South Course at Corica Park

Alameda’s Corica Park South to Open June 22

Courtesy of Joe Barks
Club & Resort Business

The grand opening is the culmination of a three-year project led by architect Rees Jones and Marc Logan, Chief Agronomist of Greenway Golf. The course has been designed to be one of the U.S.’s most environmentally friendly public facilities while also offering an affordable opportunity to experience design elements of famed Australian courses such as Royal Melbourne and Kingston Heath.

The City of Alameda, Calif. will continue its strong heritage of public golf with the unveiling of the new Corica Park South Course on June 22.

The grand opening is the culmination of a three-year project led by famed golf architect Rees Jones in collaboration with Marc Logan, Chief Agronomist with Greenway Golf. The new South Course will be one of the U.S.’s most environmentally friendly public facilities, while offering golfers an affordable chance to experience design elements of the renowned courses of Logan’s native Australia, such as Royal Melbourne and Kingston Heath.

The South Course has been designed as a walkable, world-class layout with a public-course fee structure. Jones’ vision was to provide golfers ample landing areas off the tee, and a variety of ways to approach any green. Even shorter hitters will be rewarded with a short birdie putt if they use their imagination to roll their approach shots through the contoured openings in front of most greens. A well-honed “ground game” will save strokes on shorter shots around the green as well.

The Corica Park South Course was also built to withstand California’s weather extremes. Much of the investment was at the engineering level. For example, Logan and his team installed new drainage (25 miles of pipe); a high-tech irrigation system, plus 6 to 7 inches of sand capping on each fairway, to ensure that the course is dry under foot following even the heaviest of rains. Cart paths include recycled glass, while the bunker liners are recycled turf from local football fields.

Drought-tolerant strains of Bermuda grass on the fairways reduce the amount of water required, while closely-mown areas around the greens and “run-up” ramps give Corica Park an old-school design aesthetic not previously seen in California.

Greenway Golf CEO George Kelley, a former Australian Tour player, is especially enthusiastic about the South Course’s short par-4 holes, including the 8thhole.

“It’s easy to design a great long hole,” Kelley said. “But it’s really hard to design a great short one. I think [the 8th] is one we’ll all be really proud of.”

In their heyday, the courses at the Chuck Corica Golf Complex were second in California (behind Torrey Pines) in number of rounds played at a municipal-owned facility. And with the new South Course coming on stream, Alameda Recreation and Parks Commission Co-Chair Bill Delaney believes a comeback is in the making.

“During my tenure, it was frustrating to see the courses begin to deteriorate and to watch the decline in tee times,” said Delaney. “It was obvious that the City of Alameda did not have the expertise to manage a golf complex. We have been fortunate to have Greenway take on [those] responsibilities [and] I’m looking forward to what [Corica Park] will be in a few years”

Greenway Golf won the management contract in Alameda after presenting a comprehensive plan that included the preservation of all three of Alameda’s historic courses. Shortly after taking over on September 1, 2012, Greenway rebuilt the par-3 layout known as the Mif Albright and then renovated the popular Lucius Bateman practice facility, where an artificial grass fairway was replaced with a drought-tolerant strain of turf, and a state-of-the-art short-game area and premium grass tee at the back side of the range gave the always- busy facility new life.

Corica Park now also features the “Linksoul Lab” a creative retail space designed by apparel leader John Ashworth and his team. The Linksoul Lab opened at Corica Park in May, selling apparel with the course’s new logo, plus all of the basic golf equipment and accessories golfers need.

The Lab also features artwork curated by the Ashworth/Linksoul team and unusual pro shop items such as a shuffleboard table, surfboards, bicycles, and even persimmon woods designed for Linksoul and handcrafted in the U.S.