As a golf club, Seminole is best known for its Donald Ross-designed course. Located some 15 miles up the Atlantic coast from Palm Beach, Florida, and routed in and around a pair of sand ridges that in some cases afford ocean views, it is a shot-maker’s track compelling players to be accurate with their tee shots and approaches if they hope to score well and also deal with wind often blowing from a variety of angles. Consecutive holes rarely run in the same direction, and the architect used false fronts, crowned greens and devilish bunkering to further protect par. Add putting surfaces that can be as slick as black ice, and you have a true test of golf.
Founded by financier E.F. Hutton, the club opened on New Year’s Day 1930. From the very beginning, its membership rolls have been populated by many of the biggest movers and shakers in business and golf, making it a place as exclusive as it was influential in the game. In recent decades, the club roster has been filled by exceptionally strong, low-handicap players.
“In many ways, Seminole was not a particularly good site. You have those ridges, but that big, flat-bottomed basin was totally featureless and would flood constantly in its natural state.”
Bill Coore
Seminole’s course also has long been regarded as one of the best in the country. The layout has one serious flaw, however, and that is how easily and often it floods. Catastrophic events such as the two hurricanes that recently ravaged parts of the state are a problem, to be sure, as are so-called king tides, which typically occur in the fall when the moon is full and are generally the highest of the year. But the rainstorms that hit southeast Florida on a much more regular basis often leave some of the holes on the 140-acre property soggy and not firm and fast, which is a core golfing value of the club.
“In many ways, Seminole was not a particularly good site,” said Bill Coore, who with longtime design partner Ben Crenshaw oversaw a restoration of the layout nearly a decade ago. “You have those ridges, but that big, flat-bottomed basin was totally featureless and would flood constantly in its natural state.”
Matters have not been helped in recent years by climate change and the indisputable fact that sea levels are indeed rising – and doing so at an accelerated pace.
Clearly, something needed to be done, which is why Seminole president Jimmy Dunne initiated an ambitious and carefully considered program that initially will entail raising portions of the course – in some cases as high as 2 feet – plus constructing French drains across the lowest-lying areas and upgrading a system of pumps and vaults to collect water and then channel it off-property to the Intracoastal Waterway. It is an important and far-sighted move, and in addition to ensuring the long-term viability of the Donald Ross gem, it will also help to show the rest of the golf community how to deal with what is becoming an even bigger concern for coastal courses across the country.
According to Nelson Caron, Seminole’s director of golf course operations, the seeds for this initiative were sown in December 2020, when he arrived after having served for 13 years as the director of grounds and golf course maintenance at what today is called The Ford Field & River Club in the Lowcountry near Savannah, Georgia.
“I came to Seminole about 5½ months before the club hosted the [2021] Walker Cup,” Caron said. “I brought my whole team with me from Ford, and our goal was to ensure the club was ready for the match. We had a wonderful event, and soon after, Mr. Dunne and I started talking about what we needed to do next.”
Foremost in Dunne’s mind was resolving what had become an ongoing problem with the greenside bunkers at Seminole being damaged by water draining into them when it rained. And this was even after the hazards had been rebuilt several years earlier.
“Mr. Dunne asked me to fix the problem, and to do so in-house,” Caron said. “But to get it right, we needed to have a course architect with whom we could consult and figure out a real bunker solution.”
The person they ended up choosing was designer Gil Hanse, who per usual would be assisted by his long-time associate, Jim Wagner.
Almost as soon as the bunker project began, Caron started thinking about another issue that Seminole needed to address: its coastal vulnerability. Roughly half of the oceanside track sits at sea level or just a foot or so above. The water table on the property also is quite high – and rising. In addition, the land drains poorly, largely because the course was built mostly on coral that sits below the turf itself.
“If you put a shovel into the ground and go down 30 inches, that is what you hit: a sheet of coral,” Caron said.
So, with Dunne’s support and assistance from a Miami-based company that specializes in this sort of problem, Caron started to look hard at Seminole’s situation.
“It was a 24-month process: studying the golf course and its coastal vulnerability, learning about every aspect of how water impacts the property and sorting out the best ways to fix the problem,” he said.
That led to the formulation of a three-stage plan, which the club will begin implementing next spring – and which Hanse and Wagner will also oversee.
“Bottom line, we will be elevating portions of our golf course,” said Caron, adding that the club will use a type of Florida beach sand to do it.
Phase one is scheduled to commence in April on 14 acres identified as being the most at risk. That will include all or parts of Nos. 1, 3, 7, 8 and 9 in 2025, and then the problem portions on the back nine – Nos. 12, 14, 15 and 16 – the following year. Caron says those areas will be raised anywhere from eight to 24 inches, with the vast majority of that work being done during the summer months when Seminole is traditionally closed.
According to Caron, those efforts, which will include rebuilding some fairways and greens, will ensure that those areas are “fine” for the next quarter century or so.
“Bottom line, we will be elevating portions of our golf course.”
Nelson Caron, Seminole’s director of golf course operations
At that point, he says, the club will re-evaluate its coastal vulnerability and decide what other parts of the course need to be lifted in phase two. As for the third and final stage, that will come 25-30 years later.
“We view our golf course as a Mona Lisa,” Caron said. “And if we don’t have to touch the whole thing, then there is no reason to do so. So, we are concentrating on those areas that are most at risk.”
And as far as the rationale for the time frames, Caron says that comes in part from there being a roughly 30-year life on the materials to be used for drainage and the sump pumps. Also, projections of how vulnerable the golf course will be that far down the road start to get, in his words, “a little sloppy” after passage of so much time.
As one might imagine, this is an incredibly expensive endeavor. But while club leaders are not inclined to disclose the cost, they do say they will not assess Seminole members for the capital spend.
They also aver that those same individuals are very supportive of the initiative, even considering the size of those outlays and the occasional inconveniences that will no doubt occur during the construction process.
“The membership has embraced it,” Caron said. “They feel a need to protect their asset and to be able to pass it down to the next generation in excellent shape.”
They also want to do the right thing, Caron adds, for the club and also for the greater game, as these sorts of water issues will no doubt be a growing concern for courses around the country.
One of those places is the Kittansett Club in Marion, Massachusetts. Located on Buzzards Bay, across from Cape Cod, it has been developing a plan to address its own issues with flooding and rising seas.
“People throughout the game are concerned about this issue,” Caron said. “And I have been getting countless calls from clubs going through the same thing since we first presented our plan to membership last year.”
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Top: Seminole Golf Club's 18th green and the iconic Marion Wyeth-designed clubhouse, next to the Atlantic
COURTESY SEMINOLE GOLF CLUB