Mike Bailey/Golf Advisor
Mike Bailey/Golf Advisor
Mike Bailey/Golf Advisor
Mike Bailey/Golf Advisor
Mike Bailey/Golf Advisor
The new Royal New Kent Golf Club in Virginia
Royal New Kent is back and better than ever, thanks to a new owner, which has restored the fabled Mike Strantz design magnificently.
First opened in 1997 as The Tradition at Royal New Kent, the course breaks from the usual rules of golf course architecture – in that it basically has none except it all makes sense to those who are willing to put together the puzzle. It's just one of seven solo designs by Strantz, who succumbed to cancer at the age of 50 in 2005.
For fans of his work, as well as the golf community at large, the reopening of this course, which closed two years ago, is a gift, presented to us by Greenville, S.C.-based Wingfield Golf Management, which bought the course in 2018 and spent the last year restoring the course. Though it had a soft opening in late March, Royal New Kent, located in New Kent, Va., just outside of Richmond, celebrated its reopening on Monday, May 6, 2019 with more than 100 golfers playing the course, followed by speeches and a barbecue.
In Royal New Kent, Strantz paid tribute to the fabled seaside links of the Emerald Isle, with an emphasis on the character and feel of two of the architect's favorites — Ireland’s Royal County Down and Ballybunion. There are blind shots, but the fairways are wide, so it's generous off the tee. The greens are large with plenty of slope, so the key to scoring is to come in from the correct angles and find the right parts of the greens. Every hole is different. Every hole is memorable. And now they are all back. (Click here to see Mike Bailey's review.)
"It was great to hear that the golfers embraced and enjoyed the golf course," said Heidi Mortimer, Strantz' widow. "I had not been on site since it was being grassed. It looked just like the golf course that Mike originally imagined."
Wingfield rebuilt greens and bunkers and updated the course's irrigation and drainage. Royal New Kent’s greens were converted from bentgrass to the more heat-tolerant Champion Bermuda. More than 2,300 tons of new sand were trucked in to reconstruct the Royal New Kent bunkers, making the golf course more playable and easier to maintain. The upgrades to the irrigation system include a new pump station, and all 120 inlets were rebuilt for better drainage. Meanwhile, substantial clubhouse upgrades were also performed.
With Royal New Kent, Wingfield Golf now two very good golf public access courses located within a short drive of one another. The other is The Club at Viniterra, a Rees Jones design that opened in late 2009.
Wingfield Golf, which owns eight golf courses in Florida, Mississippi and Virginia, also owns the South Riding and Pleasant Valley golf clubs in Northern Virginia.