A golf course on an Army installation near the Mississippi River that’s been lying dormant for seven years is scheduled to re-open for play in a week.
Listed as the second-oldest course in the state of Illinois, the Rock Island Arsenal Golf Course is slated to reopen to the public on April 26. The course was 18 holes, but only nine holes will be reopened, using the most historic holes from a course whose origins date back to 1897.
“We invite the community to join us as we open our reconfigured course,” U.S. Army Garrison Rock Island Arsenal commander Col. William J. Parker III said in a statement. “We look forward to having one more community activity available to not only to those that work on the Arsenal, but also our surrounding community in the Quad Cities.”
The course is part of the Quad Cities, which include Moline and Rock Island on the Illinois side and Davenport and Bettendorf on the Iowa side of the border. Rock Island Arsenal Golf Course will offer annual individual passes to the general public for $800 and $1,450 for families.
According to a story at WQAD-TV, the course’s infrastructure had to be completely revamped.
“We basically had to put in a new irrigation system, core out the greens, reseed everything, re-level the tees,” golf manager William Starcevich said. “Pretty much soup to nuts, we had to redo.”
He recalled not being able to see the course at first because the grass was so overgrown.
The course is one of the oldest in the country, started in 1897 by Capt. Stanhope Blunt, commanding officer of the Arsenal. It was only nine years after golf had been introduced in the U.S. when the country’s first course, St. Andrews Golf Course in Yonkers, New York, was established. The Arsenal course was expanded to 18 holes in 1902.
Now, it returns as a nine-hole course.
“The nine that we’ve reconstructed is probably about 80% of what the original course was,” said Col. Joe Parker, Garrison Commander of the Rock Island Arsenal.
The course was closed due to a lack of play in 2018.
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