Columbia Country Club in Maryland converts from cool-season to warm-season grass and is immediately recognizing the benefts.
There is a delicate balance to renovating a classic golf course. Heritage and playability must be preserved while implementing modern innovations in technology such as improved turfgrasses for greater sustainability. This was the case at Columbia Country Club in Chevy Chase, Maryland.
Columbia is a century-old landmark Walter J. Travis design steeped in tradition. It is the site of the 1921 U.S. Open where then-President Warren G. Harding presented the winning medal to Jim Barnes, and a 19-year-old Bobby Jones was edged out by one stroke as low amateur by 1916’s Open winner Chick Evans.
While Columbia may have been one of the frst in the nation to install an irrigation system, very little has changed at the club short of some minor adjustments to hazards and the addition of a driving range. Still, Travis’s layout has never been altered. Safeguarded by a passionate membership of low handicappers (two of whom competed for the green jacket at the Masters), the course is considered hallowed ground.
