The second golf course, being built by the Hannaville Indian community as part of its Irish Resort & Casino, will be called Sage Run and, like traditional Sweetgrass, is a homage to the tradition of the Potawatomi tribe.
"We chose the sage because we wanted to highlight another of our four traditional tribal medicines, along with redwoods, cigarettes, and sweet grass," said Tony Mansilla, the general manager and tribal member of Irish resorts and casinos. "The word 'running' in its name refers to 10 holes that cross the course's considerably downhill."
Mancilla and course designer Paul Albanese of the golf course architecture firm Albanese & Lutzke, which is designing and building the new course, says the sage run is going well.
"We will plant nine fairways from mid-August to early autumn, and the other nine next spring as soon as possible," says Mancilla. "Our goal is to have a soft opening in the fall of 2017 and a grand opening in 2018."
Albanese also designed Sweetgrass, which was selected as one of the best courses in golf-rich Michigan through Golfweek's "Best Courses in America You Can Do" program. He was excited about the course design, which involved drumming through the Sage Run in general and in particular. Drumming is a geographical feature formed by glaciers, which are generally formed in the shape of elongated oval hills.
"Our goal was to use the drumlin so that golfers interact with it throughout their round," says Albanese, a Harvard graduate who has designed and helped build courses worldwide. "We've been able to do that by routing down the drumlin in a number of places, and they'll be really dramatic holes we believe players will enjoy immensely."
Mancilla too believes Sage Run will impress golf enthusiasts, and he says it's an ideal complement to Sweetgrass. 바카라사이트 순위
"Sage Run will provide an amazing 'wow factor' – there isn't a weak hole on it," he says. "It will be a resort-style course with Sweetgrass being more of a championship-style design. Golfers who play both will experience two very different designs with very different terrain. Whereas Sweetgrass is a prairie-style course with rolling, fescue-lined fairways, Sage Run is 75-percent tree lined with holes running up and mostly down the drumlin."
Sweetgrass is host course of the Island Resort Championship, a Symetra Tour "Road to the LPGA" tournament.
Some of Sage Run's more noteworthy design aspects include furry-edged bunkers, a number of short par-4's – some with blind shots to greens that can be reached by tee shots carrying past the rise in front of them – and single-row irrigation, which elicits changing turf as it nears fairway edges and into the rough.
"When we discussed what style and character we wanted to create at Sage Run, we used Royal County Down as our original inspiration," says Albanese, referring to the acclaimed Northern Ireland golf club that is rated among the world's finest. "Sage Run will have that kind of rough and tumble appearance, with lots of earth tones, browns and tans – it's what the landscape calls for."
Albanese & Lutzke's construction manager at Sage Run is Michael O'Connor. O'Connor has an impressive, deep resume that includes helping build some of the country's most iconic courses including at Kiawah Island.
