EIGCA Associate Members Spogárd & VanderVaart appointed by County Louth Golf Club.

The highly regarded Tom Simpson course, laid out in 1938, turned to the award-winning Danish/Dutch company to help them review the options for improving a few areas of concern. Fellow EIGCA Associate Member, Ronan Branigan, who is a member of the club, has assisted Philip Spogárd with the project. His knowledge of the club and the course has added to the design and the design process.

“County Louth Golf Club, or Baltray as it is often referred to, is a truly amazing course. It is a wonderful landscape and a fun and challenging course. The fact that the layout remains very similar to the original Tom Simpson design from 1938 is a testimony to his great skills as an architect. Working with historic golf courses is a massive responsibility, as it is so easy to destroy or change the features, which helped make the course special. As an architect it is important to ‘leave your ego’ at home and approach it through the mind of the original architect. Some changes are however difficult to avoid due to the changes to the game which has taken place over the past 100 years. Greens now need to be a bit bigger to be able to spread the wear and tear – and some holes needs to be addressed because of the distances the modern golf balls are capable of going. We have presented some ideas which are trying not to take anything away from Tom Simpsons approach to the land and it is imperative for us that all potential work will be carried out based on his well known design philosophies.”, says Philip Spogárd, Principal Golf Course Architect of Spogárd & VanderVaart Golf Course Architects.

The work will include adjustments to the 2nd green, which was constructed a few years back and a new alternate green on the 17th hole. The work will also include a small enlargement to the 5th green where the pinnable area on the green has become too small to cope with the amount of play that it receives.

The proposals were approved by the club’s members at an EGM in April and construction is scheduled to start in October 2013.