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South
Ocean Golf Club
Refinishing
a gem
Joe Lee’s 1972
South
Ocean
design gets an overhaul for the future
NASSAU--To paraphrase a handful of old adages, the only enemy to grace
and good looks is time, and the saying isn’t just reserved
for the celebrity.
Before
the bay beneath the bridge linking Nassau
and Paradise
Island
was anything more than a marina cove for local fishermen to
store their boats, golf architect Joe Lee laid out what is,
still to this day, the purist and most interesting golf course
on the island. At 6,707 yards, the Lee design benefited from a
host of favourable conditions—interesting elevation changes,
atypical to island terrain, and the privacy of a secluded
peninsula—upon its construction, and for years garnered the
word-of-mouth reputation as a modest but bright gem on New
Providence. When Paradise Island exploded in the 1970s and
1980s, press lavishing praise on places like the Ocean Club
became commonplace, while South Ocean, tucked away in the
southwest corner of the island near Lyford Cay, took to the
back seat in the popularity contest. One of the main projects of
E.P.
Taylor, the Canadian business baron who spent the last half of
his life in the Bahamas, the South Ocean Club held a secure
place in
local and travel industry circles as an unsung golfing
treasure. When the chatter slowly began to fade, the South
Ocean Golf and Beach Resort took swift measures to resuscitate
the Lee design’s reputation.
In
the fall of 2003, the course’s condition had been victimized
by three decades of trade winds and tropical storms. While the
character remained, the aesthetics had faded. Bunkers wore
tattered collars, the complexion of the tees, fairways, and
greens had been washed out, and undergrowth had begun to
encroach on the limited boundaries of the property. Rather than
trim a tree here and a weed there, the club has watched the
slow corrosion of the layout, and taken decisive action.
The
complete renovation and modernization of the South Ocean Club
has begun in earnest with the reconstruction of the outdated
irrigation systems and issues regarding the perimeter fencing.
The new Ocean Club will have a handful of holes lengthened,
allowing the course to be played at around 7,000 yards from
the back tees, and the green and tee on one hole will be
reversed to take better advantage of an unemployed ocean view.
In limited space, plans have been implemented to add a driving
range to the
South
Ocean
facilities. To call the changes a mere renovation would be an
understatement, says Warren Adamson, President of the
Caribbean
division of PRK Holdings Limited, which controls the South
Ocean Development Company that operates the golf course.
“We
are at the beginning of a journey right now to fully upgrade
and modernize the entire course,” said Adamson in
conversation with Golf TI last winter. “There are many who
think that South
Ocean
is the best test of golf in the Bahamas, and very few who would dispute that it certainly will be once the rehabilitation is complete. Still, we’ll have to
wait a year or so for that.”
As
it is, approval for the extensive renovation plan is currently
on the desk of New Providence Development Company Limited,
founded by E.P. Taylor and the present-day landlord of South
Ocean Golf Course. With a collective think-tank that included
landscape architects, turf specialists and agronomists,
financiers, engineers, and even archaeologists (South Ocean is
built on the ruins of slave residences), PRK has submitted a
multi-million dollar renovation plan. Subject to approval, the
lion's share of the task will begin with the closure of the
course on the last day of April, 2004. All things considered,
the target date for re-opening, sometime in December of this
year, is an ambitious one.
Still,
PRK Holdings and South Ocean golf fans have reason to be
excited. The original visions of Joe Lee and E.P. Taylor
provided thousands of golfers with a thrilling experience, and
a new chapter will begin anew once the changes take root and a
new Joe Lee-inspired design emerges. The
whole project has been an endeavour into the forensics of golf
course reconstruction that a guest of the club, and club
management in particular, would have never imagined necessary
in the 1970s and 1980s.
The
clubhouse at South Ocean
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