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Rees Milikin

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I came across a Facebook post about the 9-Hole (plans for original 18) 1926 Donald Ross designed Roosevelt Memorial Golf Course in Warm Springs, GA getting a restoration by 2016.

http://m2.facebook.com/notes/roosevelt-warm-springs/roosevelt-memorial-golf-course-repurposed-and-returning-by-2016/774940772554189/?refid=17
&
http://www.operationdoubleeagle.org/

The restoration is supposed be completed by Augusta, GA based architect Troy Vincent.
http://www.vincentdesignllc.com/

I couldn't find much on here about the course except for a few posts from Mike Young and this post from Ross documentary producer Cob Carlson stating his top 10 Ross courses he would like to see: http://www.golfclubatlas.com/forum/index.php/topic,59971.msg1417567.html#msg1417567

If anyone has played here or has any thoughts on the possible restoration, please share.


jeffwarne

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Re: Roosevelt Memorial Golf Course - 1926 Donald Ross Restoration
« Reply #1 on: March 01, 2015, 10:52:56 PM »
very interesting stuff Rees,
Expanding your horizons I see.
"Let's slow the damned greens down a bit, not take the character out of them." Tom Doak
"Take their focus off the grass and put it squarely on interesting golf." Don Mahaffey

Rees Milikin

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Re: Roosevelt Memorial Golf Course - 1926 Donald Ross Restoration
« Reply #2 on: March 01, 2015, 10:57:37 PM »
very interesting stuff Rees,
Expanding your horizons I see.

Golden Age in the Southeast is my passion.  Brainerd Muni in Chattanooga is one Ross I really want to see restored.

john_stiles

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Re: Roosevelt Memorial Golf Course - 1926 Donald Ross Restoration
« Reply #3 on: March 02, 2015, 07:48:08 PM »
The work at Roosevelt is described at this web site

www.operationdoubleeagle.org


From the web site  "  Operation Double Eagle is founded and funded by The Warrior Alliance, a nonprofit 501(c)3 organization whose mission is to provide services that deliver healing, rehabilitation, and vocational opportunities for warriors as they transition from military service back into their communities. "




Cob Carlson

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Re: Roosevelt Memorial Golf Course - 1926 Donald Ross Restoration
« Reply #4 on: March 03, 2015, 12:22:22 AM »
In my film "Donald Ross: Discovering the Legend" Paul Dunn, the author of GREAT DONALD ROSS COURSES YOU CAN PLAY, tells a wonderful anecdotal story about F.D.R. commissioning Ross to design the course. I was also able to unearth some rare black and white silent archival film footage of patients at Warm Springs, suffering from polio, but out playing the golf course. Happens to be one of my favorite moments of the film.

Ben Hollerbach

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Re: Roosevelt Memorial Golf Course - 1926 Donald Ross Restoration
« Reply #5 on: March 03, 2015, 10:04:05 AM »


I'm rather excited for the prospects of this project, but I have my concerns. Overlaying the course drawing over the existing property, I'll be interested to see how they get around the pond and part of the medical campus that would interfere with the drawn 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, 8th, and 9th.

Mike_Young

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Re: Roosevelt Memorial Golf Course - 1926 Donald Ross Restoration
« Reply #6 on: March 03, 2015, 10:11:15 AM »
I am familiar with the golf course.   Will be interesting...
"just standing on a corner in Winslow Arizona"

Gary Daughters

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Re: Roosevelt Memorial Golf Course - 1926 Donald Ross Restoration
« Reply #7 on: August 03, 2015, 02:19:21 PM »
You can almost tell there's a golf course in there, and having walked the property a year or so ago I think it was probably a very good one.  With deference to the folks who seem to have taken admirable initiative to bring the course back to life, I think a faithful restoration of the original nine would be a better direction than to add 9 holes to a course conceived and built by Ross&Roosevelt, Golf Architects.


I was passing through this morning and didn't have the time or boots to wander around much. It's grown in deeper since my last trip, and that time I got lost in the thickets on #2, which I recall to have looked like a wicked par 5.   


