Updated Wentworth brings back memories of grander times
VIRGINIA WATER, England -- The 17th and 18th holes on the West Course at Wentworth were never the best in European golf, but for a long time those par-5s were, alongside the final two holes at The Old Course in St. Andrews, the best known and possibly best loved.
In the days before year-round coverage of the European Tour, there were just a handful of events covered by television and Wentworth hosted two of them, the season-starting PGA Championship and season-closing World Matchplay Championship.
It was natural, therefore, that the tree-lined fairways of the West Course, and the final two holes in particular, were synonymous with the golden age of European golf and the fortunes of its superstars -- Seve Ballesteros and Bernhard Langer, Nick Faldo and Sandy Lyle, Ian Woosnam and Jose Maria Olazabal.
No one was naive enough to herald those holes as great. The 17th, in particular, was always fickle with a landing area from the tee that is right-to-left in shape and left-to-right in camber, like the perilous corner of a country road with a high accident rate.
There was another capricious landing area ahead of the green, one which sometimes produced wicked bounces through the back of the green and at other times stopped the ball dead in its tracks.
The drive on No. 17 remained the same, but the vagaries of that green prompted major changes. Eight years ago, the then-owner of the Wentworth club, Richard Caring, implemented a redesign project that produced errors that have echoed down the decade and will hopefully be banished to history when the latest repair work -- undertaken since last year's tournament -- is revealed ahead of this week's BMW PGA Championship.
Caring's redesign in 2009 was never popular and the 17th green demanded much of the criticism. Indeed nostalgia for its vagaries became rampant as the new green not only wreaked havoc with the shots played on the hole, but also with the senses.
Standing 100 yards shy of the putting surface became a baffling experience. It was like encountering a favorite Hollywood starlet only to discover she'd had extensive, and catastrophic, plastic surgery.
The eighth green was even worse, lifted from the ground like a television graphic intended to delineate the contours of the surface, except, unlike such graphics, it was as if someone had forgotten to drop it back into place.
For four-time major champion Ernie Els, whose design company had been hired for the upgrade, the 2010 tournament was a withering experience. It was as if he'd baked a cake for a special occasion and instead of the guests politely suggesting it had "interesting" ingredients, or discreetly emptying their first mouthful into paper napkins, everyone spat it out en masse and gasped that it was disgusting.
A visibly upset Els told reporters: "I feel very disappointed by everything that's been said and kind of hurt."
He mysteriously added: "Nobody knows exactly what's gone on here [at the club] and I'd like to explain to players before they go to the media ... even the media doesn't have an idea what's happened here."
In time it emerged that Caring had forced the Big Easy's hand with the more outlandish tinkering -- for example, the raised 18th green and accompanying pond. Caring, once ranked the 137th richest man in Britain, has since sold up and attempts have been made to mitigate his meddling, the latest rescue bid being the most significant.
But in selling to Reignwood, a Chinese-based conglomerate, he only added to the increasingly bizarre modern history of the club. Soon after the purchase, Reignwood went to war with the members, seeking to charge them £100,000 to rejoin. It took a five-month campaign, involving the British Foreign Secretary, for the owners to back down.
There was a time when taking the shuttle bus through the Wentworth Estate during the BMW PGA Championship was to partake in a rather wonderfully English version of the morbid tours that trail around Los Angeles, pointing out where various celebrities met their grizzly end.
At Wentworth, the bus drivers would happily indicate the homes of the legends of 1970s Saturday night television, the likes of Bruce Forsyth, Ronnie Corbett and Russ Abbott. It was cozy and fun. Nowadays those drivers and their passengers mutter warily about the same properties being empty yet owned by Russian oligarchs. It's typical of modern London and very typical of modern Wentworth. Caring's course changes felt in line with that vibe.
Yet while some things change, others remain the same, and Wentworth has never ceased to be outstandingly popular among the galleries. The players, too, retain genuine fondness for a backdrop that matches the flagship nature of the tournament.
