Colonial ponders course changes for PGA Tour venue

As PGA Tour competitors recoil from a visit to Fort Worth that produced more over-par scores than normal at the Dean & DeLuca Invitational, tournament officials are discussing ways to make Colonial Country Club even more challenging in future seasons.

Colonial members have hired architect Gil Hanse, designer of the Olympic Golf Course in Rio de Janeiro, as a consultant to create a master plan for potential improvements to the 7,204-yard, par-70 venue.

The idea, said Colonial tournament chairman Rob Hood, is to explore ways to return more of the original feel to the Colonial layout that greeted golfers at the 1941 U.S. Open, the course’s debut in professional golf. Members also would like to guard against excessive birdie barrages from the touring pros when tournament rounds are not greeted with 25 mph wind gusts on a daily basis.

Hood, a former Colonial club president, stressed that talks remain in the exploratory stages after Hanse visited during tournament week with touring pros and tournament officials.

“There will be no tractors showing up on Monday. We’re just talking,” Hood said during Sunday’s final round that saw Kevin Kisner post a winning total of 10-under par. “It’s simply to take a look at the golf course and then we’ll sit down and discuss what he thinks. You don’t want to stick your head in the sand. You want to keep moving. You want to keep learning. And you want to get opinions from people who know what they’re doing.”

In terms of potential changes, Hood said: “Everything’s up for discussion.”

Marty Leonard, daughter of Colonial founder Marvin Leonard, and Dan Jenkins, a renowned author/golf writer from Fort Worth who is in the World Golf Hall of Fame, sat in on Thursday’s meeting with Hanse.

Leonard, born the same year that Colonial opened (1936), provided a hole-by-hole look at the Colonial layout in 1941. She said Hanse studied the holes with an eye toward recapturing some of the features that disappeared when holes were re-routed and levees were added along the Trinity River following a flood that canceled the 1949 tournament.

Jenkins, 87, noted in a Thursday interview with the Star-Telegram that Colonial lacks its original challenge and often allows today’s touring pros to “shoot scores here that would make Ben Hogan vomit.” Hogan, the late golf legend from Fort Worth, won five Colonial titles during its 71-year history as a PGA Tour stop. Hogan posted the course record in the final round of the 1946 event (65) and it stood for 24 years.

Nine golfers matched or bettered that score during last week’s event despite difficult scoring conditions that elicited the highest 36-hole cut mark (4-over par 144) at Colonial since 1999. Steve Stricker, 50, posted a closing 63 and Irving resident Danny Lee fired a second-round 64 on a day when swirling winds caused the field scoring average to balloon to 71.74.

What steps would Leonard like to see the club take as it furthers its discussions with Hanse?

“I would love it if there is any way at all that we could lessen the levee impact that it’s had. I think there is a chance of that,” said Leonard, citing a pair of par-3 holes impacted by post-flood renovations. “I’d love to see No. 8 and No. 13 be more like they used to be because they were such great par-3 holes. They’re too short now, probably.”

Hanse, based in Malvern, Pa., has done renovation work on multiple courses. The list includes Winged Foot Golf Club in Mamaroneck, N.Y., a venue that has hosted five U.S. Opens and one PGA Championship. On his website, hansegolfdesign.com, he lists the Colonial project as “ongoing” but offers no specifics beyond that.

At a course that has undergone multiple tweaks since it opened, most recently after the 2008 tournament, Hood stressed that any action would require a majority vote of membership.

“At a country club where you’ve got 700 members, you’ve got 700 opinions about what you ought to do with the golf course,” Hood said. “We felt the prudent thing to do was bring in somebody who knows what they’re doing.”

This story was originally published May 29, 2017 at 12:18 PM with the headline "Colonial ponders course changes for PGA Tour venue."