Dunedin Golf Club completes $6 million restoration

Dunedin Golf Club, the historic Donald Ross-designed course owned by the city of Dunedin completed a $6 million course restoration. The course has been brought back to its Golden Age roots through the guidance of Kris Spence, a leading Ross expert.

The course was built in 1926 and opened for play on New Year’s Day 1927 as under Dunedin Isles Golf Club. At the time, Ross referred to it as “his masterpiece” thanks to its ideal combination of rolling hills, waterways and other natural hazards. Dunedin took ownership of the course in 1939 and its management operations in 2024. 

The course played a big part in golf history: The PGA of America moved its headquarters south from Chicago in 1944 and renamed the course PGA National Golf Club, leasing it from the city. The PGA eventually moved out, but the site hosted 18 consecutive Senior PGA Championships — as well as the original PGA Merchandise Show in 1954. The course was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2014.

Over the years, several renovations took the course further away from what Ross had created — including shrinking the green complexes 35 to 50 percent, taking away from the strategy Ross intended.

“At Dunedin, the most pleasant surprise was that I could see the old green extending out beneath those renovations and was able to measure them and compare them to his original plans and notes, and I quickly realized that the original greens had never been destroyed,” Spence said. “They were just buried under this material, so the opportunity to remove the material, excavate and expose the original greens, and restore them was possible. It’s fairly rare that they hadn’t bulldozed them away. There’s no question that by the number of bunkers and the contouring we found in the greens, Ross was clearly given a mandate or a directive to build a top-shelf championship layout on that property.” 

Spence sais the greens’ original contours and elevation changes are back for today’s golfers to experience firsthand.

“They’re as good as any out there with great variety,” he said. “There are some subtle greens on some of the longer holes, and some with a lot more movement, tilt and complexity to them on some of the shorter holes. It’s what we’re used to seeing out of Ross when he was really on point. In hindsight, it was a blessing that they just buried the greens. It was sort of an archeological dig to go down and find the surface of the old greens and peel off the newer material like we're peeling the rind off an orange — to reveal that original green. Once we did, we could see the original greens that had been buried for 75 years.

“Players are going to experience the greens and bunkers how he envisioned it. There’s some difficulty and depth to it all, and the bunkers are very challenging. That’s the unique thing about Ross: He brought the style of golf to this country, which he grew up experiencing in Scotland. There are a lot of different shots golfers won’t experience on other courses. The little bump and runs on the ground and the low approaches into the greens you experience in Scotland, you can now experience at Dunedin.”

Early response from golfers has been spectacular. According to Blair Kline, the course’s golf operations GM, a lot of that is because of authenticity.

“If Ross crawled out of his grave today and saw how far the ball goes and how fast the greens are compared to his era, I do not believe he would design the same course today that he designed in 1926,” Kline said. “Now we have the course that we believe he would design. The routing is still the same, some bunkers changed locations to account for driving distance, and the greens are incredible. We recaptured all the pin placements, too.”