Davenport Country Club

Designed by Hugh Alison when he was running the Colt & Alison design office during the early 1920s out of Detroit, the near century-old course at Davenport has remained largely intact, apart from a remodel by Bob Lohman in 2000 when he created a new 1st hole and realigned the 9th, moving the green close to Conduit Creek.

Ron Forse and Jim Nagle were called in to upgrade the layout in 2014 and they described their ten-month project as neither a restoration nor renovation, opting instead for the term “retro rebuild,” which is rather a neat way to explain the process of re-establishing a course’s identity through updating its course infrastructure.

Director of agronomy Dean Sparks oversaw the work, using 5,700 tons of greens mix, 4,600 tons of sand and 2,000 tons of pea gravel to redo greens and tees, re-grass fairways and rebuild bunkers, reducing the number of sand traps from 49 to 37. The jagged-edged bunkers don’t resemble the original ones at Davenport but they fit the setting superbly.

The signature hole is the 423-yard 16th, a brilliant par four that’s played from a wonderfully elevated tee position, with the waters of Spencer Creek threatening the tee shot. Described as an “all-American golf hole” by Sports Illustrated magazine, it’s here that Sam Snead famously came to grief during the final round of the 1951 Western Open.

Ron Forse was interviewed by golfclubatlas.com in November 2020 and he mentioned his work at Davenport:

“From the moment we saw the stick and circle routing on the topographic map we thought that there was something special here, even before our visit. The routing is definitely the course’s strong foundation. We had no early aerial photos so we had to rely on our own instincts.

A big tool in our arsenal was photos of Hirono, Japan, designed by Charles Alison who designed Davenport in 1923. This made a huge difference in the features. We have often relied on other golf courses by the same architect to enhance the character of a course.

DCC is somewhat Spartan on a number of bunkers. We added a few more than the original design sometimes for the practical purposes such as ball containment on a very hilly site. We also rebuilt 6 of the 18 greens, modifying some. One of Alison’s greens was so flat we decided it didn’t fit in with the rest and added more subtle undulation to it.

Alison’s routing had #18 playing as a 90 degree right turn up the hill. This old green is now the practice putting green. Midwest architect Bob Lohmann deserves a lot of credit for the current routing. He placed the green across the creek, keeping the hole in the valley. Not only is it a much better green location, but the player encounters Cardiac Hill only after he is done with his round.

Poor Bob had to route his fairway round an existing sewage treatment plant. Jim and I were able to remove the unsightly object and push the fairway towards the creek. What was a poor ending to a great golf course has been over time reiterated into a strong, strategic finishing hole that no one would ever guess was not original. It fits right in topographically and architecturally.”