Montclair (First & Third)

This multi-year project paired Montclair Golf Club director of golf course operations Michael Campbell with Brian Schneider, senior design associate at Renaissance Design. The team looked at historic aerial photographs, the oldest from 1930, to guide the project.

“We’re not going back exactly to 1930 but very, very close,” said Campbell, who noted that Bobby Jones once described Montclair as the “longest short course I ever played.” “We are redoing the bunkers and rebuilt four greens (3, 5, 6 and 9) on the Third Nine. Those greens that we’re not redoing are being re-contoured along the perimeters to regain lost pin positions. And we’re re-building tees. It’s all being done with a 1930’s flavor, but to modern specifications.”

Phase I was completed and in play this past golf season, with an entirely new fifth hole that improved overall design and allowed for construction of a new short game area. Phase III, which focuses on the Second Nine, is scheduled to begin in late July 2021. The final phase, to restore the Fourth Nine — Banks’s holes, which are dramatically different from the Ross 27, featuring huge elevated greens and big, flat-bottomed bunkers — is scheduled for 2022.