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Laurence Lambrecht

The award for Best Renovation of the Year has never been tighter. These were the best of 2025

By Derek Duncan
January 17, 2026
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The mission of Andrew Green’s work at Chevy Chase Club north of Washington, D.C. was to return the course design to its historical roots. The question was, which ones?

The original nine holes laid out by Willie Davis in 1896 were expanded to 18 two years later, most likely by club professional Willie Tucker. Donald Ross, quite early in his career, remodeled those holes in 1910. This course existed until 1921 when British architect C.H. Alison, longtime partner of Harry Colt, redesigned the course once again, with the construction overseen by another esteemed architect, William Flynn, and his partner, Howard Toomey. Robert Trent Jones made alterations in 1947, and Arthur Hills executed another full renovation in 1997. So to what iteration should the course be taken back?

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Laurence Lambrecht

Ultimately, Green and the club focused on the Alison presentation of Chevy Chase using early 1930s aerial photography as the touchstone for reconstruction. But the team was also intrigued by elements from other eras, including linear mounding and raised grassy berms from the turn of the century, identifiable from other photographs.

“The aerial guided us toward recreating Alison’s really unique greens and bunker shapes and positions, and we adjusted those for changes in modern distances,” Green says. “Then we found those old Victorian, ‘hunt-club’ era pieces that we added to help tell the overall story of the course.”

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Laurence Lambrecht

The $18-million renovation involved the expansion of the green surfaces to create dynamic hole locations and the recreation of Alison’s bunkers along with widened playing corridors and selective tree removal. A new par 3, the 15th, was also created as an homage to the no-longer-in-existence par-3 10th that was sacrificed in the 1990s to make room for tennis facilities.

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For Green, who has forged a reputation for rehabilitating Donald Ross’ architecture at places such as Inverness, Oak Hill (East), Scioto and Interlachen, studying Colt and Alison was new. He says that where Ross was often mathematical in his placement of bunkers, forcing players to mentally work through their strategies, Alison was more intuitive and organic at Chevy Chase, fitting large and small bunkers into the land to fill the natural spaces. The vivid, Alison-modeled shaping of the greens and grass-faced bunkers that flank them brings material clarity and contrast to a Chevy Chase design that had come to feel sterile and standardized.

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Laurence Lambrecht

“I’m a believer that so much of the best golf in the greater Mid-Atlantic region was pushed over by the bulldozer between World War II and today,” Green says. “Anything with historic significance in that part of the world is gone. So at Chevy Chase we tried to play off the different lineages we found to recreate a level of uniqueness that would make it different than any other club in the region.” Mission accomplished.

This gives Green back-to-back Best Renovation wins, following Interlachen last year. He also won Best Transformation for Congressional Country Club (Blue) in 2021.

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SECOND PLACE
BALTUSROL GOLF CLUB

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Evan Schiller

Springfield, N.J.
7,000 yards, par 72
Architects: Gil Hanse, Jim Wagner

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Evan Schiller

When Hanse and Wagner renovated Baltusrol’s Lower Course in 2021, the task was to strengthen the faded profile of A.W. Tillinghast while reenforcing the course’s challenge for major tournaments, including the 2029 PGA Championship. The job at the club’s Upper course, reopened in summer 2025, was simpler: Bring back the Tillinghast. This included significant tree removal, major green expansions (including the addition of a lost alternate green at the par-4 14th), bunker restoration/relocation and new sub-surface air systems. Both the Upper and Lower are known for strong opening and finishing sequences, but the Upper’s beautifully revived middle holes, moving across more interesting terrain, now make the case for the courses being on equal architectural footing, if not in championship mettle.

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THIRD PLACE
EASTWARD HO!

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Laurence Lambrecht

Chatham, Mass.
6,711 yards, par 72
Architect: Kyle Franz

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Laurence Lambrecht

Located on the shore of Cape Cod’s Pleasant Bay, Eastward Ho! is a thrill ride over some of golf’s most adventurous waterfront terrain. A renovation by Keith Foster 20 years ago helped reveal the glory of the 1922 Herbert Fowler design, and Kyle Franz’s work in 2024 has taken it to the next level. More water views were opened, and putting surfaces have been expanded by more than 28,000 square feet, including a recaptured Fowler-era front section of the par-3 fourth, turning it into one of the country’s most sensational Biarritz greens. New fairway expansions allow drives to explore the unpredictability of the colossally rolling contour, and Franz’s refreshed bunker work and native sandy areas add coastal texture while hiding previously unsightly cart paths.

