26-03-2025
Florida municipal course completes $6 million restoration of Donald Ross layout
Florida municipal course completes $6 million restoration of Donald Ross layout
Architect Kris Spence has completed a $6 million restoration of the municipal Dunedin Golf Club in Florida, just northwest of Tampa.
The layout originally was designed by Golden Age architect Donald Ross and opened in 1927, but it had suffered over the years through several renovations as greens shrank by as much as 50 percent and bunkers were either lost or became obsolete. Spence focused on restoring much of the Ross ideals and pushing the greens back to their original sizes.
'At Dunedin, the most pleasant surprise was that I could see the old green extending out beneath those renovations and was able to measure them and compare them to his original plans and notes, and I quickly realized that the original greens had never been destroyed,' Spence said in a media release announcing completion of the restoration. 'They were just buried under this material, so the opportunity to remove the material, excavate and expose the original greens, and restore them was possible. It's fairly rare that they hadn't bulldozed them away.
"There's no question that by the number of bunkers and the contouring we found in the greens, Ross was clearly given a mandate or a directive to build a top-shelf championship layout on that property.'
The course originally was named Dunedin Isles Golf Club and made use of rolling hills, waterways and other natural hazards. The city of Dunedin took over ownership in 1939, and in 1944, the PGA of America moved its headquarters from Chicago to the course and renamed it PGA National Golf Club, leasing the layout from the city. The course hosted the Senior PGA Championship from 1945 to 1962, when the PGA of America moved out. The club was home to the first PGA Merchandise Show in 1954.
'Players are going to experience the greens and bunkers how he envisioned it,' Spence said of restoring the course to the original Ross ideals. 'There's some difficulty and depth to it all, and the bunkers are very challenging. That's the unique thing about Ross: He brought the style of golf to this country, which he grew up experiencing in Scotland. There are a lot of different shots golfers won't experience on other courses. The little bump and runs on the ground and the low approaches into the greens you experience in Scotland, you can now experience at Dunedin.'