Warm Springs is not far from sort of a micro sand belt region (Mike Young might want to chime in) that's centered on the town of Molena.  It might be really good dirt down there.  Here are some pix taken today:



This is looking up #1 from tee box.  It's an elegant upward slope toward the green. 







Edges on a bunker near the clubhouse.  Probably #4 green. 









This is looking back toward the tee at #4.  The tee is on a cliff back there, which you can sort of see.  There might be another see of tees tucked even farther up and around the corner.  Fairway is kind of a flood plain.









#5 is on the flood plain that leads back out to the road.  The 6, 7, 8 stretch seemed really remarkable when I walked it before, but unaccessible today.  #5:









Clubhouse







If you guess "warm spring," you guess correctly.  This is on the property, and if not's where FDR originally bathed it's within a 60 degree wedge.  I put my hand in and yes the temperature is very pleasant.


















« Last Edit: August 03, 2015, 03:00:21 PM by Gary Daughters »
THE NEXT SEVEN:  Alfred E. Tupp Holmes Municipal Golf Course, Willi Plett's Sportspark and Driving Range, Peachtree, Par 56, Browns Mill, Cross Creek, Piedmont Driving Club

MCirba

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Re: Roosevelt Memorial Golf Course - 1926 Donald Ross Restoration
« Reply #8 on: August 03, 2015, 03:08:56 PM »
This is a very cool thread and I love the ongoing golf course "archeology" efforts as witnessed in everyone's helpful posts here.
"Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent" - Calvin Coolidge

https://cobbscreek.org/

Gary Daughters

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Re: Roosevelt Memorial Golf Course - 1926 Donald Ross Restoration
« Reply #9 on: August 03, 2015, 06:25:13 PM »
I don't know how much Roosevelt had to do with the course, but I can imagine something like this:


"Now Donald, be a good man and put that the tee on the cliff!"
THE NEXT SEVEN:  Alfred E. Tupp Holmes Municipal Golf Course, Willi Plett's Sportspark and Driving Range, Peachtree, Par 56, Browns Mill, Cross Creek, Piedmont Driving Club

Gary Daughters

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Re: Roosevelt Memorial Golf Course - 1926 Donald Ross Restoration
« Reply #10 on: August 21, 2015, 05:31:21 PM »
I hope no one objects to the format, as I began writing this as a news story but now have to move on to something else.  Maybe someone else will want to pick it up from here.  It's 500 words.. sorry for the bandwidth. 


Yes, I know Donald Ross built the golf course even tho it is not mentioned below.


==


     When President Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed into law the G.I. Bill of Rights, few Georgians could have foreseen its deep and lasting gifts to America’s war veterans, their children and grandchildren.
 
And probably none could have conceived that 70 years later, a group that represents disabled Georgia vets, backed by a self-described “venture philanthropist” and friends in state government, would show its gratitude to the New Deal architect and polio sufferer by raising money for a plan that would disassociate the Roosevelt name from part of FDR’s cherished legacy in Warm Springs.
 
Last year, a Georgia vets group called The Warrior Alliance obtained from the state legislature a ten- year lease on Roosevelt Memorial Golf Course, a nine hole tract built on some of the thousands of acres of rolling, wooded farmland acquired through the years by FDR, who was famously smitten by the Pine Mountain region and its people.
 
After his death, the Roosevelt lands were deeded to the state, which currently operates FDR State Park, the Little White House and Roosevelt Rehab Center, which is adjacent to the deeply overgrown golf course, dormant now for at least three years.
 
The legislative measure approving the ten- dollar annual golf course lease identifies the Warrior Alliance as a charity, operating under another non-profit, the Atlanta-based Healthcare Institute for National Renewal and Innovation, or HINRI.
 
 HINRI is among the adviser-laden charity and business enterprises run from the Buckhead home of its founder, Ross Mason, who describes himself variously as a health care consultant, an entrepreneur with banking experience in Moscow, a venture philanthropist, executive director of something called HINRI Labs, and a fellow at the healthcare think tank of former House Speaker Newt Gingrich.
 
