Tom Cunneff of LINKS Magazine recently wrote an article about Alister MacKenzie’s Meadow Club, which Mike DeVries restored in the early 2000s.
Also fortuitous was the “benevolent neglect,” as DeVries calls it, given the greens since The Depression, which allowed him to recover their original footprints and contours: Most had shrunk to about half their average 9,500-square-foot size. Bunker renovation took more forensic work, they had deteriorated so much, but with the help of old photos DeVries recovered their locations and natural-edge style. It also meant removing some to restore playability, as on the long, par-four 9th, where someone 50 years ago replaced a knob with a bunker at the front-left of the green, taking away the ability to feed in a long iron or fairway wood.