AMELIA ISLAND, Fla. – Architect Beau Welling has completed a $7.4 million renovation of Omni Amelia Island Resort & Spa’s Oak Marsh Golf Course, which originally was designed by Pete Dye and opened in 1972. The course, sitting on a barrier island less than an hour north of Jacksonville at an expansive beach resort alongside the Atlantic Ocean, will reopen to members and guests May 16.
With the intent of maintaining Dye’s legacy at Oak Marsh without interrupting Dye’s famous design style, Welling rebuilt all 18 greens at Oak Marsh. The greens had shrunk over the years, as is typical of most courses. The greens were also covered with fresh TifEagle Bermuda grass.
Other work involved covering all tees, fairways, roughs and greens surrounds with new Bimini Bermuda grass. Each bunker was rebuilt or moved to better fit the modern game on the 6,471-yard layout, and the irrigation and drainage systems were updated. Perhaps most notably, more than a dozen acres of thick native scrub that lined many fairways were removed and replaced with a mixture of sand and coquina shells, allowing more opportunity for recovery shots from the now-wider playing corridors, with the new sandy waste areas also better framing the holes.
“Our team is incredibly excited about this renovation of Oak Marsh,” Welling – a frequent design partner of Tiger Woods who runs his own architecture company, Beau Welling Design – said in a media release announcing the reopening. “We were very mindful to preserve Pete Dye’s strategy and design intent as well as elevating the playing experience for today’s golfer.”
Welling also built the 10-hole, par-3 course Little Sandy at Omni Amelia Island.
“We have such a great relationship with the Omni team at Amelia Island, and we hope the overall aesthetic improvements, coupled with Amelia Island’s natural beauty, will truly showcase how special Oak Marsh is.”
This article originally appeared on Golfweek: Beau Welling completes renovation of Omni Amelia Island’s Oak Marsh
AMELIA ISLAND, Fla. – Architect Beau Welling has completed a $7.4 million renovation of Omni Amelia Island Resort & Spa’s Oak Marsh Golf Course, which originally was designed by Pete Dye and opened in 1972. The course, sitting on a barrier island less than an hour north of Jacksonville at an expansive beach resort alongside the Atlantic Ocean, will reopen to members and guests May 16.
With the intent of maintaining Dye’s legacy at Oak Marsh without interrupting Dye’s famous design style, Welling rebuilt all 18 greens at Oak Marsh. The greens had shrunk over the years, as is typical of most courses. The greens were also covered with fresh TifEagle Bermuda grass.
Other work involved covering all tees, fairways, roughs and greens surrounds with new Bimini Bermuda grass. Each bunker was rebuilt or moved to better fit the modern game on the 6,471-yard layout, and the irrigation and drainage systems were updated. Perhaps most notably, more than a dozen acres of thick native scrub that lined many fairways were removed and replaced with a mixture of sand and coquina shells, allowing more opportunity for recovery shots from the now-wider playing corridors, with the new sandy waste areas also better framing the holes.
“Our team is incredibly excited about this renovation of Oak Marsh,” Welling – a frequent design partner of Tiger Woods who runs his own architecture company, Beau Welling Design – said in a media release announcing the reopening. “We were very mindful to preserve Pete Dye’s strategy and design intent as well as elevating the playing experience for today’s golfer.”
Welling also built the 10-hole, par-3 course Little Sandy at Omni Amelia Island.
“We have such a great relationship with the Omni team at Amelia Island, and we hope the overall aesthetic improvements, coupled with Amelia Island’s natural beauty, will truly showcase how special Oak Marsh is.”
This article originally appeared on Golfweek: Beau Welling completes renovation of Omni Amelia Island’s Oak Marsh
