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TAKING THEIR COURSE
Blalock, Day team up on golf course |
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Glen Day
PGA Tour player has three course projects
under development in Alabama. |
By Michael Tomberlin
News Staff Writer
The designer of Birmingham's Olympic soccer
fields and a top golf pro are getting together to do some course work -
as in golf courses. Glen Day Alan Blalock Golf Design links Day, a
successful Professional Golf Association Tour player, and Birmingham's
Blalock, a 25-year veteran of land design.
The new partnership already has three golf colf
course projects under development, all in Alabama.
Construction has started on an 18-hole,
7000-yard championship course in Enterprise known as Tartan Pine Golf
Community.
Moore's Mill Golf Club will be an 18-hole,
6,916-yard course in Auburn.
Closer to home, the team is working on a
proposal for improving and redesigning Vestavia Country Club, pending
final approval of the club's members. "It's a perfect
marriage in that regard. |
"But
what I was really looking for was someone who wanted a long-term
partnership to do a lot of projects and not just lend my name to a few
projects at a time," he added.
Day first got hooked on course design when he
worked with Nicklaus Design Team to build Salem Glen Country Club in
Winston-Salem, N.C., in 1996. He has since been searching for an
established designer as a partner.
Joe Morgan, president of Vestavia Country Club,
said the club hired Blalock to submit redesign proposals for the course,
even beore he had formed the partnership with Day.
"The partnership with Glen Day enhances the
position of the company because we feel like that degree of professional
input would be very positive," Morgan said. "It could be the
thing that eventually sells our members on moving forward with the
redesign.
"After all, Glen Day has seen a lot of the
nation's courses," he added.
Day said his experience helps him approach golf
course design with a player's philosophy. Meanwhile, Blalock knows more
about topography, land shaping, and the nuts and bolts of land design
and landscaping.
"Our team gives an added dimension to the
design process because when Glen and I walk a course together that is
under construction, I'm looking at things differently than he is and
together we can make a better course," Blalock said.
Among the proposed changes to Vestavia Country
Club are landscape improvements, a redesign of the putting green area
and the repositioning of some tee boxes.
Day and Blalock's approach to tee box placement
enables pro and amateur golfers to use a combinationof clubs while
playing the 18-hole course.
Day admits he prefers building courses from
scratch more than redesigning courses, although each presents its own
set of challenges.
"It's like taking a blank piece of canvas
and creating a painting or taking a painting that's already been done
and making changes," he said. |
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