![]() ![]() Low, a citizen of the Pokagon Band of Potawatomi Indians and the director of the Newark Earthworks Center, said in a recent interview. “We wouldn’t want a country club on the Acropolis,” John N. Then, as now, the club’s unwillingness to make way for worldwide recognition of the site drew criticism. At that point, a group led by local professors and Native Americans organized a protest campaign - and some residents began questioning whether the course should exist at all. “Even though, on paper, it shouldn’t be that hard.”Įfforts to fully recognize the significance of the mounds as more than unusual golf hazards date back roughly two decades to a period when a bid to build a new clubhouse, whose foundation would have dug into the mounds, was denied. “It’s hard to shoot what you normally shoot here,” he said. Mitchell said the mounds are a more formidable obstacle than they at first appear. The course itself, with a slope rating of 119, is medium difficult, though no one would ever confuse it for Jack Nicklaus’s Muirfield Village Golf Club (slope 130), which sits 40 miles to the west. “The ancient Moundbuilders unwittingly left behind the setting for as strange and sporty a golf course as ever felt the blow of a niblick,” an article about the course in the January 1930 issue of Golf Illustrated proclaimed. The effort might have been an attempt to connect with or communicate with the powers which appeared to control the larger universe, said Hively, who discovered these alignments with a philosophy professor, Robert Horn, in the 1980s. Members of the Hopewell culture likely intended the earthworks, which can only be fully appreciated from above, to show their moon and sun gods that they understood their movements, said Ray Hively, a professor emeritus of astronomy and physics at Earlham College in Richmond, Ind. The alignments are no less sophisticated than the arranged stones at Stonehenge, experts say. When the rising moon reaches its northernmost position, it hovers above the octagon’s exact center, within one-half of a degree. ![]() Once every 18.6 years, if you stand atop the course’s observatory mound and look up the line of parallel mounds toward the octagonal area, something spectacular happens. But their value wasn’t recognized until recent years, and many were destroyed.Ĭreated one basketful of earth at a time, using pointed sticks and clamshell hoes, the mounds at the golf course are part of the broader Newark Earthworks and widely embraced as an astronomical and geometric marvel. There were once hundreds of major earthworks built by people of the Hopewell culture, which refers to the moundbuilding groups of Native Americans who lived in North America from about 100 B.C.E. Still, if one were to encounter a ball perched atop the ancient earthworks, there is no ban on whacking at it with a 3-iron. Golfers are barred from driving carts over them except on paved paths. The clubhouse features a painting and photographs of the mounds. Many of the golfers say they embrace that importance, too, even if they have indelicately nicknamed one eight-foot mound “Big Chief.” The club has a scrapbook that tracks the history of the earthworks, known as the Octagon Earthworks, back to their creation. Department of the Interior has already selected the land for nomination as a UNESCO World Heritage site, as part of a larger proposed bid to recognize some of the similar sites in Ohio, known as the Hopewell Ceremonial Earthworks. ![]() The historical import of the site is clear. The dispute heads to the Ohio Supreme Court on Tuesday. Player-friendly tees allowing the course to be played at 3,255 and 4,187 yards in accordance with the popular “Tee it Forward” initiative sponsored by the PGA and USGAįazio II himself believes his renovation achieved “that ideal balance where single-digit golfers will be fully challenged while higher handicaps will have a layout ideal for a day of enjoyable resort golf.The $1.7 million amount the state’s representatives have proposed under eminent domain is up from an initial offer of $800,000.A 70% increase in total green surface to 2.5 acres, grassed with TifEagle on the greens and Celebration Bermuda grass on tees and fairways.While the original par-72 routing remains intact, the renovation improved the classic golf architecture with modern advances, including: ![]() The Haig was designed by George and Tom Fazio in tribute to five-time PGA champion Walter Hagen, and its renovation was led by third-generation designer Tom Fazio II, who emphasized modernizing the course layout. The Fazio is a reinvention of The Haig, PGA National’s original 18-hole course that opened in 1980. ![]()
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