Pelham’s property, comprising 199 acres, was tasked with handling the runoff from a 584-acre watershed, 413 acres of which was urban. The surface water couldn’t percolate through the soil profile due to the extensive area of impervious surfaces and the drain channels got easily overwhelmed. Too often, water ran across the golf course, ultimately into Burling Brook and from there it was only a short trip into Long Island Sound.

As if flooding weren’t enough of a problem, Pelham Country Club also didn't have enough water storage capacity for its irrigation needs. The course had to deal with flooding when there was too much water and then had to pay local authorities for potable water to supplement its irrigation needs, spending as much as $90,000 a year in the process, with costs anticipated to increase 13% annually. 

 Enter Mike DeVries, a classically minded course architect who trained for the business the old-fashioned way – by building in the field. Born in Grand Rapids, Michigan, in 1963, he spent his summers at a then-obscure club in Frankfort, Michigan, where his grandparents were members – Crystal Downs Country Club. DeVries became a summertime fixture at the club – working in the golf shop, the bag room and with the maintenance crew at the course designed by Alister MacKenzie and Perry Maxwell. After an unsatisfactory stint in business, DeVries returned to Crystal Downs where he started doing small construction jobs and met a locally based aspiring designer named Tom Doak, who was then working on his first big solo project in Traverse City.

After working with Doak for two and half years, DeVries knew how to operate shaping equipment and run construction crews. He went on to earn a master’s degree in landscape architecture from the University of Michigan’s School of Natural Resources and Environment. He then spent a couple of years working for Doak and other architects before a project fell into his lap that became his own breakthrough course, Pilgrim’s Run in Michigan. By the time he was hired at Pelham, DeVries had become a major force in contemporary “land-based” design with the critical success of Kingsley Club outside Traverse City and Marquette Golf Club’s Greywalls Course on Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. He had also proven his hand at restoration, with work at the MacKenzie-designed Meadow Club north of San Francisco as well as two classic-era Westchester courses, Sunningdale Country Club and Siwanoy Country Club.

Unlike those projects, however, Pelham was not really a restoration. Reclaiming the old routing was impossible. The focus, instead, was on expanding club facilities on a tight parcel while improving playability, enhancing drainage and creating the ability to capture stormwater for irrigation.

DeVries established his “bona fides” at Pelham with a project that amounted to a trial run in 2011. The result was a short-game area with three greens, two bunkers and closely mown surrounds right out the back door of the clubhouse.

The work proved popular enough and consistent with a vision committed to a fast and firm ground game that DeVries was then hired in 2014 to do a master plan. Developing the plan entailed collaboration with the club’s engineering firm to maximize the efficiency of a pond as part of his vision for the course. “The club started with irrigation storage and flood control as its primary interest,” said Wentworth. As planning progressed, the club realized how much better the course would be with DeVries’ design.”

DeVries had extensive meetings with club committees and personnel as well as the membership. Emmet had never left behind a record of design drawings – not for Pelham, nor for anywhere else he worked. DeVries did, however, have access to old photography and he was impressed by the original deployment of large dune-like bunkers that in some cases served double duty between parallel holes.

The club ultimately divided up DeVries’ work into three phases. The idea was to minimize disturbance to play on the tight parcel while keeping to well-defined projects. Phase one, in 2016, entailed extensive work on the last two holes, including expansion of greens and surrounds, bunker work and dredging a pond on the par-3 18th hole. Two years later, phase two saw creation of a short game practice tee at the back end of the range and a new green for the opening hole. Phase three, which began in August of 2019 and opened for play in June of 2020, included renovations to five holes in the interior of the course plus a tripling of the property’s capacity to hold water.

Work on this scale involves many pieces of a puzzle falling into place. DeVries is one of those boutique designers who does his own shaping, equally comfortable in a bulldozer or doing more refined work with a mini-excavator. At Pelham, his crew included two veteran shaping associates, Joe Hancock and Jeff Stein. A golf contractor, the George E. Ley Co., undertook the major excavation and installation work on site.

Wentworth’s responsibility through this project was to navigate the two-year permitting process. A project with this many facets required approval from multiple municipalities: the towns of Pelham and New Rochelle, plus the New York Department of Environmental Conservation and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Wentworth was also responsible for procurement and specifications of all materials and also overseeing construction – all while keeping the rest of the golf course open and playable. What he calls “quarterbacking” also included hiring various subcontractors, such as pavers and tree crews.

