The distinguished Charlotte Country Club received one of the highest honors this past year when it was awarded the “Best Remodel of 2009” award by Golf Digest magazine. The publication’s January Best Courses list is always a hit with avid golfers and hits newstands next month; area golfers and those that love to play North Carolina Golf in Charlotte were enthused to see the course at Charlotte Country Club featured for its “Best Remodel” selection. The course at Charlotte Country Club is a historic design by Donald Ross that was reinvented and livened up by the efforts of esteemed architect Ron Prichard in 2009. Prichard has a great deal of experience restoring classic courses such as the one at Charlotte Country Club and he fully took advantage of the courses spectacular Ross layout rebuilding the greens and recapturing the spirit that the course first had when it opened.

The beautiful course at Charlotte Country Club first opened in 1915 as an 18 hole course. The impeccable Donald Ross layout was beloved by all who played it and in 1962 the course got a facelift from Robert Trent Jones. Jones left his mark on the course, drastically changing the course that Ross originally laid out. To his credit, Jones did reorganize almost every hole in order to make more room for a nice sized range and his remodel of the course was the one that received distinction and high honors after Vinny Giles won the 1972 US Amateur here. In fact, Jones’s remodel of the course was loved by many and during the years between 1985 and 1992 Golf Digest consistently named it one of “America’s Best 100 Courses.” Conveniently, the new remodel of the course at Charlotte Country Club comes just in time for the club to host the upcoming 2010 US Women’s Amateur tour.

Paying close attention to the classic course that Ross designed back in the early part of the 20th century, Prichard, a member of the Donald Ross society, incorporated new design elements into the course that were not a standard part of golf course design during the Donald Ross days. Because of our advancements in equipment engineering there is no longer any need to have wide fairways, thus Prichard cut back on the fairways, making them narrower and recreating many elements of Ross’s former design. The result is a grand course that mixes the old with the new and fully pays tribute to the game. For more information on one of the best Charlotte NC Golf Courses, see the newest issue of Golf Digest magazine.