{"id":542836,"date":"2026-03-17T18:22:08","date_gmt":"2026-03-17T18:22:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/542836\/"},"modified":"2026-03-17T18:22:08","modified_gmt":"2026-03-17T18:22:08","slug":"restored-dunedin-golf-club-a-busy-place-with-blue-jays-in-town","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/542836\/","title":{"rendered":"Restored Dunedin Golf Club a busy place with Blue Jays in town"},"content":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s easy to tell what time of year it is in Dunedin, Fla. With the Toronto Blue Jays <\/a>back at TD Ballpark for spring training, the small Gulf Coast town just north of Tampa is in the midst of its annual takeover by Canadian fans of the reigning American League champions.<\/p>\n

Traffic along Douglas Avenue near the stadium is busy all day while area restaurants, bars and hotels are packed. The Blue Jays logo \u2014 including the club\u2019s Single-A affiliate Dunedin Blue Jays<\/a> \u2014 is everywhere you turn. The city is so invested in the Jays organization that it hosted watch parties in local parks during last year\u2019s World Series with the biggest at TD Ballpark for Game 7 in Toronto.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re proud Blue Jays fans,\u201d said Dunedin\u2019s mayor, Maureen Freaney, in an interview with CTV News before game one in Toronto. \u201cNext year will be 50 years of the Jays in Dunedin for spring training. We love our Jays and all our Canadian friends.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dunedin Golf Club gets its own dose of Blue Jays fever this time of year.<\/p>\n

Titleist, Callaway and TaylorMade-branded caps are standard fashion for 11 months but in March, Jays fans overthrow the golf manufacturers and execute a temporary headwear coup of the city-owned municipal course\u2019s fairways.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis town is hard to believe when spring training hits,\u201d said Blair Kline, Dunedin Golf Club\u2019s general manager of golf operations, with a grin when I visited in January. \u201cIt\u2019s wild. If you\u2019re here in March, morning (tee) times are tough to come by. Everyone wants to book early so they can play and get to the game for 1 p.m.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dunedin has been well supported by golf-playing Blue Jays fans through five decades but a 2023-24 restoration of the 1927 Donald Ross design has more of them clamouring to get out to the Golden Age layout about 10 minutes from TD Ballpark.<\/p>\n

Returned to its proper place as one of Florida\u2019s top municipal courses, I was blown away by the experience.<\/p>\n

The $6.3 million project was funded through state and federal grants, financial support from the city of Dunedin and a donation courtesy of the Donald Ross Society.<\/p>\n

It was a restoration long overdue.<\/p>\n

Multiple renovations and questionable maintenance practices through the years had reduced and, in some cases, wiped out Ross\u2019 design principles and strategies from the near century-old parkland course. Green complexes had shrunk in average size by 35 to 50 per cent (not a misprint) and the bunkers either no longer resembled Ross\u2019 work or had been eliminated to reduce maintenance costs.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere wasn\u2019t much of him left,\u201d Kline said as we chatted in his office after my round. \u201cThe routing was still here but they weren\u2019t Ross\u2019 greens and bunkers anymore. Those were gone.\u201d<\/p>\n

Putting the legendary architect back into Dunedin and returning it to its classic course roots was a team effort. There was even a Canadian connection. Kris Spence \u2014 a Ross specialist \u2014 was commissioned to lead the on-course restoration, and tag-teaming with the architect was shaper Ron Hart of Canada\u2019s TDI Golf. The Guelph, Ont., classic course rehabilitation firm came highly qualified with prior experience on 30 Ross designs.<\/p>\n

\u201cKris and Ron literally saw eye-to-eye on everything,\u201d Kline said. \u201cIt was amazing to watch them transform this golf course into what it is today. I still get chills thinking about it.\u201d<\/p>\n

To restore green complexes, bunkers, fairways and tees, Spence utilized historical data from the Tufts Archives Museum in Pinehurst, N.C., aerial photographs, drawings, ground images and Ross\u2019 original notes on the golf course.<\/p>\n

The project had a stroke of good fortune right out of the gate.<\/p>\n

Examining core samples from the greens, Spence discovered a black layer of soil two to three feet below the surface. Knowing Ross grew his greens on cinders back in the day, Spence and Hart were able to remove the top layers of soil and easily find Ross\u2019 blacked-out greens still intact.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat was a pleasant surprise,\u201d Spence said. \u201cI could see the old greens extending out beneath those old renovations. They were never destroyed \u2014 just buried. It was almost an archeological dig. Once we peeled away the newer material, we found his original greens that had been buried for 75 years and we were able to excavate, expose and restore them exactly as Ross designed them.\u201d<\/p>\n

The ode to Ross went well beyond the green complexes.<\/p>\n

Forty-three of 116 bunkers were put bac,k bringing the course\u2019s total number up to 87. Fairway widths and strategic angles reappeared and creativity and imagination was returned around the greens.<\/p>\n

\u201cRoss brought the Scottish style of golf to America, with bump-and-runs and low approaches that you can now experience again,\u201d Spence added.<\/p>\n

Historically, the golf course holds a prominent place in the annals of American golf. Opened in 1927 as Dunedin Isles Golf Club it proved popular with touring pros and winter snowbirds alike. The City of Dunedin took ownership in 1939 before leasing the club to the PGA of America in 1944.<\/p>\n

Moving its headquarters from Chicago to Dunedin, the PGA renamed the facility PGA National Golf Club. The course played host to 18 PGA Senior Championships before the PGA left Dunedin in 1962, moving across the state to Palm Beach Gardens.<\/p>\n

Another historical nugget: the first PGA Merchandise Show was held in the club\u2019s parking lot in 1954. Vendors sold out of their car trunks until tents were needed to accommodate the growing number of attendees (50) in 1957. The show remained there until 1963. Following the 2024 renovation, the City took over full management and operations of Dunedin under Kline\u2019s watchful eye.<\/p>\n

Inside the clubhouse is a veritable golf hall of fame.<\/p>\n

Black and white images of Bobby Jones, Ben Hogan, Gene Sarazen, Sam Snead, Louis Suggs, Babe Didrikson Zaharias and Byron Nelson adorn every wall. All of those great players and many others frequented Dunedin Golf Club during their careers. Sarazen lived nearby in 1928 and played the golf course almost every day according to Kline.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s one of the really cool parts of the experience now. The course you played today is the same one those great players played all those years ago. Same routing, same green complexes, same bunkers,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

The Spence restoration has already been duly recognized. Golf Inc. Magazine named Dunedin its 2025 Public Course Renovation of the Year in its annual worldwide renovation awards.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s very exciting especially for a municipal course,\u201d added Kline. \u201cIt\u2019s a testament to the City of Dunedin\u2019s vision and to the remarkable work by Kris Spence in bringing back the greens and bunker complexes that Ross originally intended. And being recognized like that shows something else: it reinforces the importance of preserving history while keeping golf accessible. It shows that municipal golf can be world-class.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dunedin Golf Club was named to the United States National Register of Historic Places in 2014. Donald Ross called the golf course one of his finest works and praised its \u201cideal combination of rolling hills, waterways and natural hazards.\u201d<\/p>\n

For Blue Jays fans in March, it\u2019s the perfect place for a day of golf and baseball.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It\u2019s easy to tell what time of year it is in Dunedin, Fla. With the Toronto Blue Jays…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":542837,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[443],"tags":[49,48,622,58580,211840,82],"class_list":["post-542836","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-golf","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-golf","tag-golf-course-architecture","tag-golf-course-features","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/542836","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=542836"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/542836\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/542837"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=542836"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=542836"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=542836"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}