Bunkers and Bulldozers

QUOTE/UNQUOTE For the first time since the College required students to own computers, more freshmen picked Windows (593) machines over Macs (371).

TALK ABOUT HAZARDS. BACK IN July, golfers at the Hanover Country Club worried about more than bunkers, as bulb dozers and 100-foot pines crashing to the ground came into play. Work had begun on a major renovation of the Colleges 100-year-old golf course.

Golfers managed to play through, but they won't be able to next year. The course will likely close for most of the 2001 season, with perhaps nine holes open for part of the year. The new course should be open by June 2002.

The current course, a less-than-challenging par 69 (5,800 yards) squeezed into 89 acres, doesn't compare with the championship courses at, say, Yale or Williams. The redesign adds 700 yards with four new holes carved through College-owned woods. Serious tweaking of the other 14 holes will provide new tee boxes and renovated greens. Par increases to 71.

The new layout is the work of Ron Prichard, a golf-course architect known for the renovation of historic courses such as the Longmeadow Club in Massachusetts and the original design of the Tournament Players Club in Tennessee, a PGA tour stop.

Besides upping the par, the improvements solve an age-old problem. "The renovation will give us modern, sand-based greens that drain well, so the team can practice earlier in the spring," says Dartmouth golf coach Bill Johnson. "And we'll be able to accommodate the 25,000 rounds a year we have now, as opposed to the 10,000 the original course was designed for. It won't be a championship course like Yale, but it's going to be a fun, challenging course."

Funding for the initial $3.2-million project comes from private donations. A second stage, as yet unscheduled, calls for the replacement of the cramped clubhouse on Rope Ferry Road with a new facility on the Lyme Road. A reconfiguration of holes would enable both nines to return to the clubhouse—a modern concept for a venerable 19th-century course.

Building a Better Sand Trap A gallery of construction equipmentgreets golfers on the 17th green atHanover Country Club.