Mason also is listed as a “non profit adviser” to the Warrior Alliance, whose other listed advisers include Greg Schmieg, Executive Director of the Roosevelt Warm Springs Institute for Rehabilitation, which is run by the state and was deeply involved in talks that led to the Warrior Alliance receiving the favorable lease on the Roosevelt golf course.  Schmieg was appointed by Georgia Governor Nathan Deal in 2012, around the time those talks are said to have started.
 
HINRI and The Warrior Alliance are seeking to raise a purported $35 million for a plan to renovate and expand the Roosevelt course at Warm Springs, which they envision as the centerpiece of an untested rehab and job training regime for veterans disabled in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
 
According to the group’s website, vets would get training in disciplines such as golf course construction, golf course maintenance and course operations, which they then could carry with them back out into the workforce.
 
As late as Wednesday, the Warrior Alliance’s fundraising website (www.operationdoubleeagle.org), was touting the group’s intent to strip the Roosevelt name from the golf course beneath a colorful, banner-sized quote attributed to FDR that begins, somewhat incongruously, with a Rooseveltian reference to the “right to life.”
 
Thursday, the passage that had trumpeted the planned name change disappeared altogether from that prominent slot near the top of the webpage.  Farther down, though, the page makes repeated solicitations for pricey memberships to “Warm Springs Golf Club,” asserting, among other things, that donors can “help restore a historical landmark.”
 
 
 
THE NEXT SEVEN:  Alfred E. Tupp Holmes Municipal Golf Course, Willi Plett's Sportspark and Driving Range, Peachtree, Par 56, Browns Mill, Cross Creek, Piedmont Driving Club

Rees Milikin

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Re: Roosevelt Memorial Golf Course - 1926 Donald Ross Restoration
« Reply #11 on: August 21, 2015, 06:20:16 PM »
Gary, thanks for the updates.

Mike_Young

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Re: Roosevelt Memorial Golf Course - 1926 Donald Ross Restoration
« Reply #12 on: August 21, 2015, 10:06:55 PM »
Gary,
Here's what little I know of the project.  Greg Schmieg whom you mention had discussed the project with a group I was involved with who used to donate to the course and had an interest.  During this time the governor appointed him to a position in charge of rehab for the State.  He had us meet with a person who headed up the non-profit you mention and it was very clear that she had no clue what was going on but was good at raising money.

Meanwhile, the group had several fundraising efforts take place at East Lake and several people from this site attended. 

From everything I know Ross Mason is the real deal and has very good intentions.  But the golf makes no sense and cannot work.  However, there is federal money, (plenty of it) available for rehabilitation of veterans and using such a place at such a location fits what is needed to acquire such monies. However, turf schools are closing and trying to train vets for golf course jobs may sound good but is not something where they can find a job.  Secondly, the destination is not practical and the locals have enough golf in the area.  Thirdly, the existing nine holes are nothing to write home about and the pricing they have for renovating such is not practical.
 
All in all if it happens it will just be another over funded golf project that has to be completely subsidized and the rehabilitation aspect will be a tough one.  All sounds good .  for fun check out all of the various "wounded vet groups"  There are probably 50 out there. 
All in all the Mason fellow is the real deal and the rehab center aspect may work but the golf for rehab thing will not.  It will be more taxpayer money wasted. 
From what I hear people are figuring out the golf thing down there..
No one would be trying this thing if there wasn't free money out there from the govt for such...
Last I heard they were trying to get Larry Nelson involved as their spokesman. 
"just standing on a corner in Winslow Arizona"

Gary Daughters

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Re: Roosevelt Memorial Golf Course - 1926 Donald Ross Restoration
« Reply #13 on: August 22, 2015, 05:52:50 AM »
Mike, thank you for the info.


Is it unusual for the state to grant such favorable terms on a lease?
THE NEXT SEVEN:  Alfred E. Tupp Holmes Municipal Golf Course, Willi Plett's Sportspark and Driving Range, Peachtree, Par 56, Browns Mill, Cross Creek, Piedmont Driving Club

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