Five new greens were built according to USGA recommendations, with DeVries and team coring out the subgrades and overseeing the gravel layer and sand mix installation along with floating the putting surfaces prior to grassing.

The plan called for two kinds of rerouting – both sequence and structure. The sequential part had long been discussed at the club but never adopted until now. It basically called for a tighter configuration of the routing, with less walking to connect the dots. The major structural change came as a result of the need to fix the old 13th hole – a 452-yard, sharp dogleg-left squeezed into a corner of the property, with out of bounds tight to the first and second shots. It was an Emmet original, and while perhaps a “sporting” short par 5 in its day, it had become a very bad par 4. Many players were laying up off the tee to avoid hitting through the fairway, but then had to hit a long second shot that brought adjacent houses into play on the right. Meanwhile, long hitters were booming tee shots over trees on the inside of the dogleg and driving it within 100 yards of the green – or, if they came up short, endangering players on a par 3 nearby.

DeVries shortened the hole to a 273-yard par 4 and swung it to the left, away from the property line. When members questioned whether the new hole would actually prove safer than the old one, a Pelham member and former club champion, Mark Broadie, devised a shot-dispersion chart based on actual club data that confirmed the gain in safety. Broadie, it should be pointed out, is a Columbia University business professor who, in his spare time, created the Shots Gained golf analytics system and is author of the book, “Every Shot Counts.”

Shortening that hole created room to lengthen the preceding hole into a long par 5 – now the 605-yard third hole. Along the way, trees came down and the hole corridors were expanded, so that what had been a fairly undistinguished run of holes on flat ground has become more open and interesting. Material excavated to create a large drainage channel provided fill for elevating some playing surfaces and creating more ground contour. The newly opened channel creates strategic interest for play and a functional outflow that drains the playing areas and manages incoming street runoff. At the north end of the property, one pond was expanded and another was created, bringing the course’s water-holding capacity from 1.3 million gallons to 4.1 million.

In the process of rerouting, Pelham did what a lot of progressive clubs are doing these days – getting both shorter and longer. Longer to accommodate elite players, while shorter to meet the needs of the vast majority of golfers who are out there to have fun. What started as a course that stretched from 5,552 yards up front to 6,388 yards at the back ended up ranging from 5,218 yards to 6,504.

Besides providing for irrigation needs and solving routing issues, the master plan satisfied the club’s commitment to both environmental and financial sustainability. The club also added over one-half acre of wetland habitat and an acre and a half of open water to go along with healthier turfgrass that will be less reliant on plant protectants.

Improved drainage will reduce the pressure of Pythium blight across the site. As for the 8.25 acres of fairway on the new third, fourth, 12th and 16th holes, Wentworth consulted with Adam Moeller, director of USGA Green Section Education (with whom the club has a long relationship), and Dr. Stacey Bonos of the Rutgers University Department of Plant Biology. Wentworth concurred with their recommendation to use the improved bentgrass cultivars ‘Coho’ and ‘Matchplay’. These varieties are the top-performing bentgrasses for tolerance to dollar spot and using them should reduce the need considerably for fungicide treatments.

Bonos said, “These grasses are the result of several cycles of selection for dollar spot disease tolerance, improved putting green quality and wear tolerance.” She is looking forward to seeing how they perform as they grow-in and get more use at Pelham. Thus far, the turf has performed ideally.

The hydroseeded fairways and sodded greens all grew in well following the renovations. Since the course reopened for play, the tee sheet has been extremely busy; opening day set a club record for rounds played that was surpassed on day two. The early word on the new holes at Pelham has been extremely favorable.

“It is very rewarding to be part of a project that added so much value and quality to the course and so much sustainability to the facility,” said DeVries. It may turn out that there’s another phase of work in store for the club.

For now, Wentworth has a golf course that drains better, performs better and is able to withstand the summer heat better. Now if he can only figure out what hole he is on.

Brad Klein is a veteran freelance journalist whose biography, "Discovering Donald Ross," won  the Herbert Warren Wind Book Award for 2001.