A renovation project that will include the changing of greens over three summers at the 27-hole Thistle Golf Club continues this year with the closing of the MacKay nine.
The MacKay nine closed on June 2 and is expected to reopen by Sept. 8, weather permitting.
The club is making some additions in the midst of the greens project, as well.
While the MacKay is closed, a waterfall is being added between the clubhouse and bag drop. Rock for it has already been delivered and Thistle head pro Brian Eckley expects it to be completed in July.
“It really is going to be cool,” Eckley said.
Last year, an open-air bar near the driving range and clubhouse featuring televisions and speakers for music and entertainment was built. It’s designed to be utilized as a quick stop at the turn or a place to congregate and be a headquarters for tournaments.
The greens will remain TifEagle ultradwarf Bermudagrass, which has been on them since 2014-15, when a changeover from the original bentgrass was done on all 27 holes.
The Cameron and Mackay nines opened in 1999 and the Stewart nine opened in 2000 at the Scottish links-style property in Sunset Beach, N.C.. The Tim Cate design is at least 6,800 yards in all 18-hole combinations.
The Cameron nine holes were redone last year, and the Stewart nine are scheduled for next summer.
“They’re starting to finally soften up a little bit [on the Cameron nine] so they’re a little bit more receptive to approach shots,” Eckley said. “You still get the kind of firm chips and pitches. They’re rolling fantastic.”
Though Thistle’s greens aren’t considered small, “The greens have gotten a lot smaller,” Eckley said. “We’ve lost a handful of acres of putting green through the aging process on the greens, which is just amazing to add that size. You start losing pin placements, you start getting near some hills and some of the tiers and you lose those pin placements.”
A no-till method was used for the first transition a decade ago, and a more thorough and intrusive method is being used for this upcoming transition, in which 4 inches of turf is being removed and replaced.
The collars of the greens will include a five-foot buffer of TifTuf Bermuda between the fairway and green that is designed to impede encroachment on the greens of a different variety of Bermuda in the fairway.
The greens on the Cameron and Stewart nines aren’t being fully aerated this year – with the Cameron being new and the Stewart being replaced next year – so 18 holes will remain open all summer. A tiny tine aeration that is less intrusive is expected to be done later this summer, but it isn’t expected to require any closures.
Two long bridges on the MacKay fifth and seventh holes, and a shorter bridge on the seventh, are being rebuilt.
The Cameron nine has three bridges that were rebuilt, while the Stewart nine has only one bridge made of concrete that does not need to be replaced.
The tee box on the Mackay’s sixth hole is being redone. A depression that separates tee boxes is being filled in to create one large tee box that will hold three tees.
“It will really be ideal for us,” Eckley said. “It will give us more space because it’s a challenged area with the tee boxes with the amount of trees and shade.”
A project that is setting Thistle apart in the market is a labor-intensive PermaEdge stacked sod bunker undertaking that began in 2020 and is continuing each year in the cooler months until every bunker is completed.
All greenside bunkers are complete, and work will continue later this year on fairway bunkers.
