Designer Tom Fazio: new course is ‘one-of-a-kind’
The new Richland Golf Course is now open at Reynolds Lake Oconee, continuing the renowned private lakefront community’s tradition of world-class golf.
Richland’s acclaimed designer, Tom Fazio, spent the day at Reynolds on Thursday, Oct. 24, touring the finished course with Fazio Design’s veteran Design Associate Brian Bowers, Reynolds Director of Golf Wesley Forester, Reynolds Senior VP of Sales, Marketing & Strategic Planning David Short, Reynolds Kingdom of Golf Director Sean Cain, other Reynolds administrators and members, and the media.
Members of the media played a round of golf on the new course that morning. As they returned to the clubhouse, Fazio wanted to know if anyone had birdied a hole and how many and which holes they’d birdied.
Fazio’s passion for his specialty energized his conversation during the press conference.
“Reynolds is a quality golf environment. There’s a lot of terrain variation, a lot of ups and downs, ins and outs, twists and turns, which is great for golf,” Fazio said in an earlier interview while the course was being built.
Those varying factors seemed to be a common theme in the questions presented by media members, many of whom had played at Reynolds’ other golf courses in the past.
Richland is built on Reynolds’ other course designed by Fazio, The National. Created in 2000 and renovated in 2014, The National consisted of 27 holes. The nine National holes, known as the Bluff Nine, were transformed, and another nine were added to create Richland. It joins The Creek Club as Reynolds’ second members-only golf course.
“It’s not a new nine in terms of order of placement,” Fazio explained of Richland. “You play some of the new holes on the front nine and some of the new holes on the back nine. So it blends in with the total experience.”
While planning Richland’s design, Fazio and Bowers said they focused on who would play the course regularly.
“We have members of all caliber,” Fazio said. “Some very low handicap, high handicap, and beginner players who also have guests come here. So you have to have a golf course that’s compatible to all levels of players in order to have a golf course that’s successful and recognized as a quality golf experience.”
Fazio said another challenge they faced when planning the design was the fact that there are 40 other Fazio golf courses within 100 miles of Lake Oconee.
“So that’s an important factor for us because they have to be distinctive and unique and one-of-a-kind and not the same because we like working here at Reynolds,” he added. “And we hope they might consider having us if they build another golf course at Reynolds. And it won’t be because we’ve done the same courses; that would be boring. So we work hard at doing what we can to give the golfers variety and interest, and it’s more interesting for us.”
Richland’s layout follows natural rolling terrain highlighted by a dramatic elevation change of more than 100 feet. According to Fazio, the 10th hole is the most difficult because it is uphill.
“Especially if you have strong winds,” he described. “The play is against the wind, so it is the hardest. So, the strength of this golf course is in the middle – they’re the hard golf holes. In some golf courses, the strength is at the start or at the finish, but here it’s in the middle, so that adds to the uniqueness as well as individual character.”
Noting that Richland’s aesthetic was different from that of other courses at Reynolds, which are known for corridors of trees and beautiful houses, one question was asked if the holes that play into the meadow, similar to heathland golf, were created that way because of the natural terrain or to create differentiation.
Bowers explained that they had to move a significant amount of dirt to create the holes, “and when you do that, you must remove trees. So the solution was to plant native fescue grass.”
“When we were walking the holes, we said, ‘hey, this is something unique, open, unlike anything at Reynolds and it gives a different perspective seeing it from the other holes,” Bowers said.
Richland’s uniqueness also includes being the only course at Reynolds to traverse both sides of the peninsula and touch the lake from Richland Creek and the Oconee River.