His overall reaction: “It’s been a crazy year for Colonial, obviously, but the restoration, Gil Hanse and his team did, I mean it’s unbelievable how fast it came together. I know that the membership has been very excited about it. It took some hoops to jump through to get it approved through the membership, and it’s pretty cool to kind of be a part of a lot of the conversations we had. Sitting at a table with Gil and going through it all, answering questions. So to finally see it, and for the guys on Tour to be here playing it, I heard a lot of great positive comments, so that’s good to know. I was a little nervous, to be honest with you, for the course and for the club, but, yeah, I just spoke with Gil outside a few minutes ago and he said he’s heard a lot of great things. So I’m excited to see how it all unfolds this week.”
On his favorite part of the renovation: “Mainly just the redo of the greens as far as the grass and the systems underneath the hydronics, because we are here during the summer playing, and the greens are spongy, soft from all the moisture, because they don’t want ’em to die and burn out. So to be able to use the system with that heating and cooling, I feel like we’re going to have great greens throughout. In the wintertime they can heat ’em, summertime cool ’em off. The greens right now are rolling perfectly. I’m so excited for the golf course that Gil’s out here seeing now. A lot of changes that taking some bunker play out for us to make it a little tougher, that was a big thing we talked about. Making it more playable for the membership as well, for the everyday golfer, not having to play out of the bunkers. Yeah, it’s going to be, it’s going to still take a year or two I think to really see how this golf course plays. This year it’s going to play firm and fast because it’s so new and immature, but it’s going to be a, to bring back a little bit of history of this golf course back when it played and when it was first designed. You hear Gil talk a lot about the course Ben Hogan played. So it’s cool and nice to see that kind of come back to life. I’m excited about it.”
On his role in the renovations: “I wouldn’t say I had a lot of involvement, I think it was more just conversation. I’ll never forget when this first started they asked if I would be interested in sitting down and giving my two cents, I guess, from a Tour standpoint and, I mean, I couldn’t have said yes fast…
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