AREA GOLFERS SHOULD FACE NEW CHALLENGES; SOME COURSES IN CAPE GIRARDEAU, JACKSON UNDERTAKE MASSIVE CHANGES

Cape Jaycee Municipal Golf Course foreman Randy Lueder, left, and Jack Hamm, maintenance worker removed asphalt near the clubhouse. The upper and lower parking lots will be resurfaced.

Ed Donahue, left, and Bill Snider, both of Roanoke, Va., teed off near the new lake at Bent Creek Golf Course. The course also has a new computerized watering system installed.

Golfers who feel they have mastered area courses can expect new challenges as some courses undergo extensive renovations.

Kimbeland Country Club in Jackson is undertaking the most sweeping changes. By next year all the course's greens and tees will have been replaced and five new holes will have been built. Plans also calls for adding 25 bunkers and contouring the fairway for more challenging play.

This marks the first major overhaul of the 33-year-old course.

"We're trying to update the course to provide for the future," said David Clabaugh, president of Kimbeland's governing board. "We haven't really done much in the last 30 years. ... We just decided to do it all at one time and get it done with the minimum of inconvenience."

Work began Feb. 26 on building the new holes, three of which will be on 18 acres of recently purchased land just east of the existing course. The renovation work will begin in mid-August. When that work starts, only nine holes will be open to members until the project is complete.

"We hope to have all the construction done and have the whole course playable by the spring of 1997," Clabaugh said.

Kimbeland recently sold land adjacent to Highway 61, which is currently the course's No. 4 hole. The profits from its sale allowed for the purchase of the new property and will cover one-half the cost of the renovation project.

The fourth, fifth, 10th, 11th and 13th holes are those being replaced. The existing 10th and 11th holes will be replaced with a driving range, 40 to 50 new golf cart sheds and additional parking.

The course, currently a 6,500-acre par 72, will be a 6,700-acre par 71 course when completed.

Work will also be done on the greens and tees to make each much larger. "The tees and greens are just too small for the number of rounds we play out there," Clabaugh said.

The course at Cape Girardeau Country Club will also play quite differently after the completion of changes already under way.

Hale Irwin Golf Services in St. Louis designed the alterations, which include a complete renovation of greens and tees on the front nine. The project is expected to be done by the end of March.

"Primarily what we are trying to do is give members a first-class golf course and country club," said Don Staples, club president.

Greens on the 11th, 14th, 15th and 18th holes were recently replaced in their existing positions. The greens work on the front nine, however, will be in completely different positions.

"The front nine is fairly short," said Staples. "When we finish we want it to be an additional 300 yards."

The entire No. 2 hole will also be moved and additional modernizations on several fairways will be made as well.

Though he declined to be specific, Staples said the renovations will cost "a lot of money" and represent "a significant investment on the part of members."

Work on a new nine-acre lake is nearing completion at the Bent Creek Golf Course in Jackson. The lake will create a new water hazard on the border of the No. 3 hole.

Terry Wylie, greens superintendent at Bent Creek, said some additional tees and bunkers will be added and areas opened up to make some holes play differently.

The biggest changes are in improvements to the irrigation system.

"We've been adding on to the irrigation system and the more we add on, the more complex it gets, so we're going to run the system by computer," Wylie said.

"What it actually will do is allow us to run the maximum number of heads at one time."

Dan Muser, superintendent of the Cape Girardeau Parks and Recreation Department, said tees on the No. 5, 6 and 7 holes at Jaycee Municipal Golf Course will be improved this year.

The work, which should be completed by spring, is needed "to increase the size of the tees so they will bear up a little bit more under the heavy use," Muser said.

A number of projects for the future -- construction of a new clubhouse and improvements to fairways, greens, storage facilities and irrigation -- are on the drawing board but are not funded in the course's budget.