Championship encore

Nine years ago, the U.S. Women’s Open brought William Flynn’s classic design at Lancaster Country Club before the eyes of the golf world.

With Memorial Day weekend nearing, the Women’s Open returns to the central Pennsylvania club for its 79th playing May 28-June 2.

Josh Saunders is the club’s director of agronomy. His team will handle the ultimate responsibility of preparing the stage on which world’s best female golfers will perform. When he assumed his post in February 2019, the 2024 Women’s Open was already on the calendar. The championship has been in his thoughts ever since.

“The first thing I really did is I started to take notes,” he says. “I kept a journal. Each year, I started taking notes from around mid-February and would keep those notes all the way to what would be championship week. That way I could kind of see how I reacted to whatever Mother Nature gave me coming out of winter.”

Saunders, who came to Lancaster Country Club from Longue Vue Club in suburban Pittsburgh, understood the weather was the wild card in his Women’s Open preparations and planned accordingly. “Each winter is going to be different,” he says, “and each spring is going to be different, especially with having A-1/A-4 greens, which typically are the last to wake up.”

Saunders’s normal approach at the start of each season is to let nature take its course and not accelerate the green-up process. This year, he’s doing things a bit differently.

“I’m very much a believer in allowing the plant to wake up on its own and let the natural progression happen instead of trying to go out and artificially create growth,” he says. “(But) for the first time in my tenure, we did a dormant seed over the winter and that’s really responding well. This year, we used Earthworks 8-2-2 and we also did seedhead sprays, which is something that traditionally I haven’t done in the rough in the past.”

Those who competed in or attended the 2015 Women’s Open will see some changes to the club’s infrastructure, inside and outside the gallery ropes.

“We removed a lot of trees,” Saunders says. “I know that’s a touchy subject. But the great thing about this property and the way William Flynn used it was the topography. Not only is there a lot more light and a lot more air flow compared to 2015, which is going to aid in firmness, but we’ve created this amphitheater. If we have 13,500 patrons again this year, those roars are going to echo.”

Saunders says the new amphitheater will add to the ambiance of the event.

“The No. 1 comment from all the players in 2015, outside of course conditions, was the atmosphere,” he says. “So, creating this grand amphitheater and this grand stage, that’s really going to showcase the property. And then there’s other little things. We redid our practice facility. We built a 14,500-square-foot putting green that’s now off the back of the clubhouse where the pool used to be.”

The golf course the players will tackle this year is different than the one they saw in 2015. Architects Jim Nagle and Ron Forse have been tinkering with the course since 2004. A Lancaster County native, Nagle spent 25 years working alongside Forse before recently opening his own design firm, Nagle Design Works.

“Eleven holes have been altered on one way or another,” says Nagle, a Flynn devotee. “That’s not to say they’ve been fully renovated and things moved. The alterations in most instances consist of the addition of a bunker or a relocation of bunkers. And most importantly, the feel of the property, because it is much more exposed now.”

Nagle notes that the tree-management program accompanying the renovation has provided a fresh look at the scope of the site. “You never really got a sense of how much elevation change there was on the property because of the layering effect of the trees up the slopes that basically hid that elevation change,” he says. “Well, now that’s been exposed, and you really get a sense of the brawniness, for lack of a better term, of the property.”

Nagle says the tree-management effort combined with the updated bunkering introduces new strategic elements for the players.

“(The updated bunkering) creates that risk and reward,” he says, “and with the removal of the trees, those complement each other. If you can open up the lines of play by widening the corridors some more, as well as introducing additional bunkers, then you are introducing greater challenge and greater intrigue throughout the golf course and greater engagement of the golfer throughout the golf course.”

Saunders says players will notice changes on the putting surfaces.

“I think the biggest difference they’re going to see from 2015 is in the greens,” he says. “They were phenomenal from everything I’ve heard, but they were four years old. All of us in the turf industry understand what four-year-old greens can be with lack of body, a lack of organic matter. They just didn’t have the structure yet that naturally comes with time. Now, they’re older with a lot of body, a lot of matter, and I think they’re going to be a little firmer than they were in 2015. “That’s exciting, too, and, in return, I think it’s going to allow the same green speeds to showcase and highlight the Flynn greens.”

Matt Wolfe is the superintendent overseeing the daily maintenance of the course. He’s responsible for the Dogwood and Meadowcreek nines that comprise the Women’s Open course. There’s also a third nine, the Highlands. Wolfe, who accompanied Saunders to Lancaster Country Club from Longue Vue five years ago, is pleased with how the spring started.

“Everyone keeps saying the same thing,” he says. “They don’t understand how we’re weeks ahead of the other courses in the area, but I think that’s due to what we did last fall and, obviously, when soil temperatures get up, that’s when we can really start getting (more aggressive) with it.”

Wolfe and his crew must strike a balance between keeping the course available for member play and preparing it for the Women’s Open. With that in mind, the club instituted the mandatory use of mats last October and maintained that policy this spring.

“No divots are to be taken off any tees or fairways,” Wolfe says. “Everyone will be taking an individualized artificial turf mat with them. That’s also going to help the recovery process from late summer/early fall play” — the course traditionally closes the second weekend in November and reopens the first weekend in April — “and the membership has been completely supportive behind that.”

Eco mats will also be utilized in certain roll-off and collection areas, and to protect tees on par-3 holes. The course will remain open for member play until two weeks prior to the championship.

“Obviously, the USGA does not want to take the golf course away any more than they have to,” Wolfe says. “The USGA has been very understanding. They know that we are very much a members’ course. They know that we’re out in the middle of nowhere, we’re not really in a metropolitan area, so this is kind of a retreat.”

Wolfe praises Shannon Rouillard, the USGA’s senior director of championships for the Women’s Open and the Senior Women’s Open, for the organization’s understanding and work with the course.

“They’re not allowing any practice rounds during advance week, so during advance week and the week prior, we’re not going to have any play out there whatsoever,” he says. “We’re going to be able to get the golf course dialed in to tournament specifications before the USGA gets on property.”

Saunders notes that having the Highlands nine available will ease the stress on the other two nines. “I have the ability to put Highlands in play if I need to give Dogwood or Meadowcreek a rest for a few days,” he says.

Saunders and Wolfe will have an abundance of support during championship week. Their own crew will ideally number around 30 and more than 70 volunteers from other clubs are expected to be on hand to support the championship.

As the countdown continues, one of Saunders’s nagging concerns is, unsurprisingly, the weather and the possibility of flooding on portions of the property.

“It’s hard not to ignore Mother Nature, right?” he says. “That’s the No. 1 monkey wrench in the room. With our property, flooding is always a concern. We went two years without a flood heading into December of 2023. We’ve had five since then. That keeps me up at nights, obviously.”

But Saunders has more than the Women’s Open on his mind. Come June 3, when the championship departs, he and his team will be as committed as ever to providing a golfing oasis for members. For as enthusiastic as he and his team are about hosting the premier event in women’s golf, Lancaster Country Club is a members’ club.

“We obviously had this championship and future championships in mind,” Saunders says, “but most importantly, what Jim Nagle, myself and the committee really worked on was providing a championship golf course that would test the best in the world but remain fair for all skill levels and our members and guests. And we achieved that. That was very important to us.

“We’re never going to be in the realm of some of the courses that all of us who love golf and are fans of golf know. But are we a property that’s going to be sprinkled in every few years (for championships)? Obviously. So, it was important to us to remember our biggest asset when we did the renovation, and that’s our membership.”

Rick Woelfel is a Philadelphia-based writer, senior Golf Course Industry contributor and host of the Wonderful Women of Golf podcast.