Broken Sound Club Director of Golf Jeffrey Waber remembered one of his first conversations with golf course architect Rees Jones.
“Rees basically asked, ‘What are you looking for?’ in regards to the $9 million renovation of the Club’s Old Course.
“I told him, ‘That’s your job,”’ Waber recalled from inside the Old Course clubhouse in Boca Raton, FL. “Keep the routing the same – but make it playable.”
The phrase “make it playable,” of course, can have a plethora of definitions for the architect, director of golf and members. At the Old Course at Broken Sound, which along with the Club course, makes up one of the more prestigious private golf club communities in South Florida, Jones’ mission clear: Transform the previous layout – considered too difficult for many members – into a course that was fair and equitable for its 350 members, as well as the Champions Tour players who are there next week (Nov. 3-5) competing in the TimberTech Championship.
“We work for the membership,” Waber said. “They pay a lot of money to belong here. We have to meet their needs every day.
“The Tour comes and goes. These members are here for years. I told Rees that I didn’t want 7,200 yards of hell; I want 7,200 yards of fun. We didn’t lose a lot of trees and we didn’t add a lot of trees. We just sort of cleaned up everything. That was the goal.”
That’s a fine line, but Jones, the legendary “Open Doctor,” succeeded. The transformed Old Course at Broken Sound is a model example of how to create a course that simultaneously challenges tour professionals and satisfies the membership.
The “new” Old Course (par 72) now features seven sets of tees (7,150 yards down to 4,440 yards), wider fairways than the previous layout and low-mowed greens complexes that promote chipping and putting.
Jones refers to the low-mow areas as “ramps.”
“Now you can hit it 150 yards and get the ball on the green,” Waber said. “With the (previous) layout, you had to play everything through the air.”
Waber smiled. “I think I’m going to be selling a lot more 7-woods.”
Indeed, there is something immensely satisfying about hitting (or chipping) a fairway wood or hybrid from off the green to near the pin.
But it’s never as easy as it sounds. Jones makes sure of that on the Old Course. While he widened the fairways and replaced some bunkers, he also protected the course with larger TifEagle greens that are mostly shaped like upside-down bowls.
“The old greens were flat – maybe with two degrees of slope,” Waber said. “Now we have one that are five and six degrees tilted. It’s pretty exciting to see that.”
Mission accomplished.
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Photos Courtesy of Broken Sound Club