The CSGA Links Volume 6 Issue 4 August 2018 | Page 22

COURSES
Greens, Trees and a Punchbowl:
Talking Yale’s Transformation
At the famous 9th hole,
the Biarritz, Ramsay
restored some 2000
square feet to the
green and collar.
Golf-Art.com
T
he transformative restoration of the Course at Yale is due in large part to the work of Superinten-
dent Scott Ramsay. To mark the 78th playing of the Four-Ball Championship there on September
12, we present excerpts from an interview by historian and author Anthony Pioppi (The Finest
Nines, Skyhorse Publishing) with Ramsay about the changes he’s overseen since taking over in 2003. The
interview first appeared on Pioppi’s Turfnet podcast, sponsored by Golf Preservations. It covers the refur-
bishing of bunkers, reclamation of Yale’s greens, the pruning of thousands of trees, and a possible future
restoration of the original third green, which was modified in the 1950s.
Anthony Pioppi: When your tenure began was
there restoration under way, wasn’t there? It was a
slow restoration. That was 2003?
Scott Ramsay: The bunker restoration was almost
completed when I arrived. There were two bunkers
that were under discussion to be redone and we did
that on Nos. 13 and 17: The Principal’s Nose on 17
22 | CSGA Links // August 2018
and the Redan bunker on 13. So when I came in for an
interview the quote that I made in my interview, that I bor-
rowed from a friend of mine, was something like, “Some-
where out there in the middle of that forest is a wonderful
golf course.” They had all the intent and everything to
begin a tree program, begin an irrigation program, they
started the drainage work so there were a lot of things go-
ing on, but we just needed one guy to shepherd it through.
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