Client Course Description
Old Chatham is a golf club, not a country club. Here golf is played on an 18-hole championship course set in 400 acres of protected woodlands – a rare sanctuary forever free of real estate development. Native forest separates the fairways, giving each group the feeling that it has the course all to itself. The golf course and grounds are maintained with an exceptional attention to detail and a seamless combination of both modern and traditional maintenance practices, giving one the sense that the golf course at Old Chatham has been quietly in existence for many years.
In 2021, the club requested plans for select improvements to the course.
Designer Notes
This course was carefully routed across a site that is beautiful, wooded, and rolling – in other words, perfect for golf. The resulting course is reminiscent of the days when tee and green sites were natural and little earth was moved.
During the spring and summer of 2022, we partnered with the Club to complete an additional phase of course renovation work.
Paramount within the scope of work was the reimagining and complete reconstruction of Hole #16. The new design significantly improved the shot options, strategic value and overall risk / reward opportunities of this hole within the finishing sequence, by incorporating new tee locations, strategically located fairway bunkers, varied fairway widths and contouring, greenside chipping areas and a new pond. The new hole provides golfers of all skill levels with multiple opportunities to envision and execute a variety of strategies, including driving the green with a well-played tee shot.
Work also included the removal or size reduction of several fairway bunkers, the addition of four new fairway bunkers that significantly improve the strategic value and visual definition of several holes and the reshaping and reconstruction, including the installation of Capillary Concrete liners, throughout all of the remaining fairway bunkers.
In addition, over 70 existing tee surfaces were laser-levelled and regrassed. All green surfaces, collars and fairways were also completely regrassed
