Over the past few months, reports on Tiger Woods’ health have mainly focused on his latest round of rehabilitation. Here’s a more encouraging update. It’s about Trout National-The Reserve, Woods’ partnership with baseball star Mike Trout.
If you keep up with golf news, you’re probably familiar with the scheme of the project, a private destination golf club in Trout’s hometown of Vineland, in southern New Jersey, with a championship course designed by Woods’ golf architecture firm, TGR Design. In the nearly two years since word of Trout National got out, details about the property have been kept under wraps. But as work progressed, a clearer picture of the club emerged.
The course itself was finished in October and, thanks to a period of clement weather, all 18 holes are now fully grassed. They make up a robust par 72 that stretches 7,455 yards, with a course that takes advantage of the rugged terrain of what was once a silica sand mining site. The course design is meant to bring out imaginative shots, with many greens accessible from the ground game and outflows around them allowing for creative recoveries.
‘It’s going to be challenging,’ says Tyler Trout, Mike’s brother, who heads the club’s development team. ‘But I don’t see people losing many balls around here.’
As the turf takes deeper root, construction continues on a series of Trout-inspired amenities. In an homage to baseball, a service station called the Dugout is nearly completed behind the 14th and 16th hole starting areas. True to its name, its design mirrors that of the benches in MLB stadiums, with stadium seating as a perch for watching pitches from the ground and a digital scoreboard displaying players’ scores throughout the course.
Meanwhile, a larger rest stop has already been completed. A full food and beverage hangout (named Aaron’s, in honour of Mike’s late brother-in-law, who had a reputation as a party boy) is located between the sixth and eleventh holes in a spot that golfers pass through several times during a round and boasts wraparound terraces, braziers, an outdoor kitchen and an indoor-outdoor bar that is designed to be a place where members and their guests can relax, watch and, if the spirit moves them, offer their friends from other groups some light-hearted banter.
The Trout National is located a short drive from Philadelphia and Atlantic City, in a region that is home to some of the country’s most famous courses, but aims to strike a classic-contemporary balance by attracting golfers with a course designed for purists in an environment free of stifles or starches.
‘It will have an atmosphere that has grown up in golf over the last ten years or so,’ says Trout. ‘It’s pure golf. You don’t see houses. But the culture and atmosphere is more modern and relaxed.’
In keeping with this ethos, golfing offerings will include a fully lit short course, the Bullpen; a 30,000-square-foot under-light putting range and short game area; and a performance centre with three hitting stations, one of which will double as an assembly station, along with high-tech training tools such as TrackMan, Swing Catalyst’s Force Plate and an indoor putting lab.
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