Renovation of the Year 2023: Public Courses

On the public side, international contingents earned top honors. Stockholms Golfklubb in Stockholm, Sweden, and La Hacienda Alcaidesa Links Golf Resort in Cadiz, Spain, took first and second place, respectively.

“I am extremely proud over receiving this recognition,” said Per Jacobson, course committee chair. “Established in 1904, we at Stockholms Golfklubb are proud of our heritage and legacy. We were certain this was the right approach for the club when we started this project to combine our history, the golf architectural importance of Harry Colt, with modern golf of today.”

Golf Inc.’s Renovation of the Year once again sought nominations from across the globe and judged entries on the following criteria: vision; course aesthetics; economic and environmental sustainability; and course routing and land use. This year’s judges were Jason Sloan, director and project manager at Frontier Golf; John Buser, general manager at TPC Colorado; and a panel of Golf Inc. editors.

Here are the winners for the Public Course category. Click here to view the Private Club winners.

(Excerpted from the July/August 2023 issue of Golf Inc.)

FIRST PLACE

Stockholms Golfklubb
Stockholm, Sweden
Owner: Member-owned
Architect: (re)GOLF
Contractor: 1st Golf Construction
Cost: €2 million

Stockholms Golfklubb was founded in 1904. The course, designed by Harry Colt and John Morrison, dates back to 1932. The course’s future has been threatened by a series of short-term leases from the ever-encroaching city. Recently, however, the club was able to secure a much longer lease from the city, making it reasonable to invest in much-needed improvements.

The goals of the renovation included improving and updating the aging irrigation system and reworking the entire course to make it more appealing to all levels of players. Those goals worked in tandem, given that a modern irrigation system allows for larger fairways.

Colt’s original design emphasized natural beauty and playability. To bring back that aesthetic, the renovation team removed elements that detracted from the natural beauty of the course and restored original elements such as bunkers and contours that had been lost over time.

The team also carefully reshaped the course to match the natural contours, honoring Colt’s philosophy of using natural shapes and materials.

Colt favored irregular, organic shapes for his bunkers, greens and fairways, and he believed that a course should be shaped by the natural…