COURSE CONSTRUCTION: Attention to detail

In a year when some 75 golf courses closed their doors and only 16 opened them, the August unveiling of Westhaven Golf Club stood out as particularly anomalous. The new 18 at Westhaven in Franklin, Tenn., developed by Southern Land Co. and designed by Arthur Hills/Steve Forrest and Associates, welcomed the onset of member play Aug. 29.

Toledo, Ohio-based Arthur Hills/Steve Forrest and Associates is responsible for more than 200 original designs on four continents, but partner Chris Wilczynski doubts a project has ever been designed and developed quite like this one: Here is a 21st century private club that boasted a full complement of homeowners before ground was ever broke. Here’s a "real estate course" where golf and housing are within sight of each other but for once. Here a golf club is buoyed by the success of that real estate component – not dragged into receivership by it. Here’s a course where the architects designed only 17 holes.

Indeed, Hills/Forrest can lay claim only to that many because the par-4 13^th hole at Westhaven was designed by Doug Wright, then an undergraduate at Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Pa. Wright’s plan for no. 13 at Westhaven was the winning entry in a nationwide, amateur design contest conducted by LINKS Magazine.

"It’s hard to miss the serendipity of the course design process at Westhaven," says Wilczynski, "and I have to say, the course would not have turned out so well without them. This was also Southern Land Co.’s first golf development, though the company has vast development expertise. All this informed what has become a pretty special golf course experience. That sounds like marketing hype, but that’s the consensus. The members and other golf observers around here have all confirmed there is nothing like Westhaven in the Nashville market or anywhere in the Southeast."

Working alongside Lepanto Golf Construction of Pomona Park, Fla., Hills/Forrest broke ground in the fall of 2007. Course superintendent Jerry Craven – who arrived in Franklin after tending to one of the 18s at the Legends Club, the facility owned by Vanderbilt University – initiated the grow-in one year later. In August 2009, Westhaven opened in mint condition, with bermudagrass fairways and bentgrass greens, each equipped with portable Sub-Air capability to assist that bentgrass in coping with Franklin’s hot and humid summer months.

"In the early stages there was talk of going with zoysia in certain areas," Craven explained, noting that the Legends sports zoysia fairways and tees. "But the ultimate goal was bermuda, for reasons of playability and cost, because you can’t sprig zoysia so any sort of widespread use can be expensive. I would much rather have the bermuda I’ve got, I can tell you that."

The West Harpeth River borders the course on one side, and so Hills/Forrest engineered an elaborate drainage and retention scheme to ensure that not one drop of runoff from the golf course would find its way into the river. Every ounce of runoff is gathered in and filtered through two ponds before being discharged off site, away from the river.

"That was a substantial piece of drainage and retention work at Westhaven," adds Chris Lepanto, owner of Lepanto Golf Construction, which has collaborated with Hills/Forrest on renovation of The Dunes in Brooksville, Fla., and new construction of the Glacier Club in Michigan. "It was thoughtfully done and extensive throughout. We’re talking 50-inch pipe draining those holes, pulling everything away from the river."

"A lot of this was already in the ground when I arrived on the property," Craven added, "but I can tell you that it’s working great. The irrigation infrastructure and drainage throughout this course is awesome. We’ve had a lot rain here this summer and fall and we can play the same day and drive the next. That is the golf standard right there. I’ve never had a golf course where you could that."

Wilczynski is matter-of-fact about the environmental sensitivity he built into the design at Westhaven: "We created between four and five acres of wetland that weren’t there when we started, and, of course, those will remain protected in perpetuity," Wilczynski explained. "It was all part of the same retention system. There was no trading of wetlands, destroying some and creating others."

Hills/Forrest has long lead the way toward environmentally appropriate golf course design, dating back to the 1980s, long before "green" architecture was fashionable. Hills/Forrest-designed Collier’s Reserve Golf Club (Naples, Fla.) was the world’s first Audubon International "Cooperative Gold Signature Sanctuary" course, establishing golf design’s highest environmental standard. The firm is responsible not only Europe’s first "Gold Signature Sanctuary" course (Oitavos Dunes in Cascais, Portugal, just named to GOLF Magazine’s world Top 100 ranking) but also, as of spring 2009, the first Audubon Sanctuary course in Mexico (Paraiso del Mar, La Paz, Baja California Sur).

