ASGCA Past President Damian Pascuzzo and Steve Pate – Pascuzzo/Pate Golf Design – have completed a renovation and redesign of Nemu Golf Club in Shima, Japan.
Golf Course Architecture reports:
Plans included significant changes to six holes and the introduction of a new practice range – something necessary if the course were to hold a tour event.
It was decided that the site of the course’s tenth hole would be the best location for the new practice range. To compensate for the loss of this hole, plans called for the nines to be reversed.
What was previously the par five seventeenth hole was redesigned to create two separate holes. These would comprise a par three hole with a drive over a small pond, and a ‘drive and pitch’ par four hole, with a green that sits just beyond a wetland area.
The latter would be the course’s former ninth hole, which will now play as the new eighteenth. This hole received a complete bunker overhaul and the introduction of a new green.
Other elements of the project included the lengthening of the sixteenth hole. The green on this hole has now been moved closer to the top of a bluff, and will now be a par five.
Every bunker across the course was rebuilt or renovated as part of the project, as were many of the course’s tees. Issues around trees and cart paths were also addressed.