Cedar Rapids Country Club

For decades, Cedar Rapids Country Club had the feel of a classic parkland design, with sturdy rough bordering narrow, tightly tree-lined fairways. That began to change in 2014 when veteran architect Ron Prichard and then associate Tyler Rae were hired to renovate the course. Leaning into the tenets of its 1914 Donald Ross design (Ross had remodeled a course Tom Bendelow originally laid out), they thinned the forests, widend fairways and greens and rebunkered significant portions of the course. That got Cedar Rapids partly back to looking like it did 100 years ago. A major derecho--a system of violent, sweeping storms--in 2020 did the rest of the job by clearing out hundreds of remaining trees and damaging other parts of the property. Ultimately it was a benefit, once stiched back together, as holes that were previously buttoned up in dense woods now ramble through lovely portions of meadow and prairie.