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HONORABLE MENTION

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Addison Reserve Country Club: Salvation/Trepidation
Delray Beach, FL
3.7
5 Panelists
Arthur Hills’ firm built the three Addison Reserve nines in South Florida from flat, treeless agricultural fields in the mid 1990s. He was most proud of how their work, specifically the creation wetlands and lakes with riparian shelves, encouraged birds and wildlife that previously did not habitat the site began to make the area their home, even as housing filled in around the holes. Over the last several years, Rees Jones and associate Steve Weisser have conducted a $24 million remodeled of the three nines, regrassing the course with Platinum TE paspalum, revamping green surfaces and creating new bunker strategies and identities. Golf Digest panelists evaluate the Salvation and Trepidation nines as the club’s official course.
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Black Diamond Ranch: Ranch
Lecanto, FL
3.8
13 Panelists
The Quarry Course at Black Diamond Ranch, which once ranked as high as No. 24 on America’s 100 Greatest Courses, dominates the topic of golf at this upscale community club due in large part to four second nine holes that descend dramatically into a massive stone quarry. The Ranch course, built in 1997, 10 years after the Quarry, is more subtle but no less evocative. Visitors are often surprised to see how much elevation change exists in this part of Florida, 90 minutes north of Tampa, but ancient sand ridges give the topography variety to go along with beautiful mature live oak specimen trees. That’s the tapestry of the Ranch, which has the feel of a pastoral stroll, a feeling enhanced after a 2024 renovation by architect Tripp Davis.
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Callawassie Island: Dogwood/Magnolia
Callawassie Island, SC
4.1
7 Panelists
Callawassie Island, formerly the Country Club of Callawassie and located northwest of Hilton Head Island, was among the first generation of courses Tom Fazio designed in the mid-1980s following his longtime partnership with George Fazio, his uncle. The club is set on a ubiquitously named island and features two nines that comprise the main course that our panelists evaluate for the Golf Digest rankings. Both circle out through the Lowcountry development with the last hole of the Magnolia nine running along the tidal marshes of the Colleton River and Callawassie Creek, and the last four holes of the Dogwood nine skirting tight along the marshes from the opposite direction. Both nines have undergone extensive renovations over the previous few years.
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Colonial Country Club
Fort Worth, TX
3.8
10 Panelists
We give credit to Texas golf historian Frances G. Trimble for establishing the fact that Perry Maxwell, not John Bredemus, originally designed Colonial Country Club for Fort Worth businessman Marvin Leonard. Both architects submitted routings. Maxwell’s was used, while Bredemus supervised construction. Colonial sported the first bentgrass greens in Texas when it opened in 1936. In 1939, the USGA awarded Colonial its 1941 U.S. Open, the first ever in Texas, so Leonard brought Maxwell back to toughen the course. He added 56 bunkers and created the present par-3 fourth and par-4 fifth (two of the famed Horrible Horseshoe trio of holes) and a par-3 13th (since replaced following a 1968 rechanneling of the Trinity River). Keith Foster’s 2008 restoration wasn’t to everyone’s satisfaction. In 2023, Gil Hanse and Jim Wagner initiated a warp-speed, total renovation of the design using Maxwell's 1941 modifications as a roadmap, a similar treatment they implemented when remodeling Maxwell's Southern Hills in 2018, on display at the 2022 PGA Championship. This ranking does not reflect the Hanse/Wagner work: Their changes will be revealed in the 2027-'28 results.
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Dunedin Golf Club
Dunedin, FL
3.8
7 Panelists
This nearly 100-year old course, designed by Donald Ross, is the former home to the PGA of America. The course has hosted dozens of Senior PGAs, and legends such as Ben Hogan, Gene Sarazen and Bobby Jones have played here. It was also the host of the first PGA Merchandise Show in 1954. Designer Kris Spence completed a $6 million renovation in 2024 that expanded the greens and remodeled the bunkers to better resemble what Ross initially built in 1927, with flat floors of sand and steeper grass faces. Spence says that most of the original green contours and outlines were still present—they just needed to be excavated from the layers of material buildup and previous renovations. Dunedin is a rare venue that gives public players a chance to play on revitalized Donald Ross architecture.
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Evanston Golf Club
Skokie, IL
3.7
7 Panelists
Donald Ross built or remodeled over a dozen courses in the greater Chicago area between 1913 and 1921. Naturally, some of the brightest of them dim accolades that might have gone to others. But even those that haven’t commanded the most attention historically are often only a smart renovation away from reassessment. Ross's Chicago work came during a period of creative awakening, a middle career stage that includes some of his boldest and most artistic bunking like that found at Evanston Golf Club. Much of that artistry and strategy had been lost over the decades through modernizations, but Ron Prichard’s 2007 studied renovation brought back the full effect of Ross’s aggressive green contours and cross-bunkering including numerous centerline fairways hazards that must be contested. Prichard’s former associate, Tyler Rae, has spent the last few years fine tuning Evanston, expanding fairway lines and reconstructing bunkers, taking it to its greatest heights even as the design remains an underrated piece of Chicagoland architecture.
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The Gasparilla Inn & Club
Boca Grande, FL
4.2
7 Panelists
Open to members and guests of the resort, Gasparilla Golf Club sits on an island near the picturesque coast of Charlotte Harbor. Though it perhaps lacks the overall ambiance and seriousness of the architecture, the proximity of the design to the water (five holes run directly along the island’s shore) and the exposure to the coastal winds puts Gasparilla in the same category of other Pete Dye seaside courses like Teeth of the Dog and The Ocean Course at Kiawah Island. Dye revamped an old 1930s-era course here in 2002, making it his own, though time, weather and other modifications over the last 20 years muted much of that character. Now Tripp Davis has attempted to bring back the overall Dye composition while making adjustments in certain places including shifting greens and fairways, planting new grasses and shortening some holes while lengthening others by as much as 40 years. The constant is the unique location and water views.
