Gil Hanse to Restore Mid Ocean Club
Alex Elias
CGI image of Hole 18 (Home) at Mid Ocean Club, Bermuda
Mid Ocean Club has appointed renowned golf course architect Gil Hanse to restore its historic Charles Blair Macdonald-designed golf course.
For Hanse, whose acclaimed Macdonald restorations include Sleepy Hollow Country Club, The Creek Club, and Yale Golf Course, the project is a unique opportunity to restore another of Macdonald’s designs.
“C.B. Macdonald is on my personal Mount Rushmore of golf architects, so it’s an honor to have the opportunity to work on another of his courses,” said Hanse. “He only built 10 or 12 golf courses, depending on how many you credit to him. The fact that we now have a significant opportunity at Mid Ocean Club, means the world to us.”
CGI image of Hole 5 (Cape) at Mid Ocean Club, Bermuda
Known for his “ideal holes,” inspired by holes on some of the great British links, including Redan (North Berwick Golf Club), Alps (Prestwick Golf Club), and Eden (The Old Course at St Andrews)—now known as “template holes”—Hanse called the Par-4 5th, a Cape hole with a diagonal drive over Mangrove Lake from an elevated tee, “one of the greatest holes in golf.”
With a wealth of information—including archival information that Hanse said “we normally don’t get access to”—and recently uncovered film by club researcher Rick Skelly, containing what is currently believed to be the only moving images of Macdonald himself, discovered in the archives of the Smithsonian Institution, Hanse said, “Ultimately our goal is to be faithful to Macdonald and restore his work.”
“With the archival information and, ultimately, having a presence on site and being on the machinery myself, we will have an opportunity to get in the ground and faithfully restore what Macdonald and Raynor built on the property.”
