How Jerry Pate is adding touches to Ol' Colony in preparation for Epson Tour LPGA event
When Jerry Pate designed Ol’ Colony, his vision went beyond that of a typical municipal golf course.
“My original concept, honestly, was to have two courses. We had enough land to do two courses,” Pate said. “We still have enough land to do 27 holes. My original concept someday was going to be that the course was strong enough and the community could support something like a women’s U.S. Amateur or a men’s U.S. Amateur because they need 36 holes – or an NCAA championship or the regionals. So we certainly thought it had the ability to host any kind of tournament entity.”
The course has hosted an NCAA regional, University of Alabama men's and women's tournaments, the Southern States Invitational, the Alabama Open, the Alabama State Amateur and match-play championships, high school tournaments and an abundance of fundraising events.
Come September, Ol' Colony will be taken to another level when it hosts professional golf with the Tuscaloosa Toyota Classic, the final regular-season stop on the Epson Tour, the qualifying feeder into the LPGA. It will be held Sept. 29-Oct. 2 and include 54 holes of tournament play and a field of 120 golfers from an estimated 30 countries.
"The way it's designed, the different-lengths tees and the bunkering, the hazards and the way the greens are designed – you don't even have to bring the rough in, just move the tees back and set the hole locations in a way that you can challenge the best players in the world.
"What really makes it exciting is it's a core golf course, so it doesn't have holes with real estate on the left or right sides of the fairway. It's wall-to-wall golf, and it makes it nice for spectators to see other holes and cut across from one hole to the other to get a glimpse of another group."
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Coming into play are 25 acres of lake.
"I think the large lake in the middle gives it a great atmosphere there that you see golfers around the course,” Pate said.
Pate was included in a group that visited a tour event to get better insight on what hosting entails and became even more confident Ol' Colony and Tuscaloosa would make a good host.
The U.S. Open and U.S. Amateur champion has played a lifetime of golf, including as a golfer at Alabama and player on the PGA and Senior PGA tours. He heads The Jerry Pate Company in Pensacola.
He has made trips to Tuscaloosa to oversee projects to prepare the course and plans a few more between now and September.
Tweaks made involve agronomics. All the roughs have been aerified for uniformity. Fairways have been punched. Winter kill on some of the greens that resulted in the cancellation of an NCAA regional has been repaired. Bunkers have new sand.
"Architecturally, we haven't changed anything other than maybe 10 years ago we lengthened the course out," a change made when Alabama's golf teams made Ol' Colony home, Pate said.
"The kids hit the ball so far we had to move some tees back and make it longer."
The Epson Tour women will play a shorter course, about 6,000 yards, as opposed to the distance of about 7,600 yards from the back tees.
Still to come, Pate said, is minor maintenance, like continued mowing of the fairways and perhaps aerating the fairways once more.
"I think this is the first step of many bigger, regional and national events to come,” Pate said, adding Ol' Colony offers the three necessities to hosting big events: aesthetics, agronomics and strategic feastures.
"Ol' Colony has the ability to host anything it wants to," he said.
This article originally appeared on The Tuscaloosa News: Jerry Pate is adding touches to Ol' Colony golf course for EPSON Tour
