A substantial strengthening of Stone Creek Golf Club in Makanda, Ill. will ensue after the Atkins Group, which has owned the property, announced that the course would be donated to the University of Illinois Athletic Department. The course will be renamed Atkins Golf Club at the University of Illinois.
In March, around 60 residents of the Stone Creek subdivision in Makanda, Ill. met with University of Illinois (UI) Athletics Director Josh Whitman and Spencer Atkins, Director of The Atkins Group, which developed the subdivision and owns the golf course within it, the Champaign/Urbana News-Gazette reported. There were plans to resurrect the golf course, Atkins and Whitman announced, after it had closed in January.
C+RB reported on the news at the time.
The university has applied multiple times to host an NCAA men’s golf regional, the News-Gazette reported. That the Illini have held steady atop the college golf world for a decade-plus would have, at least in theory, put them near the top of the hosting candidates. But there was always one, clear stumbling block. Stone Creek Golf Club never passed muster with the NCAA. It simply didn’t play difficult enough for that level.
Neither Illinois golf program—men’s, nor women’s—has played all that frequently at Stone Creek, the News-Gazette reported. The high-profile Fighting Illini Invitational, hosted by the men’s team every fall, is held at Olympia Fields Country Club in the south Chicago suburbs.
On June 30, the Atkins Group and the UI announced that Stone Creek Golf Course would be donated to the UI athletic department, the News-Gazette reported, while more than 100 residential lots, 70 acres of undeveloped acreage and a “sizeable commercial parcel” would be donated to the university.
The rarity of a home tournament could change in the coming years, the News-Gazette reported. Illinois’ acquisition of Stone Creek Golf Club will create a permanent home for the Illini golf program. The next step? Turning what will soon be called Atkins Golf Club at the University of Illinois into a championship-caliber course capable of hosting major collegiate and amateur events.
First, though, there’s work that needs to happen in order to make Atkins Golf Club suitable for those events, the News-Gazette reported. Tee boxes to extend. Landing areas and fairways to narrow. Deeper rough to develop. Greens to firm up.
“We want to provide a great test for our team members because that helps prepare them for the championships,” Illinois women’s golf coach Renee Slone said. “This is an incredible opportunity for our programs. Excited about some of the enhancements we can make. Obviously, a lot has changed in the past 20 years in golf in the way the game is played.”
Illinois men’s golf coach Mike Small has some specifics in mind for the improvements necessary for Atkins Golf Club, the News-Gazette reported. Course length needs to be extended to approximately 7,500 yards, and bunkers need to be reworked. That, plus firmer, quicker greens and the steady winds that can rip through wide open southeast Urbana should do the trick.
“There’s not as many tournaments to go around for everybody to host an event,” Small said. “To have the ability to do it and decide how we want to do it would be huge. Then, if we get an NCAA regional, that changes everything because then people would want to come see the course more often anyway.”
While Atkins Golf Club will be revamped in the coming months to accommodate the competitive needs of the Illinois golf teams, it will remain a public course, the News-Gazette reported. Both Slone and Small understand a more difficult course also has to maintain its appeal for the more casual, recreational golfers.
“Maintaining that playability for the general public, too, is important,” Slone said.
“We don’t want to complicate it for the normal golfer, the normal public player,” Small added. “I think if we do it smart enough and narrowing the fairways where amateurs would be hitting it and not so much for the public player, then I think this would still be an enjoyable, fun golf course for the public.”
A permanent golf course home for Illinois had been considered for several years, the News-Gazette reported. That included the idea of building a new course to suit the program’s needs. Land was surveyed. Designers and builders were consulted. Then Small turned his attention to what he thought was a more pressing need in a practice facility.
Now, Illinois will be able to pair its Demirjian indoor and Lauritsen/Wohlers outdoor practice facilities with a soon-to-be-renovated golf course home, the News-Gazette reported.
“Obviously, we do a lot of training and practice at our facility,” Slone said. “To actually get out on the golf course and do situational practice, a lot of times that can only be emulated on a golf course.”
Getting away from Demirjian and Lauritsen/Wohlers a little more is something Small is actually looking forward to for his team, the News-Gazette reported. As it turns out, there’s a downside to having a state-of-the-art practice facility accessible 24/7.
“Right now if you’d ask me, one of the disadvantages to having such a great facility like that on campus is our guys practice too much,” Small said. “They do. They practice too much. They get too much wrapped up into their technique, and they become practicers and not players. I think as a program, as a coach, we’re learning how to mix and match a great practice facility still with the ability to go out and compete and play and shoot a score.”
The changes are not only welcome news for the university and its golf programs, but also the surrounding community.
When The Atkins Group had announced to homeowners in January that they were having exploratory talks with Applied Ecological Services, which regularly turns golf courses into wildlife reserves, some of them were anxious over the uncertainty of what would happen to the land, the News-Gazette reported.
“There was a lot of concern about what would happen,” homeowner Mike Davis said. “We didn’t have any set opinions about what it was going to be turned into. We were just hoping it was going to turn into something that would be usable and still an asset.”
Resident Jonathan Coppess said he enjoys living next to a golf course, even though he doesn’t golf, the News-Gazette reported. Like Davis, he was open to the options, but having a resolution with certainty of what the course will become was welcome.
“I think it’s great for the neighborhood,” said Coppess, who has two young children. “We like the open space. For kids, a wildlife preserve would have more use for a place to run around. But certainly, that’s going to require who’s going to own and maintain and all that. There were a lot of questions that had to be worked through for something like that.”
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