Broderick stated changing the Fazio course to 2, more-relaxed programs was pushed by the membership’s new house owners, Brookfield Asset Administration, which paid $233 million for the membership in 2018. “We’re unbuttoning the highest button of our golf shirt, and we’re enjoyable the principles,” she stated. “We would like individuals to have enjoyable.”
Firestone Nation Membership in Ohio, a personal membership that was initially the corporate membership for the tire producer of the identical title, has lengthy been recognized for being a powerful take a look at of golf. It has hosted many years price of PGA Tour occasions, most lately the WGC-Bridgestone Invitational in addition to the Bridgestone Senior Gamers Championship. Tiger Woods has received eight PGA Tour occasions at Firestone.
But, extra lately, the membership has opened as much as restricted stay-and-play choices.
“We at all times had three actually good golf programs,” stated Jay Walkinshaw, the membership’s basic supervisor. “Because the membership and the membership has developed, we realized we had these 86 visitor rooms on property and a few extra capability. That was after we began serious about opening up Firestone.”
Opening it for semipublic play has introduced in income with out hurting member play. “It’s a vacation spot for golf fans, and now we’re accessible to them,” he stated
Even venerable Pinehurst in North Carolina, the host of 4 United States Opens within the subsequent twenty years, has loosened up. Its principal attraction, Pinehurst No. 2, thought of among the many greatest Donald Ross-designed programs, stays a sought-after take a look at of golf simply as when Payne Stewart beat Phil Mickelson within the 1999 U.S. Open. But it surely now has the Cradle, a nine-hole course, with music piped in. What it's lacking in historical past, the Cradle goals to make up in enjoyable.
“There’s this theme at Pinehurst of going again to our historical past and tweaking it for the trendy period, and the Cradle is a superb instance,” stated Tom Pashley, president of Pinehurst. “Having music on the Cradle is lauded now, however it was a really tough choice. It’s added to the relaxed environment we needed. It’s a part of the attraction now of taking part in the Cradle.”
Likewise, Pebble Seashore Golf Hyperlinks in California this yr transformed an underused par-3 course into the Hay, a brief course designed by Tiger Woods with lengths that commemorate historic moments at Pebble, together with a duplicate of the course’s seventh gap, the brief par-3 surrounded by water.
