By way of Dr. Alister MacKenzie, the famed golf course architect, and Marion Hollins, the female pioneer, player, developer and architect, not to mention Bobby Jones, who played in the opening day foursome and fell in the love with the work of MacKenzie and Hollins, Pasatiempo in Santa Cruz, Calif., is forever entrenched in the fabric of golf in America.
Dating back to 1929, this (mostly) public course has a rich history. But life for the course and club hasn’t always been easy. There have been economic struggles, agronomic downturns and there was a rather famous fight for reclaimed water, which was resolved in 2016.
And then there was this issue with the greens. All of them.
The club leadership knew it, Justin Mandon, the course superintendent knew it, and Jim Urbina, the course architect who had worked for a better part of two decades tweaking and restoring the course, but not the greens, also knew it. And through a thoughtful and rigorous process, all of the above convinced the members/shareholders of the club that the putting surfaces needed to go back to the future.
This is it, an in-depth look at what happened in the dirt of every green at Pasatiempo, but this two-part series is through the lens of what they did to restore the 16th green.
In Episode 1, it’s peeling back “the fat,” it’s looking at images from 1929 to 1931, it’s building what they refer to as “the model,” and it’s creating their “forever template.”
In part 2 of this two-part series on the restoration of the Pasatiempo greens, through the lens of what was done to the 16th green, one of the most diabolical putting surfaces in golf, we pick it up as the core it out, modernize the drainage 16-inches below the surface, then they build it back up, reestablish the template, finalize the edit and then seed it and grow it in. You’ll see heat maps that indicate the changes to realistic hole locations on the 16th green, graphics over the new green indicating what’s happening around the green that makes it fair and fun, and you’ll see a three-month time lapse that shows the process in daily, weekly and monthly increments.
Months later, Fire Pit Productions was back at Pasatiempo when they reopened all 18 greens and recreated a star-studded foursome of professional golfers as they played in front of Pasatiempo members, leadership and the team who worked on the restoration. You’ll hear from Arron Oberholser and Roger Maltbie as they reflect on what the course is now versus what it was when they played it as their home course at San Jose State. And you’ll get final thoughts from Jim Urbina and Justin Mandon as they stand in the 16th fairway looking back on the project and the work they did to get it to the finish line.
Coming off the green jacket ceremony at Alister MacKenzie’s Augusta National, Pasatiempo, another one of the iconic architect’s Crown Jewels, hosts the Western Intercollegiate, an annual tournament of college golf’s elite who are playing for a team title, with the individual champion leaving with a blue jacket. (Scottie Scheffler of the University of Texas won it in 2015, giving him one blue and now two green jackets.) But it was Jim Urbina who was asked to restore Pasa’s front-nine greens, which are being played as the back-nine this week. And as soon as the final putt drops on Wednesday, the semi-private club will embark on restoring the back-nine. The new front-nine will remain open through spring, summer and fall, with all 18 holes and greens reopening this winter.
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