Tyler Rae to begin Ross-inspired renovation of Detroit’s North Course in 2025

The Detroit Golf Club in Michigan has approved a Tyler Rae renovation master plan and will begin work in the summer of 2025.

The club has two 18-hole courses, the North and the South, both designed by Donald Ross. Various architects, including Robert Trent Jones, Ellis, Arndt & Truesdell, Arthur Hills, Bruce Hepner and Renaissance Golf Design, have worked on both courses since their opening in the early 20th century.

In March 2024, members voted in favor of Rae’s proposals. “As the current stewards of one of the nation’s most renowned golf clubs, we would like to thank our members and lending partners for understanding the importance of these golf course renovations,” said President of the club, Michael Pricer. “At a time when our club has more members and golfers than ever, we look forward to restoring our golf courses to their original splendor. »

Once the North hosts the PGA Tour’s Rocket Mortgage Classic in June 2025, a $16 million first phase will begin, covering all features of the golf course, as well as its drainage and irrigation. A renovation of the South will follow.

“The Detroit Golf Club is a special place with a famous history and we are honored to lead the restoration of its golf course, which will incorporate many facets of Donald Ross’s bold original design, including buttes and mounds, ditches, sloping drainage and perched greens,” Rae said. .

The North greens were rebuilt in 1988 to USGA specifications and renovated again in 1993 due to performance issues. “USGA greens have a lifespan like any other piece of infrastructure on a golf course and we are noticing that the green profile is no longer wearing out like it once was,” said Rae. Rae’s proposal is to personally remodel and rebuild all greens to their originally planned scale and height and install subsurface drainage, a four-inch layer of gravel and 12 inches of USGA-approved root zone material.

The greens have also shrunk over time, with the fifth, ninth and fourteenth being redesigned or repositioned during past renovations. Rae plans to use Donald Ross’s 1914 detailed plan, early aerial views and historic ground-level photographs to determine how to rebuild the greens so that lost pin positions are recovered and the character, scale and the original grandeur of Ross be restored.

Before Detroit Golf Club hosted the PGA Tour’s Rocket Mortgage Classic, the current North bunkers were renovated many years ago without any coverings and to a smaller scale and size for cost-effectiveness reasons. Given their smaller size, golfers often found themselves facing difficult lies, with many balls resting close to faces. Additionally, over the years the sand has become contaminated with silt, clay, gravel and other debris, leading to poor drainage.

“The bunkers that Ross built at the Detroit Golf Club were atypical for him in the northern United States,” Rae said. “Historic ground level photographs dating back to the 1920s feature higher than normal sand flash and beautifully concave bottoms that release balls away from the edge and face of the bunker. We will work to remodel the bunkers in this historic style.”

Existing North bunker sand will be stockpiled and used as fill for fairway drainage or for surface surfacing.

The club added tees at various times between 2006 and 2021, with the most recent project completed before the 2021 Rocket Mortgage Classic. “Existing tees feature a variety of different construction methods, including some with split drainage of two inches, and others without drainage and native soil root zones,” Rae said. “This results in inconsistencies in water infiltration and agronomic conditions from tee to tee, as well as varying degrees of wear tolerance and clod recovery.”

Rae’s plan is to rebuild the tees with more usable square footage and add more tees in an effort to distribute wear and tear more evenly, giving the club’s grounds crew more flexibility in the daily setup. Mixing grass varieties will also be addressed, with all tees re-greased with 007 bentgrass.

The irrigation consultant also proposed replacing the existing pumping station, which was located underground and had flooding and power supply problems, with a new irrigation system, designed by Michael Kuhn & Associates, with a supply pipe connected to the city water supply.

The drainage system dates back to 1926 and is a combination of artificial ditches and clay tile pipes, designed to carry water away from the property and connect it to the city’s storm system. “The clay tile pipe is past its lifespan and is failing in many places,” Rae said. “Additional drainage was added sporadically and connected to the original pipes, with many ditches softened or removed due to erosion or maintenance practices. With the addition of drainage throughout the course over the past 100 years, the original clay tile no longer has the drainage capacity necessary to handle large-scale rain events, resulting in causes water to back up on fairways and other areas of the course.

Rae’s proposed solution involves installing 24-inch and 36-inch pipes under the main drainage ditches to replace the outdated system. The original Ross-designed ditches will be significantly deepened, widened and restored to facilitate water movement throughout the property. Two-inch drainage slots will also be installed throughout the fairway and approach areas to improve playing conditions without the need for significant regrading.

The work on the two courses is part of the club’s 125th anniversary. Rae aims to build the Detroit Golf Club for the next few decades.