Grande plans to lengthen west-coast course
AFTER the fuss surrounding his design work at the Trump International Course near Aberdeen, Martin Hawtree must see La Grande Mare as a political and architectural breeze in contrast.
The noted golf course architect, who initially designed La Grande Mare in the late 1980s, was in the island recently before heading back to his UK base to come up with new designs to make the Guernsey west-coast course longer, fairer and better.
His visit to La Grande Mare, where he walked and re-analysed the course in the company of John Dent, its relatively new director of golf, is part of a plan to not only make conditions better for current and future members, but also go a long way to alleviating concerns of those players who considered it wrong to hand the par-three dominated layout the staging of the 2019 inter-insular.
Dent, who has already overseen significant improvements out Vazon way, outlined what he and the Vermeulen family hope will strengthen the growing reputation of the course, which has been operating now for 22 years.
‘Martin came to have a look to see where we can improve the course, so my ideas of lengthening the course are [initially] 4, 5 and 7 and he has agreed in principle to do that and reshape some of the greens.
‘The problem at the moment is that when you hit the greens everything falls off the back, so we want to build up the back of some of the greens, reshape some of them, widen some tee boxes as some are very narrow, reshape a couple of bunkers and plant some trees.
‘We are going to put a five-year plan in place and we are hoping to start the work in the first week of January, all being well, weather permitting.’
Full story in Thursday's Guernsey Press.
