Mt. Hawley Country Club has hit the grounds running this summer with a major renovation of its 18-hole golf course.
The bunkers on the par-71, 6,359-yard course are the newest, and perhaps best in the area now after a six-week, $800,000 project.
Club members were invited to play the course and check out the bunkers for the first time this week.
“We’re super proud of the project,” said Bill Cole, the former Illini basketball player and presently a Mt. Hawley Country Club board member. “These just got finished, reshaped, remodeled on every hole. It’s literally in great shape.
“Aesthetically, just to look at it, it’s a 10. That old brown, 25-year-old sand is gone. Now it’s that nice white sand and it really pops. If you’re interested in playing on a pristine golf course and doing it in a location easy to reach I think we’re the new club in town ready to make that our calling card.”
Billy Bunker and Ohio sand
The Mt. Hawley bunker project was guided carefully by many hands, including Cole, longtime club member and former board member Paul Hammond, club pro Dave Lundy and course superintendent Spencer Smith.
Illinois-based golf course architect Todd Quitno hired on, and the project was done by Illinois contractor Hollembeak Construction.
Smith says the course repurposed 50,000 square feet of fairway/bent grass sod. About 160,000 square feet of rough sod was installed.
The bunkers were renovated with the Better Billy Bunker System, a bunker design launched in 1994 by former Augusta National course superintendent Billy Fuller, and today is in use on more than 600 courses nationwide.
The Billy Bunker system enhances drainage and stabilizes sand and minimizes contamination from storms.
And the sand is the thing. Just like Major League Baseball infields utilize a special clay from a mine in Pennsylvania, and baseballs are rubbed by Mississippi mud, golf has an elite type of sand for its bunkers. It’s called Pro/Angle Sand, and it comes from terrain impacted long ago by a glacier and mined in Thompson, Ohio, a small town near Lake Erie about 50 miles west of Cleveland.
“It’s what the best courses in the country use,” Hammond said. “It was a huge undertaking. The look of it is very impressive. The bunkers were very aged, hadn’t been touched in 25 years. Now it’s really beautiful white sand.”
There were 45 bunkers on the 18-hole course to do. Mt. Hawley trucked in 40 semis from Ohio loaded with the sand, about 900 tons of the Pro/Angle product all told.
“They were pretty poor, any rain event they would wash out, make them hard to play, and difficult for our maintenance team,” Lundy said. “We had to use Chillicothe river sand. This money was well-invested. It’s a white sand like PGA Tour events. Top of the line from this pit in Ohio.”
More than the golf course
Mt. Hawley Country Club, located at 7724 N. Knoxville Ave., opened in 1922. More than 100 years later, its course has a face lift, and so do its amenities.
A second round of renovations is planned, in which the eight tennis courts at Mt. Hawley will be re-purposed. Two will remain tennis configurations. But six will become pickleball courts. Those courts will also get lighting.
“We’re excited about the direction we’re going,” Lundy said.
The club’s pool already has new furniture. And the club also wants to be on area radar as a destination for business meetings and dining.
“We’re making sure we create and maintain a family culture,” Cole said. “The next phase is for those who don’t golf. We offer social memberships. I’ve lived in Peoria my whole life, and sometimes you talk to people who’ve never driven back there (seen the club).”
Dave Eminian is the Journal Star sports columnist, and covers Bradley men’s basketball, the Rivermen and Chiefs. He writes the Cleve In The Eve sports column for pjstar.com. He can be reached at 686-3206 or deminian@pjstar.com. Follow him on X.com @icetimecleve.
