Eisenhower Park's Red Course (Emmet, 1914) reopened for the season this past weekend and debuted its newly lengthened par-5 7th. For a course that's no stranger to hole modifications and rerouted fairways, the changes on #7 are among the most substantial in the Red's history.
A new green was built 50-60 yards behind and to the right of the old green, turning a straight par-4 into a dogleg right par-5. The old green is being converted to fairway. The new green has a large trap on the right and a slope going from center to front. There is a new back tee that required clearing all the way back to the perimeter fence at Salisbury Park Drive. For those familiar with Red, it's the northernmost hole on the course, running alongside remnants of the old Hempstead Plain and Old Country Road.
There are also changes at the par-4 11th, where the park added a series of four bunkers running up the right rough, with small mounding in between. Since that particular hole has three different chutes with tee boxes on left, center and right, the hole plays differently depending on what direction your teeing from. The back and middle tees were on the left (longest) tee box last weekend, so your drive was facing the traps.
#1 is in the process of being shortened to a par-4.
Meanwhile I was looking at old aerials this weekend to see how those holes have evolved over time, and it's too bad, at least in #7's case, that they didn't go back in time to something more in line with what Emmet had laid out. The original hole had three center-fairway bunkers about 50 yards short of the green. Eventually (post-1950s) those were removed and the hole became simply a straight, unremarkable par-4. And #11 originally featured clusters of bunkers left and right of the fairway, before those were later removed and grassed over.