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Lakewood Country Club
Westlake, OH
4
9 Panelists
Lakewood, located in a suburb west of Cleveland, opened in 1921 and is the only course in Ohio designed by A.W. Tillinghast. Like most courses of its vintage, it had been modernized through the decades and one of the club’s goals in 2020 when they hired Keith Foster, who has demonstrated his Tillinghast expertise at courses like Brook Hollow in Dallas and Philadelphia Cricket Club’s Wissahickon Course, was to return it to the original routing. The other goal was to imbue it with a more rugged, Golden Age character by converting all the bunkers from flashed sand to a more vintage grass-faced style, expanding the fairway lines, thinning hundreds of trees that had been planted in the 1960s and ‘70s and recapturing an incredible 35,000 square feet of putting surface. Foster also modified Tillinghast’s Great Hazard on the par-5 15th, a vast sandy wasteland that terrorizes second shots in the same vein as the one at Baltusrol Lower’s 17th. The overall results when the course reopened in 2025, and for the efficient price of $6 million, is a drier, faster layout that looks and plays like it might have during the decade it was built.
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Minneapolis Golf Club
Saint Louis Park, MN
4.1
13 Panelists
In 1920, Donald Ross was invited to remodel this 1916 Willie Park Jr. design. For some unknown reason, Ross did not include Minneapolis GC in his resume. His work here wasn’t insignificant: Ross moved the clubhouse and reconfigured the routing, making it mostly his own, and the course was deemed strong enough to host the 1959 PGA Championship, won by Bob Rosburg. A recent renovation by Jeff Mingay altered the bunkering and recaptured many original green contours. It is well known in the Twin Cities as the “Player’s Club” because of the number of single-digit handicappers.
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Pasatiempo Golf Club
Santa Cruz, CA
4.6
32 Panelists
Pasatiempo is arguably Alister MacKenzie's favorite design. He lived along its sixth fairway during his last years. With its elaborate greens and spectacular bunkering, it’s a prime example of MacKenzie's art. The five par 3s are daunting yet delightful, culminating with the 181-yard over-a-canyon 18th. The back nine is chock full of other great holes: 10, 11, 12, 15 and 16 all play over rugged sand and grass barrancas, and another bizarre barranca, turfed in fairway grass, runs down the left side of the par-4 14th. Among these is one of the course’s great sleeper holes, the uphill par-4 17th with a frighteningly tilted putting surface. The storied course has hosted two USGA championships: the 1986 U.S. Women's Amateur and the 2004 U.S. Senior Women's Amateur. In 2023 and 2024, architect Jim Urbina cored out and rebuilt every green to improve drainage issues and remove decades of sand and organic buildup. He then used a vast array of historical data and images to restore the contours as closely as possible to what they were in the 1930s. The work recaptured hole locations on masterpiece greens like the 16th and 18th that were unusable due to slopes that had become too severe for modern green speeds. The club will maintain the rebuilt greens at slightly slower speeds to embrace the brilliant contours MacKenzie designed.
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PGA West: Stadium Course
La Quinta, CA
4
33 Panelists
Originally private, the Stadium Course (the original 18 at PGA West) was among the rota of courses for the old Bob Hope Desert Classic until some pros, objecting to its difficulty, petitioned to remove it (it’s now back). It's Pete Dye at his rambunctious best, with a finish mimicking his later design at TPC Sawgrass: a gambling par-5 16th (called San Andreas Fault), a short par-3 17th to an island green and an intimidating par-4 18th with water all the way to the green. Though hideous in its difficulty and aesthetics by 1980s standards (it was can't miss television when it hosted the 1987 Skins Game), it's matured into a noble piece of architecture that represents the tail end of Dye's extreme middle phase. In 2024, Tim Liddy, a protégé of Dye, returned to PGA West to perform a restoration to return putting surfaces and bunker complexes to their original dimensions, as well as grassing the greens in more drought-tolerant TifEagle bermuda.
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Philadelphia Country Club: Spring Mill
Gladwyne, PA
4.6
10 Panelists
The original 18 at Philadelphia Country Club, known as Spring Mill, was designed by William Flynn in 1927 (Tom Fazio later added an additional nine holes in 1990, called Centennial). The appropriate word to describe the course and the property is “grand,” especially after Jim Nagle’s 2023 and 2024 renovation work expanded fairways and greens, upscaled the bunkering to better match Flynn’s original hazards and opened up the remaining sight lines so the full scale of the land’s movements and vistas across the west Philadelphia horizon could be appreciated. The design is full of standout holes like the uphill, double-dogleg second, the sweeping downhill fourth and the par-3 seventh nestled in a cove. But the second nine stretch of holes, particularly from the par-5 12th walking along a high ridgeline through the powerful dogleg right 17th that banks through a valley corridor into a green sitting in a secluded hollow are in a class with the best of any course in the Philadelphia market. Philadelphia Country Club was the site of the 1939 U.S. Open, won by Byron Nelson only after an additional 36-hole playoff with Craig Wood and Denny Shute. The tournament may be most remembered, however, as Sam Snead’s best chance to win the Open. Playing the 72nd hole, he needed only par to win but thought he needed a birdie to tie Nelson. After driving the ball in a bunker on the par-5 18th, he elected to go for the green with his 2½ wood instead of laying up with an iron. That shot caught another bunker under the lip and he proceeded to make an 8. The infamous hole is now the par-5 third—the sequencing changed when the clubhouse was relocated to the other side of the course in the 1970s.
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Quarry Oaks Golf Club
Ashland, NE
4
7 Panelists

