Colonial Country Club

The current renovation project now underway at Fort Worth’s Colonial Country Club will be the largest milestone for a club full of them, the site of the 1941 U.S. Open, the 1991 Women’s Open and the longest running host of a PGA Tournament event (outside of Augusta National), since the 1930s.

The project is under the experienced eye of super architect Gil Hanse. Plans are that he will be able to accomplish the extensive work in less than 11 months in time for the 2024 Colonial in late May.

“I wish you wouldn’t mention that,”

Hanse said recently. “I get nervous just thinking about it.”

But Colonial members who consulted on the long-term project feel like they have the best architect on one of the best and most historic courses in Texas.

“We engaged the best with Gil and we’re entrusting him with our baby,” said longtime Colonial member Chris Stenholm, “and we’re asking him to treat it with the same care.”

The price tag for the makeover is expected to be around $21 million, far more than most clubs spend, but it comes from the expedited timeframe to complete the job, lots of weekend and overtime work as needed and the complex pipe system which will be installed under all the trademark bent grass greens, allowing the putting surfaces to behave as if it is 72 degrees every day, regardless of what the North Texas weather provides.

“I’m confident in myself and my staff that we can get the project done on time,” Hanse told Colonial members in one of his many local town hall meetings “This is an 18-month project we’re compressing into 11.”

While flooding by the adjacent Trinity River forced some course changes in the 1960s, this redo of the classic layout first designed by Texas’ John Bredemus, Ralph Plummer, and Oklahoma’s Perry Maxwell and others, will keep the original routing in place which as Hanse described, changing to easier for members, harder for pros.

Among the way he plans to achieve that is taking out many of the greenside bunkers at Colonial and replacing them with grass bunkers. While most amateurs fear any kind of sand shot, professionals excel out of the sand, a skill they showcase on a weekly basis.

Hanse also plans to lower several of the greens at Colonial, some by several feet, as they have become built up by sand and grass growth over the last several decades and have made running the ball up on the greens difficult if not nearly impossible for many weekend golfers.

He will also remove some of the trees on the front nine to allow the Trinity River to come into full view. The biggest hole change could come on the par 3 8th hole which will move the green slightly to make it more dangerous to players of all kinds and also lengthen the tee box.”

“It can only help our future; it’s really a milestone for our club,” said Marty Leonard, whose father Marvin founded Colonial in 1936, in the midst of the Great Depression, and who still remains active in club affairs.

Despite the Colonial board unanimously approving the project, there was still the matter of the all-member vote. Technically, a 51 percent “yes” vote would seal the deal, but after four years of talking and planning, Colonial members wanted closure and overall club concurrence.

For the final town hall meeting, Leonard rose to speak to the membership about the monumental decision that would greatly impact the club her father founded.

“I wanted them to know what they were missing out on if we didn’t approve this,” Leonard said. “Gil Hanse is the most sought-after architect in the country, and this is a great opportunity for us. But if we don’t pass this, we may not have another opportunity.”

“Getting the great Hanse renovation passed was a big hurdle … a big, big hurdle for the club,” added longtime head golf professional Dow Finsterwald who recently retired from his full-time role, but is still at the club.

“We’re celebrated our 75th tournament anniversary. If we don’t get it passed, maybe we don’t see the 76th celebration. That’s probably not true, but you don’t know for sure.”

The pairing of Hanse, who finished up the massive 36-hole PGA Frisco project with Beau Welling, and Colonial is a project six years in the making. The club first contacted Hanse in 2017 for a longterm restoration plan to bring the course back to its original look and shape, as well as to overcome several decades of wear and tear.

Hanse, who first became known as golf ’s hottest architect for his work on the 2016 Olympic Golf course in Rio de Janeiro and later successive restorations at Open sites, Southern Hills in Tulsa, Oakland Hills, outside Detroit, and LA North in Los Angeles, the site of this year’s US Open, produced the plan as required. But then it sat and sat … and sat some more.

Perhaps the biggest step to make the project a reality was the involvement of longtime Colonial member and PGA Tour player Ryan Palmer and his one-time caddy James Edmonson, a former Colonial club champion.

They walked the par-71 Colonial multiple times with Hanse, who was in town offering ideas on how to make the ambitious plan better and how to sell it to the members.

“In 2017, Gil Hanse came to the table, but in the final six months, it was Ryan Palmer and James Edmonson. And that has been huge, because they have credibility with everybody liking them and believing in them,” said Colonial member and former board member Marc Goodman.

The project was originally supposed to start after the 2022 Colonial won by

Sam Burns, but the global pandemic and the resulting supply chain issues had Hanse and Colonial leaders nervous than any slowdown or lack of project materials could miss the very tight window they had for completion. That allowed them to push the project by a year, stockpile needed items and be ready to begin in haste the day after a sponsor tournament was held the day following the 2023 event won by Emiliano Grillo.

One of the people most affected by the aggressive Colonial timeline is PGA Tour Charles Schwab Challenge tournament director Michael Tothe, who feels Hanse’s steady and experienced architectural hand will have one of the oldest professional golf events at a brand new, but familiar site in spring of 2024.

Asked if it seemed realistic that Hanse and his crew can pull off what they have promised, Tothe replied, “I don’t know, that’s why I’m not an architect, but we don’t have a Plan B because we still have a tournament to run here.”

“It will be a dark day if it’s not finished in time, but that’s why we got one of the best (architects) ,” Stenholm added.

But the renovation of a Lone Star Golf Jewel Colonial should only mean bright days ahead for the historic course.