Watson’s vision takes shape at Mozingo
SUBMITTED PHOTO
Ron Darnell, left, park maintenance manager at Mozingo Lake, and golf great Tom Watson look out over the site of a new nine-hole youth golf course currently under construction at the 3,000 acre city-owned park.
It has been just five years since golfing legend Tom Watson last captivated British galleries with his dramatic play in The Open Championship, finishing a heartbreaking second in 2009.
It has been more than 30 years — 1983 — since his name was last engraved on the Claret Jug, the iconic trophy symbolizing The Open title.
But last Monday, while Watson overlooked the new youth course that the 2014 U.S. Ryder Cup team captain has designed at Maryville’s Mozingo Lake Recreation Park, a touch of Scottish magic seemed to hang in the air.
The same magic, perhaps, that Watson parlayed into five Open championships, the others coming in 1975, 1977, 1980 and 1982.
AIt was bright at Mozingo during Watson’s visit, but later in the week, there were gray skies that produced a steady mist, conditions that slowed but failed to stop work on the new greens and tee boxes.
That part of the course’s construction is more than three-quarters complete and is expected to be finished by the end of this week, according to Ron Darnell, park maintenance manager at Mozingo.
And if anyone understands golf at Mozingo Lake, it is Darnell, longtime head greens keeper for the existing 18-hole layout. He first came to the Don Sechrest-designed course in 1994, a year before the front nine opened for play.
Darnell is working with a familiar team in building the new $600,000 Watson-designed nine-hole junior course.
Rick Boylan, president of Mid-America Golf and Landscape of Lee’s Summit, is the contractor for the youth course, and he was with the same company when it built Mozingo’s existing 18-hole layout.
In addition, J.D. Johnson, the lead “shaper” for the new greens and tees, performed the same work at Mozingo 20 years ago.
And although the designers are different, actual construction of the two courses is surprisingly similar.
After Watson conceived the initial layout of the youth course, only minor changes, such as removing a bunker, have altered his original vision.
“It is definitely an art to be able to see what a course can look like,” Darnell said of Watson’s input. “The shapes of the tees and greens are not a lot different from the Sechrest course, but there is considerably more mounding and swailing. It’s a Tom Watson course, though, that’s for sure.”
Noting that the new 1,600-yard layout is tailored for beginning golfers, Darnell said there are plenty of design features that will “collect balls around greens and bring them back in, not let them get away.”
Some of that is for drainage, he added, “But some of it is for safety, to keep balls where you want them. It is going to be a great course, short — approximately 60-yard to 300-yard holes — but very challenging.”
With construction of the putting surfaces yet to begin, Darnell said a best-case scenario for opening the new course is Memorial Day.
“A nice fall to get the grass in, and then a good spring for growing would be ideal,” he said.
Like the greens on the existing course, the new putting surfaces will be built in accordance with United States Golf Association specifications.
The new sand, gravel and peat moss have already passed USGA specification tests, but Darnell said he is uncertain if the final mixing process will bee done on site, as it was in 1994.
Darnell said the all-important growing mix will probably reflect the 90 percent sand/10 percent peat composition of the original 18 greens, but the exact formulation has not been determined.
After the greens are shaped and drainage tiles installed, 4 inches of gravel will be added over the clay base. That will be topped with a 12-inch layer of the sand/peat mix before a creeping bent grass mixture developed at Penn State University is planted. A rye-bluegrass mix will be used for the fairways, and the roughs will be fescue.
Williams Lawn Seed of Maryville has the seed contract, as it did for the Sechrest course.