From Golf Digest Architecture Editor emeritus Ron Whitten:

Quarry Oaks Golf Club lists its address as Ashland, Neb., but in truth it's closer to the little town of South Bend, named for the big turn of the Platte River as it makes its way east to the Missouri River. The Platte bends south because it butts up against limestone bluffs. The river has deposited a lot of sand here, which has been mined for generations, along with the limestone. Towns like Ashland were established around sand and gravel pits and cement and lime factories.
 

This is the river whose banks I explored as a kid. I also explored it once as an adult, back in 1989, when my friend Dick Youngscap, who had established Firethorn Golf Club in Lincoln a few years earlier, invited me to join him to scout out a possible new course location. Dick had been following the progress of the then-proposed Mahoney State Park, midway between Omaha and Lincoln, right off I-70. He knew the state was planning to build an interstate exit there, so he figured he'd bring in Pete Dye (who'd done Firethorn) and have him build a boffo public course easily accessible to tourists.


Explore our complete review here—including bonus photography and ratings from our expert panelists.

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Wedgewood Golf & Country Club
Powell, OH
3.5
12 Panelists

From Golf Digest Architecture Editor emeritus Ron Whitten:

Of the two residential courses Robert Trent Jones Jr. created around Columbus, Ohio in the early 1990s, Wedgewood Golf & Country Club in the northwest suburb of Powell has always been considered the better of the two. Nothing wrong with Jefferson Golf & Country Club, but it's the more obvious residential development course. Wedgewood is a lot more compact, a core course with homesites mostly around the perimeter and most holes separated from one another by portions of forest.
 

Bruce Charlton, then an associate, now a partner in the firm of Robert Trent Jones II, was the onsite architect on both jobs. He told me when I played both courses with him way back in 1992 that he and Jones were tickled to work in Columbus, home of architects Jack Nicklaus and Mike Hurdzan, among many others. "Columbus is literally a museum of great architecture," Bruce said, citing classics like Scioto, Muirfield Village and The Golf Club. Now they would be part of that museum. Wedgewood has been ranked by Golf Digest among the Best Courses in Ohio, but it has never contended for a spot on the first or second 100 Greatest. It's hard to say why; the course is certainly lovely, with bent fairways slivering through those acres of hardwood trees, and it's certainly tough, as those corridors between trees are narrow.
 

Explore our complete review here—including bonus photography and ratings from our expert panelists.

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