But 12 months ago, Danny Willett was the sole world top-20 player in attendance and European Tour CEO Keith Pelley barked: "The bulldozers are coming in a week Tuesday."
The Wentworth club, aware of growing whispers about a move elsewhere, green-flagged more than £5 million of investment. They returned to the Ernie Els design group that, along with European Golf Design and an advisory team including Paul McGinley and Thomas Bjorn, led the extensive renovation.
But as Jeremy Slessor, managing director of EGD, told ESPN.com the project's impetus was never one dimensional.
"The [2010] changes weren't popular with members or tour players," Slessor said. "So Reignwood's brief was that we need to make it more enjoyable for everyone to play."
It's an issue European Tour player Chris Wood appreciated.
"The eighth green had very few options for us," this week's defending champion told ESPN. "Really deep bunkers to a fast green sloping down to water. Members don't get [back spin] like we do, so they're just playing out and reloading, and where's the fun in that?"
Reducing the overly penal nature of the deep bunkering throughout the layout was a key consideration.
"Every bunker was made shallower," said Slessor. "We also removed 29 [bunkers] to reintroduce shot-making options. For example, on 16, in the old days if you missed left, and had the lie and skill to hit a high draw out of rough, it was an option, but from the new bunkers you had no escape. We removed those bunkers."
Wood concurs about the sand traps, referencing the third hole, a long and difficult par-4.
"If you found the bunkers up the right, it was sand wedge out," he said. "Now the option of hitting the green exists although it still needs a great shot. There will be more aggression from the tee and it will impact on scoring."
The greens, too, have undergone significant alterations, with softening of slopes; four complete and five partial rebuilds; plus the introduction of 007 bent grass, which aims to fight off the infiltration of native Poa Annua grass.
"The greens were pure when I played a few weeks ago," said Wood, who noted that the 17th green, although not returned to its original state, has been modified.
"I really like what they've done there," he said. "Last year I was 20 yards short in two during the final round and I walked off with a 6, yet I didn't feel like I played a bad shot into the green. I missed my mark, but not by anywhere near enough to have been penalized as I was. They've flattened the front-left swale. More balls will find the putting surface in two."
Might there be perhaps a revival of an old Wentworth tradition?
"I didn't like what they did to the final two holes [in 2010]," Wood said. "Finishing with two par-5s was always uniquely Wentworth and potentially dramatic. Someone could finish 4-4, 3-4 or 4-3. That's what fans want to see, isn't it? The last few years finishing 5-5 has been a good effort and that's never felt right to me."
Slessor is keen to stress that the latest changes were no mere exercise in sentimentality.
"We weren't trying to create a pastiche," he said. "Kenny Mackay [Wentworth's director of golf courses and grounds] put it nicely: a nod to the past with an eye to the future."
That said, just as the Wentworth Estate has ceased to seem quite real, with its sheen of international and corporate money, the course assumed a nature that felt contrived.
"We're returning to a simpler way of presenting the course," Slessor said. "There won't be diamonds across the fairways. A lot less areas have been mown. More natural habitat. More softening. Moving into the autumn there will be another phase of landscaping, introducing heather, gorse, broom and rhododendron where appropriate."
Wentworth needs to work as a venue. Close to London it draws big crowds, owns an abundance of history, has a spectacular backdrop, which is only going to improve in the next 12 months. It feels like home, generates a great atmosphere, and craves the trust of the players to help create a show they don't want to miss, even more so given the suggestion that the Players Championship on the PGA Tour might move to March and the PGA Championship to May.
"For a European, after the majors, the BMW PGA is definitely a bucket list want-to-win event," Wood said. "We've been watching it all our golfing lives. It's a special place."
Growing old gracefully, for humans as well as golf courses, is a ticklish task that often prompts the madness of a midlife crisis. Fingers crossed that Wentworth's dalliance with unrealistic facelifts is over and done with.
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