Simsbury Farms Golf Course Gets Needed Attention

The town's original public golf course is being reinvented by a handful of dedicated individuals after nearly 40 years of active use.

Golfing at Simsbury Farms wasn't always Gerry Wetjen's first choice, but improvements in the last decade have brought him back to the public course. Now he hopes to see it become the great club it once was.

In 2008, the Simsbury Farms Men's Club set out to revitalize the antiquated course and began the process of securing town funding to take on the project. Wetjen, club president at the time, said the first attempt to obtain town funding for the project was rejected by the Board of Finance.

In 2010, the town was able to appropriate $225,000, just enough to rework the bunker system — on a tight budget — and replace tee boxes, according to Wetjen.  

In an effort to cut costs, Golf Course Superintendent Mike Wallace has taken on the task of doing the work with his crew of three full-time and five seasonal employees. Without their efforts, the project could cost as much as $600,000, Wetjen said.

"We're very fortunate to have Mike," Wetjen said. Wallace is the former president of the National Golf Course Superintendent Association and former course superintendent for Hop Meadow Country Club.

Wallace and his team will work on the bunkers as often as time and weather will permit until the regular season begins and routine course maintenance will leave less time for work on the bunkers.

Last year, town officials hired Simsbury native Doug Beach to help design the new bunker system for the course. Beach has been designing golf courses for more than 30 years and spent 15 years working for golfer Jack Nicklaus. Beach now resides in Simsbury and runs his own business, Douglas Beach Golf Course Design.

Beach and Wallace have been working together since last year to redesign and begin work on several of the course’s bunkers. To date, four bunker systems have been redesigned and rebuilt. Wetjen said they hope to complete work on at least half of the approximately 40 bunkers on the course.

"When you do this you're dealing with drainage, you're dealing with water pipes, and you're dealing with electrical wiring, so you've got to do all of your design work and construction based on existing infrastructure," Wetjen said.  The project is both time-consuming and labor-intensive, but the group feels it will be worth it when it’s complete.

“It’s a good break from the day-to-day maintenance,” Wallace said. In fact, it allows him to be creative in ways regular course maintenance duties don’t allow.

Many of the course’s bunkers are worn, some have eroded, and all of them have grown to be rocky. Wallace and his team are reconstructing the bunkers with a special liner to allow water through but keep rocks out of the sand. Once the bunkers are complete they will lay down new sod to prevent erosion.

Wetjen said the club hopes the improvements will attract new players and strengthen their chances to host more tournaments, but mostly they aim to  continue providing a great local spot for golfers.