"I guess we see ‘green’ design as simple attention to detail," Wilczynski says. "It’s not special to this project or that project. Protecting an abutting river, or the groundwater, or working around specimen trees – that’s something we do as a matter of course. What stands out to me at a project like Westhaven is the golf, or the way we restored those 19^th century stone walls, because they are both so particular to the site."

Lepanto smiles at the subject of these walls. According to the Hills/Forrest design, his team unearthed and restored more than a mile of these walls throughout the property – between the back-to-back par-3s at 15 and 16, which sit in their own "landscaped rooms" (more on that later) beside the West Harpeth River, all along the 4^th and 17^th holes, even running in front of the 13^th tee (a piece of in-the-field flare young Mr. Wright had not anticipated).

"To be honest, I have been around that sort of masonry work before but we had never done that sort of work," Lepanto says. "It’s not complicated but it was painstaking. And very satisfying – when it was finished. They really look great and provide nice separation on those back-to-back par-3s down by the river. It doesn’t get any better than that."

Indeed, for all its green qualities and design serendipities, it’s the golf itself that distinguishes Westhaven. Wilczynski, Lepanto and Craven were provided a superior property and produced a golf course sure to be celebrated for its design, diversity, maintenance standard and, well, its attention to detail.

"I love the design," Craven says. "It’s a fun, playable golf course that is different every day. I like the two par-3s at 15 and 16, but I like 16 best. I just like the way it’s nestled into the corner of the property there by the river."

Asking course architects to pick favorite holes is like asking parents to choose among their children, but when pushed, Wilczynski cites Westhaven’s 14^th and 17^th. They are sibling par-5s that play in opposite directions but share a single fairway dominated by a broad, central ridge dotted with bunkers. The 14^th finishes at a vast, almost rectangular green framed by giant oaks and sycamores along the West Harpeth, while 17 is punctuated by the smallest green on the course.

Wilczynski also likes 18, a classic par-4 that plays downhill from elevated tees to a green framed by a pine forest and, come 2010, a neo-Georgian clubhouse. Bunkers guard the inside of the slight dogleg left, but a collection of cross-bunkers 100 yards short and left of the green plays tricks with a player’s depth perception. The green itself is giant punchbowl whose gathering qualities are complicated by a giant hogback feature.

"I also like No. 4," says Wilczynski of the 177-yard par-4, "mainly because the hole really does feel like it’s been sitting there for 100 years in this enclave amongst the trees and the river. Early in the design process, Tim Downey, the president of Southern Land Co., said the same thing about the 9^th green – he felt it was attractive because it appears to sit in its own ‘landscaped room,’ a perfect border of trees and landscape, apart from every other hole.

"We routinely create framing for our golf holes, but this was a different sort of term and particularly apt term, I thought. The idea suited the Westhaven site, and it soon became a theme for all the holes at Westhaven — and it made me focus a little harder on creating separation from one hole to the next."

Southern Land Co. was founded 22 years ago in Chattanooga, Tenn. In 2006, it opened offices in Dallas and is developing projects in McKinney, Keller and Allen. Its communities in Tennessee include Carronbridge, the Enclave at Carronbridge, LaurelBrooke, Windstone, Westhaven and McEwen.

Southern Land Co. headquarters was relocated to Franklin in the mid-1990s, so it’s fitting it embarked on its first golf real estate venture here. Westhaven is a 1,500-acre, master-planned community in West Franklin. It will include more than 2,700 homes with a town center, amenities, commercial space and 800 acres of open space.

Southern Land broke ground on the first housing phase at Westhaven in 2003 and has built more than 800 homes. The traditional, neo-classical nature of the vertical architecture at Westhaven informed the golf course Wilczynski and his associates designed.

"Everything at Westhaven feels timeless and elegant in a simple way," Lepanto says. "It looks like it has been there a long time. The golf course fits right in with that."

"That theme and vision definitely influenced the golf course we designed, with its raised greens and grass-faced bunkering and squared tee boxes," Wilczynski says. "We tried hard to match the community at Westhaven because, unlike many real estate communities we’ve built, the community was already there when we started.

"To be honest, I’ve never been involved with a project like this. Traditionally, the architect designs and builds the golf course first, then lots are sold. At Westhaven the brand was already established. When we held the ground-breaking ceremony for the course, many of the residents attended. We met and talked with them. After something like that, you can’t help but feel you’re working for them." GCI