Beyond business as usual

The renovation of the TPC Las Colinas at the Four Seasons Resort and Club in Irving, Texas, was an especially personal project for the architects at Weibring-Wolfard Golf Design. The course is home to the EDS Byron Nelson Championship – a PGA Tour event – and golf course architects D.A. Weibring and Steve Wolfard have a special connection to the tournament’s namesake.

Nelson, a PGA Tour player in the 1930s and 40s, was one of the original investors in their design company, then called Golf Resources, which Weibring founded in 1987. Nelson also was a consultant for the original design at Las Colinas, where the first tournament to be named for a professional golfer started.

“From our personal relationship with Byron, we knew it was very important to him,” says Steve Wolfard, lead golf course architect at the Plano, Texas-based firm.

The golf course was built in 1983 with Jay Morrish leading the design and Nelson and Ben Crenshaw as player consultants.

“Byron wanted to create a golf course that not only was good the week of the tournament but all the time for the members and players at Las Colinas,” Wolfard says.

Some tweaking has been done throughout the years but nothing significant, and the course was due for a renovation. That opportunity came in 2006 when Bentley Forbes, a privately held, Los Angeles-based real estate company bought the resort. After meeting with a few firms, the course management decided to hire D.A. Weibring for the project.

“The goal was to improve the property, create a little pizzazz and generally lift the golf course to match it up to a five-star resort,” Wolfard says.

The architects decided to keep and build on the course’s solid aspects and characteristics and then make updates based on recommendations. The firm’s master plan process requires feedback from players about what changes they’d like to see at the course and also what they’d like to stay the same. The architects received feedback for Las Colinas from 100 players, including some professionals on the PGA Tour, Tiger Woods and Vijay Singh among them. Harrison Frazar and J.J. Henry, who reside in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, were player consultants on the project.

“We literally have a list: We knew from players their favorite holes were Nos. 8, 14 and 17,” says Weibring, a PGA Tour player.

The No. 1 aspect players mentioned was that there were multiple awkward shots, which probably was a result of technologically advanced equipment being used playing an older course, Weibring says. The biggest change probably occurred on No. 18, Weibring says. The architects moved the tee to the players’ left to better incorporate a lake that was built along the left side of the fairway.

“You now have to choose to drive over the corner of the lake or around it,” Weibring says.

A cascading water feature was added, which was used for many TV beauty shots during the tournament. The designers kept the course’s routing intact but moved 165 trees to try to frame different landing areas and reshaped and moved some of the greens.

“We tried to clean up the entire property,” Wolfard says.

In all, the changes didn’t add much length to the course – it came out to be 7,166 yards, about 170 yards longer than before.

Construction started May 10 last year, 10 days after the tour ended. It happened to be the wettest June and July on record last summer, which proved challenging. Although Weibring and Wolfard prefer to spend a lot of time on the course during construction, the conditions made it necessary for even more frequent site visits. At some points at least one of the architects was at the course daily. The construction firm, C.R. Sanders, also ramped up efforts.

“The contractor obviously had to staff up a tremendous amount more than they usually would,” Wolfard says. “They stepped up to the plate to provide the resources to get the job done.”

The fairways, roughs and tees used to be TifWay 419 Bermudagrass. But the tees were changed to TifSport, and the roughs and fairways remained the same. The greens remained the same, too – bentgrass.

The target finish date was Sept. 15, but the last piece of sod was put into place Oct. 15. Management was committed to keeping the course closed until tournament week, which was in late April. So far, feedback from the players has been positive.

Others seem to be pleased with the renovation as well. The tournament sponsor, EDS, had two years left on its agreement with Las Colinas as the home course and the company and stepped it up to a four year extension after that term ends.

But the architects will never get to hear feedback from Nelson, who passed away in 2006. Yet, they believe his memory is carried on through the design.

”We did this to pay respect to Byron and keep alive the tournament momentum that he cared so much about,” Weibring says.