BALLENISLES UNVEILS MORE BIG-TIME AMENITIES

View Article

« Back	Post Date: Tuesday, May 2, 2023
BALLENISLES UNVEILS MORE BIG-TIME AMENITIES What do you do when your club already committed more than $80 million in capital improvement projects over a 10-year-period, including a new $35 million clubhouse unveiled four years ago and a $7.5 million completely renovated Rees Jones South Course in 2020?

TROON LIVING
BALLENISLES UNVEILS MORE BIG-TIME AMENITIES
By Scott Kauffman

What do you do when your club already committed more than $80 million in capital improvement projects over a 10-year-period, including a new $35 million clubhouse unveiled four years ago and a $7.5 million completely renovated Rees Jones South Course in 2020?

If you’re Troon Privé’s BallenIsles Country Club in Palm Beach Gardens, Fla., you don’t rest on your luxurious golf lifestyle laurels. You turn right around and invest $6.3 million to revamp the club’s famed East Course and $1.4 million to build one of the best practice facilities in the business, anchored by the newly 2023 opened $1.4 million ‘71 Learning Center, modern tech-fueled center for learning all things golf.

BallenIsles’ East Course is perhaps best remembered as the former home of the PGA of America and where Jack Nicklaus won the 1971 PGA Championship. Now, it’s known for having a new championship-level layout after the nearby Nicklaus Design team spent more than eight months “modernizing and upgrading” the entire Dick Wilson-designed course from a playability and agronomic perspective.

Among the highlights of the renovation led by Nicklaus’ senior designers Chris Cochran and Chad Goetz were shallowed bunkers and reshaped fairways and greens with “natural humps and hollows” giving golfers of all skill levels more run-off areas and recovery options to enjoy the course.

To top it off, the new practice facility features a 65-bay two-sided range with Toptracer technology and target areas, practice bunkers, a putting green and wedge range with targets from 30 to 105 yards. The four-acre short-game area has a 25,000 sq. ft. Snead Green putting course, plus five pitching and chipping greens.

Club general manager/chief executive officer Ryan Walls and Nicklaus Design president Paul Stringer are particularly thrilled about the club’s newly reimagined practice facility, which Stringer describes as a growing trend in the private club industry.

“We call it the gamification of driving ranges,” says Stringer, who’s in his 20th year with Nicklaus Companies. “People are becoming a little bit more sophisticated about their golf … so we’re seeing more of these (renovation projects) involving any kind of technology to help players or to have an entertainment base.”

BallenIsles president/member David Frank describes the new East Course and practice grounds as “simply spectacular.” Adds Frank: “We continue making BallenIsles Country Club better and better.”

Click here to view the original article.

FED

CSS