Driven to change

Golfers at Northmoor Country Club in Highland Park, Ill., are active practice-range users, so it came as no surprise to Tommy Witt, director of golf course operations, the 14,000-square-foot driving range tee area was taking a beating.

“It was way too small for the amount of activity the range gets,” Witt says.

Witt’s crew maintained the surface by rotating and resodding the tee area at the end of each season. They also tried using different species of turf.

“With the number of players, we couldn’t grow any species of grass fast enough,” he says. “We tried growing sod on moveable pallets and moving it off and on the site. We tried everything. It was just too much activity for the limited amount of space.”

The driving range sits on about four acres. Its growth potential is limited because it’s adjacent to a school and a parking lot and Witt didn’t want errant balls to become a problem.

In 2006, Witt hired golf course architect Michael Hurdzan, Ph.D., to help the club solve the practice facility’s space issue. After first ensuring a safe facility, Hurdzan worked on a design that would create as much usable tee space as possible from the site. Following this design, the tee space was enlarged by moving it out toward the landing area, increasing its size from 14,000 to 42,000 square feet.

The hitting area changed from all bluegrass to bentgrass. The target areas, grown with bluegrass, feature contours and differing heights of cut, resembling a fairway. In the back portion of the tee, a hard, all-weather surface that resembled AstroTurf was replaced with a newer material that permits driving range use even in frosty or wet conditions. The new facility includes a separate tee area off to the side where the golf professional can conduct lessons.

“Tommy and I worked together during the planning process to see that the new practice facility met the needs of the membership as well as our professional staff,” says PGA head professional Adam Rosuck, adding that a temporary practice range was made available to his staff during construction to allow them to maintain revenues.

One of the only parts of the process Witt would revisit if given the chance would be the timing of the netting installation. Previously, there was no netting on the range, but with one of the tee positions leaving the range length at 275 yards, which could leave some of the long hitters hitting too far. Witt doesn’t regret the decision to install the netting, but the process wasn’t as smooth as he hoped. He didn’t realize it would take as long as it did to obtain permission from the municipality to install the netting poles. By the time the village of Highland Park granted permission to install the poles, the rest of the practice facility was in place. After the poles were installed, Witt discovered the practice facility was no longer in an acceptable condition to open.

“The company that installed the poles had to bring in huge equipment, and it killed all the grass,” Witt says. “In a four-day period, I went through $30,000 in corrective measures. The facility went from being ready to a complete disaster to being ready to open again.”

In total, the practice facility was closed for about 12 weeks while $750,000 worth of changes were completed, including the addition of matching, wooden accessories that were made in-house. Members were naturally curious about when the project would be completed, Witt says, adding it helped that he wasn’t at odds with anyone.

“The board and greens committees was supportive and said, ‘We’ll open the practice range when it’s ready,’” Witt says.

Since the facility opened in late summer of 2006, there haven’t been any negative issues, Witt says.

“It has been very well-received, and the members have the type of hitting surface the membership of this caliber expects and deserves,” he says.

Hurdzan credits the staff and club members with contributing to the design that seems to fit the space well.

“The quality and diversity of the learning facilities at Northmoor Country Club could be a prototype for any golf course, but to be able to safely fit all those features into a small space is remarkable,” he says.