Hanse, Wagner to restore Golden Age classic course in Bermuda

The golf architecture team of Gil Hanse and Jim Wagner have signed on to restore Mid Ocean Club in Bermuda, a seaside course originally designed by C.B. Macdonald with collaborator Seth Raynor and opened in 1921. The course work will follow a clubhouse renovation and upgrade, with the course slated to close for the restoration in the fall of 2027.

Mid Ocean was the only course Macdonald, a famed Golden Age architect, designed outside the United States. Mid Ocean, which accepts limited non-member play, ranks No. 6 on the 2026 Golfweek’s Best list of top courses in the Caribbean, Mexico, South America and the Atlantic islands. It also ranks among the top 100 courses outside the United States.

“C.B. Macdonald is on my personal Mount Rushmore of golf architects, so it’s an honor to have the opportunity to work on another of his courses,” Hanse – who also restored Macdonald’s designs at Sleepy Hollow Country Club, The Creek Club and Yale Golf Course – said in a media release announcing the project. “He only built 10 or 12 golf courses, depending on how many you credit to him. The fact that we now have a significant opportunity at Mid Ocean Club means the world to us.

Advertisement

“Every single golf course C.B. Macdonald worked on was impactful, not only from the standpoint of that particular club, but in the world of golf course architecture.”

Macdonald pioneered the use of template holes in his designs, using the concepts of great holes abroad to recreate strategic demands with “ideal holes.” One particular template in play at Mid Ocean – the Cape Hole design at No. 5, a par 4 that launches off an elevated tee then curves around a lake – was described by Hanse as “one of the greatest holes in the world.”

Hanse plans to use archival material to stay faithful to Macdonald’s design at Mid Ocean. That includes film footage from 1926 that appears to show Macdonald, who kept a home at Mid Ocean until his death in 1939, playing the course. The film was found by club archivist Rick Skelly and might be the only moving images anywhere of Macdonald.

Advertisement

“I was blown away when I found the footage,” Skelly, a member of Mid Ocean Club, said of the footage for which the club is working to confirm as really Macdonald. “I was reviewing a longer film with classic 1920s Bermuda images when it suddenly switched to Mid Ocean Club and the first tee. And I see this older gentleman, thicker set, take this backswing and immediately I’m just stunned and think, ‘That’s C.B Macdonald right there!’

“I was merely hoping to find imagery of the course to help the design team, but to seemingly find C.B. Macdonald at our club was really cool. It was only later we realized there was no known footage of C.B. Macdonald and what we had was probably something very special.”

Hanse said that with all the historic materials at his disposal, he hopes to recreate the layout as designed by Macdonald. The course was modified on the 1950s by Robert Trent Jones Sr.

“Ultimately our goal is to be faithful to Macdonald and restore his work,” said Hanse, who first visited Mid Ocean Club 40 years ago while on honeymoon with his wife, Tracey. “With the archival information and, ultimately, having a presence on site and being on the machinery myself, we will have an opportunity to get in the ground and faithfully restore what Macdonald and Raynor built on the property.”

Advertisement

Jason Lusk is Golfweek’s travel and golf course architecture editor, as well as the magazine’s creative director. He has written for and designed Golfweek for more than two decades.

This article originally appeared on Golfweek: Hanse, Wagner to restore Golden Age classic course in Bermuda