Silva-restored Brookside reopens in Ohio

Canton, Ohio - With 18 of the country’s best-preserved, Donald Ross-designed greens, Brookside Country Club might have seemed an unlikely candidate for restoration. But thanks to architect Brian Silva, Brookside is one of America’s best-preserved Ross layouts, tee to green.

Closed in the fall of 2003, Brookside reopened for member play in June, minus 600 trees and featuring the perpendicular fairway bunkers Ross originally designed – much of which had been abandoned since the course opened in 1920. The club held a rededication ceremony for its course Aug. 13.

“The steps taken to upgrade a particular course depend on the quality of the original,” says Silva, a partner with Uxbridge, Mass.-based Cornish, Silva & Mungeam. “At Brookside, the course was an eight on a scale of 10 before we broke ground. Accordingly, we carefully restored those elements that had been diminished.”

Working with MacCurrach Golf Construction of Jacksonville, Fla., Silva also rebuilt all 18 tee complexes at Brookside and installed a state-of-the-art irrigation system. Yet the bulk of Silva’s work amounted to restorative re-expansion. Fairways were narrowed by excessive tree-planting programs, and fairway bunkers filled in over time. Silva even restored Brookside’s trademark greens to their original parameters, recapturing portions of certain putting surfaces that had disappeared following decades of careless mowing practices.

“Brookside was subject to all the unfortunate evolutionary changes we typically see at clubs of this vintage,” says Silva. “It’s an old story.

“Our work was a good example of how greens restoration and tree trimming work together,” he adds. “Because they’ve got such distinct, individualized pin placements, the greens at Brookside were designed to be approached from one side of the fairway or another. But you couldn’t do that anymore because many of those fairway areas were located under a tree. The trees at Brookside had encroached so much, many of these choices had been lost. So we restored them, and added nine new acres of fairway in the process.”

Brookside superintendent Bob Figurella – a 35-year employee of the club – said he had no idea how much the golf course would change.

“I was emotionally invested, and it all happened so fast,” he says. “Hole after hole, area after area. The happiest day of my life was when the sod went back around the bunkers, and I could see the finished product coming together. For about six weeks it was all going one way. I’m just not used to being in the dirt business.

“It took me a while to get it, but I did,” he adds. “And now that it’s done, everybody loves it. I think it’s just gorgeous to look at. Brian took away all the trees from behind the greens and the vistas he’s created are worth it alone.”

Figurella also appreciates the agronomic benefits.

“The bunkers are easier to maintain,” he says. “We don’t save time because we do it all by hand, but they look and drain much better. It takes a bit longer to mow the banks, but the look of these bunkers outweighs any inconvenience.”

Silva’s work recapturing lost portions of putting surface also made an impression on Brookside’s long-time superintendent.

“I like having all the greens with sun on them,” Figurella says. “They dry out evenly now. Brian also really opened up the fronts of these greens, which were pinched in by mowing patterns over the years. He made them appear larger. They are larger. He recaptured the greens, not just the size but the character.

The long range planning committee at Brookside took Silva’s past work into account when it choose him from a pool of 18 golf course architects.

“Brian has something like 15 Donald Ross renovations under his belt,” says Steve Cress, a Brookside member involved in restoration planning. “His references came out extremely well for him. He was also very direct and honest with the membership, which is a good thing.”

Brookside’s rigorous selection procedure was matched by an internal education process waged by the committee prior to the decision to renovate.

“This project is the result of what I like to call overdisclosure,” Cress says. “For two years prior to selecting an architect, we worked with the membership to explain why this work had to be done. We learned from talking to other clubs that one or two members can unduly influence an entire membership, so we broke up the membership into 10 groups of 40 and explained the reasons for restoring the course to each one. This also created an extraordinary level of interest in the project. We had a Donald Ross day two summers ago, and 250 people showed up. When we voted in December of 2002, the measure passed by 100 votes.”

Cress says the combination of the club’s education efforts and Silva’s candor made it work.

“We had done our due diligence,” he says. “We even took our board members down to Augusta Country Club, which had done the same sort of project we were planning. We played the golf course, sat in the grille room and talked to their members. We learned a lot – like how they wished they had replaced the irrigation system during their renovation. That helped us decide our 27-year-old irrigation system should be replaced in the context of Brian’s restoration, which is what Brian had recommended all along.”