's more to come. In March, all golf carts will be equipped with GPS (Global Positioning Satellites) systems, which calculate exact yardage on every shot, among many other features.

The final piece of the puzzle will be the renovation of the Lake View side, which is the original back nine.

"The members are eagerly awaiting this," Moody said. "It will be an awesome facility when that is complete."

The Lake View side will close after the 2006 Masters Tournament in mid-April and reopen in late October or early November. Originally, work wasn't going to start on the Lake View side until 2007.

"We just decided to go ahead and finish out the course," Green said. "The quality of play on those (Lake View) greens are so radically different from the other two that we decided to go ahead and make it a '06 project as opposed to '07."

Right now, there is three-year-old Tift Eagle Bermuda grass greens on the Pine View side, 11-month-old Tift Eagle on the Island View side and 30-year-old 411 Bermuda greens on the Lake View nine. It's not hard to figure out which of the nine-hole sides golfers request to play the most.

"Gordon Lakes had a well established reputation for having slow greens," Moody said, noting the new greens on the Pine View and Island View nines are "fast and fascinating."

Now all that's left is replacing the old greens on the Lake View side. One architectural firm told Gordon Lakes head pro Bill Fumai that those greens "look tired."

When it's all done, "we're going to have 27 holes of great golf," said Fumai, who has already seen the membership grow from 230 when he arrived in December 2004 to 317 today.

"It's been an uphill climb," Fumai said. "Business has picked up, and we actually made some money for the first time in a few years. The attitude here is Gordon Lakes is OK and a nice place to play golf again."

Those membership numbers mean the word is getting out about the changes and renovation of the course outside the post.

"You still find a few people who say, 'Wow, this is open to the public?'" said Kim Lyons, the Morale, Welfare and Recreation marketing/advertising representative. "But he's (Fumai) seen a big increase in play from the stuff we're doing.

"It's like a hidden treasure," Lyons said of Gordon Lakes. "It's a beautiful place, and he's (Fumai) really got it up to where it looks really good. Now we want people to come out here."

During the Lake View renovation, greens were rebuilt, lowered and grassed with Tift Eagle, new cart paths were built, more forward tees were built and bunkers were moved so they would come into play more for low handicappers.

Some work that didn't get done - such as replacing the bulkheads on the island par-3 sixth hole and building up the soggy fairway on No. 7 - will be done during the Lake View renovation.

At a time when every renovated course in the area is adding yardage to keep up with technological advances in golf clubs and balls, Gordon Lakes is going the opposite direction.

It can thank designer Robert Trent Jones Sr., for having that luxury. Jones, who died in 2000 at age 93 after designing or renovating more than 500 courses, was known as the "father of modern golf course architecture."

He had two major trademarks to his work: long courses and huge bunkers.

When he designed the original Gordon Lakes nines 30 years ago, the course measured a then-whopping 7,077 yards. The two original nines - the Island View and Lake View - are now 7,049 yards.

Those 28 yards were subtracted from the renovated Island View side, which went from 3,511 yards to 3,483 yards.

The Lake View side is already 3,566 yards long, so "we're not going to pay very much attention to the black (back) tees" during the 2006 renovation, Fumai said.

As was the case on the Island View side, the emphasis will be on building more forward, or shorter tees, for women and seniors.

"More women and seniors are playing golf today," Fumai said. "Thirty years ago, Robert Trent Jones' idea (in design) wasn't about women and seniors playing golf. Ladies and seniors weren't a main focus for him in design; nowadays, it has to be."

Fumai said he wants golfers at Gordon Lakes to have fun, which means having a few pars and a birdie or two on their scorecard when the day is done.

"He (Jones) wasn't much into that thinking," Fumai said.

On the other hand, because Jones made the course so long and challenging, it has held the All-Army Trials and Armed Forced Golf Championships. Those events stopped coming in the late-1990s when the course started to age.

"Even when we host the All-Army tournament, which will probably will do when we get all three nines opened, I won't even put them (the participants) there (the back tees)," Fumai said. "We can get it to 7,300 yards and at this elevation, it's no fun."

Other than making the course more accessible for all levels of players, the fact Jones designed Gordon Lakes is point of pride.

It is one of only two Army courses Jones designed. The other is the 7,072-yard Custer Hill Golf Course at Fort Riley, Kan.

"To have a Robert Trent Jones Sr. layout in the Army world ... it's kind of nice, so we need to take care of it," Fumai said.

The challenge of re-energizing Gordon Lakes is what drew Fumai to the course. He had "a great job" at the Fort Carson course in Colorado Springs, Colo., where he had been the pro for six years.

"I had the opportunity to come to a golf course that had figures pretty comparable to what I had at Fort Carson, in Augusta," Fumai said. "I just saw a great potential to make an impact here."

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