News

Clearing of remaining fairways for the first 18 holes at Compass Pointe in Leland, NC is under way with the final routing and clearing limits being set in the field by Rick and Brian in late August. If real estate sales continue at the same pace they have been for the past several months, the shaping and other construction should proceed this fall and into next spring.

Master planning of the entire 1000+ acres of Echo Valley Country Club in Des Moines, Iowa continues. The renovation of the Creek Course has now become a complete remodeling of the 9 holes into a new nine that will match the style and quality of the Ridge Course that Robbins & Associates designed in 2004. Some existing holes that had flooding issues will be abandoned and new holes will be built on additional property to the east. As currently being planned, the Creek Course will become a totally new course.

Robbins & Associates is one of the firms asked to submit a Request for Qualifications for the restoration of the greens at the historic Donald Ross designed course at Wilmington Municipal in NC. R&A has past experience with restoration of a Ross course at Camden Country Club in South Caroline and at Carolina Country Club in Charlotte, NC.

Rick has been invited to attend the China Club Managers Conference from September 22 - 24 at the Changbaishan Resort in Jilin Province. This is the annual meeting of all the managers of golf clubs in China and it is definitely an honor for Rick to be invited to attend such a prestigious event. The resort is located on a large lake that is in the crater of an old volcano of which the eastern part lies in North Korea. Rick and wife Ginger are looking forward to visiting this part of China and meeting with the club managers.

It has been a busy summer at R&A with several trips to China by Rick and Brian to review work in progress and to look at new prospect jobs. The major renovation of Yinhong #6 in Beijing has moved ahead very quickly and several of the completely remodeled greens will be ready to seed in the next few days. As I write this, Brian is in China reviewing the Yinhong #6 greens with our on-site design coordinator, Don Habenicht. Brian is also visiting the project under construction at Taining in Fujian Province. More than usual wet weather over the past year has made the construction slower than expected but it is now proceeding well.

Both China Maple in Dandong and Yishan International in Wuhan have informally opened for member play. China Maple will open officially next summer when the 3rd nine holes is completely grown-in and the reconstruction of the highway to the site from Shenyang is finished. The first 18 holes are open and Rick was able to play these holes on his visit in June with one of the owners and golf staff. Rick and Ginger Robbins will make a trip to China from September 19 - October 7 to visit several new sites and check construction progress of current jobs.

Since returning from China in late March, it has been very busy with many events taking place in April. The day after returning from China, I played in a North Carolina Golf Panel event at Pinehurst #2, site of the 2014 US Open Championship. The best thing about the day was playing this renovated course with my father (86 years old) and my brother, both NC Golf Panel members. I made a trip to Tampa, Florida to help Bob Sierra, one of my former employers and owner of Avila Golf Club with plans for renovation of the 3rd hole. I then went to Washington DC to attend National Golf Day as the representative of ASGCA. This was a successful event in that the group met with over 100 of our congressmen during that day and I personally attended 7 meetings. The discussions with the members of Congress regarding the importance of golf to our economy and number of jobs associated with golf were very good and we asked our elected lawmakers to please treat golf in the same fashion as other major business enterprises. Following that meeting came our ASGCA annual meeting and it was very successful in terms of our education sessions, the venue and the golf play.