Bucking a slowing course development trend, the course design firm of Hills/Forrest & Associates celebrated its third course completion of the year recently when the private Westhaven Golf Club opened in Franklin, Tenn.
Developed by Southern Land Company, the Westhaven community surrounding the course provided a full complement of members before the course officially opened.
Since the beginning of residential construction in 2003, Southern Land has built more than 800 homes in the community. The golf course, built by Lepanto Golf Construction of Pomona Park, Fla., broke ground in 2007.
The Hills/Forrest team, headed by project architect Chris Wilczynski, can actually only claim credit for the design of 17 of the holes. Doug Wright, an undergraduate at Lehigh University at the time, submitted the winning entry in a hole design contest for what turned out to be Westhaven’s 13th hole conducted by Links Magazine, which was adopted.
Hills/Forrest’s other two openings in 2009 were TPC at Treviso Bay in Naples, Fla., and Paraiso del Mar in Baja California Sur, Mexico.