The Monday Mowdown: Detroit Rebuilt, Royal Lytham Goes Robotic

Detroit Golf Club began a full renovation of its North Course immediately after last year’s Rocket Classic. Greens, tees and bunkers were rebuilt, while a new irrigation system was installed under architect Tyler Rae’s restoration plan.

The competition routing also has been reorganized. The tournament’s opening two holes will use the members’ Nos. 8 and 9, followed by the North Course’s first hole as the tournament’s third. Director of agronomy Sam Moynihan and his staff are not simply preparing the familiar Detroit venue. They are introducing a different version of it.

The new par-70 configuration will feature bentgrass greens, collars, approaches, tees and fairways. The average fairway is only 26 yards wide, while the turf-type tall fescue and bluegrass rough is expected to stand at 4 inches.

There are 103 bunkers covering approximately 160,000 square feet, but no water hazards. That last number may sound inviting until the rest of the setup is considered. Detroit Golf Club does not need ponds or creeks to create uncomfortable recovery shots. It can use narrow corridors, Ross-influenced angles, firm greenside contours and rough thick enough to compromise both contact and control.

The restoration has the potential to change how the event is played. Detroit has traditionally been associated with low scoring, but rebuilt greens and bunkers can alter sightlines and preferred landing areas even when the surrounding property remains familiar. Players who rely too heavily on old yardage books and memories may find that the North Course no longer gives them the same answers.

Moynihan is preparing for his fourth Rocket Classic. North Course superintendent Richard Juvancic, South Course superintendent Darryl Jackson, construction superintendent Steve Addis, equipment manager Tim Travis and the club’s assistant superintendents form the core operation around him. That staff has carried the course from demolition and construction into tournament presentation within a single year.

There is also an unavoidable bit of timing attached to the unveiling. The 2026 tournament will be the final Rocket Classic under Rocket Companies’ sponsorship. The PGA Tour has said it remains interested in Detroit and will explore possibilities for another sponsor, but the tournament’s place on the 2027 schedule has not been secured.

Detroit Golf Club has rebuilt a course capable of presenting a more complete professional test. This week may determine whether the tournament platform around it receives a rebuild of its own.

The Monday Mowdown

Detroit Golf Club: The New Test

The rebuilt North Course removes water from the equation but replaces it with narrow landing areas, deep rough and 103 bunkers.

70

Par

26 Yds.

Avg. Fairway

4 In.

Rough

103

Bunkers

0

Water Hazards

The Mowdown Read: Detroit does not need water to punish mistakes. The combination of 4-inch rough, narrow fairways and restored Ross angles can make the wrong miss expensive.

Royal Lytham Brings Robots to a 174-Bunker Major

Royal Lytham & St Annes is not receiving its introduction to championship golf.

The Lancashire links has hosted the AIG Women’s Open five times, producing victories by Georgia Hall, Catriona Matthew, Annika Sörenstam and Sherri Steinhauer, who won there in 1998 and 2006. Its sixth Women’s Open will also mark the championship’s 50th edition.

The official hole-by-hole setup totals 6,601 yards and par 71. That number alone does not reveal much about Lytham’s character. The club’s defining statistic is its 174 strategically positioned pot bunkers, spread across a links bordered by suburban housing and a railway line. The Irish Sea is not visible from the course, but the coastal breeze remains part of the examination.

The par-4 third has nine bunkers and ranks as the most difficult hole in the official course guide. The 586-yard seventh has 14, including six surrounding its long, narrow green. Players may be able to overpower certain stretches elsewhere, but Lytham keeps asking for the correct side of the fairway and the discipline to play away from hazards that offer few heroic escape options.

What makes this Women’s Open especially interesting from the maintenance side is how the club is combining that old-school architecture with newer operating technology.

Royal Lytham has purchased four Husqvarna CEORA 546 EPOS autonomous units and one Automower 580L EPOS. Husqvarna is supplying two additional CEORA machines to support championship preparation. The program follows the use of robotic mowers across all 18 fairways during the 2025 AIG Women’s Open at Royal Porthcawl.

Smith is not describing a fully automated maintenance operation. His staff has developed what he called “a hybrid maintenance programme” that combines conventional cylinder mowing with robotic equipment.

That distinction matters. Autonomous mowers are not replacing course knowledge, judgment or skilled greenkeepers. They can provide mowing consistency, reduce pressure on equipment fleets and allow trained staff members to spend more time on bunkers, surrounds, presentation details and the daily adjustments that become critical during a major.

Lytham’s modernization extends beyond mowing. A recent championship-focused remodeling program included a new practice ground and practice tee, a rerouted 11th fairway, a new tee at No. 14 and improved internal road access. Environmental planning also addressed the protection of the site’s dunes, habitat and rare species.

Jonathan Fisher, head greenkeeper at Ruddington Grange, and Kate Stillwell, course manager at Golf Club of Kópavogur and Garðabær in Iceland, will join the Royal Lytham operation through The R&A Championship Agronomy Programme. Their inclusion reinforces another part of major-championship maintenance that rarely receives enough attention: these weeks are competitive tests for players, but they are also classrooms for the next generation of course leaders.

AIG Women's Open

Royal Lytham’s Sand Examination

Length is only the beginning. Royal Lytham’s pot bunkers dictate positioning, approach angles and when a player must accept the safer route.

6,601

Yards

71

Par

174

Pot Bunkers

14

Bunkers on No. 7

6th

Women’s Open Visit

The Mowdown Read: Royal Lytham asks players to earn their angles. A few extra yards rarely compensate for playing from the wrong side of one of golf’s most heavily bunkered layouts.

Two Historic Courses Make Two Modern Decisions

Detroit Golf Club and Royal Lytham are modernizing in different ways because they are solving different problems.

Detroit needed to restore architectural identity, replace aging infrastructure and make its North Course more compelling for members and professional competition. Royal Lytham needed to improve its championship logistics while finding more efficient ways to maintain a large, detailed links operation.

One project is primarily architectural. The other is operational. Both require the maintenance teams to protect characteristics that made the courses significant in the first place.

At Detroit, the restored Ross influence should be measured by whether players must think more carefully about position, angle and recovery. Fresh turf and attractive bunkers will photograph well, but the renovation’s real value will emerge when a player misses the wrong side of a 26-yard fairway and discovers that the next shot has changed.

At Lytham, autonomous mowing should be judged less by the novelty of driverless machines and more by what the technology allows the human team to accomplish elsewhere. The machine can follow its mapped route. It cannot read a changing breeze, evaluate bunker presentation, anticipate traffic patterns or understand how one day of links weather should affect the next morning’s maintenance plan.

That remains the work of experienced people.

Thursday will turn both courses over to the players. Until then, one crew is refining every contour of a rebuilt Ross layout while another balances cylinder blades, robots, links turf and 174 pot bunkers.

None of that work appears on a leaderboard. Almost all of it will help determine what the leaderboard eventually means.

Why It Matters

Historic Venues Cannot Stand Still

Detroit Golf Club

Rebuilt greens, tees and bunkers, a new irrigation system and restored Donald Ross strategy.

Royal Lytham & St Annes

A hybrid mowing program, autonomous equipment and infrastructure improvements designed for modern major championships.

The Shared Goal

Use modern tools to make each course’s original strategic identity clearer rather than covering it up.

PGA of America Golf Professional Brendon Elliott is an award-winning coach and golf writer who serves as Athlon Sports Senior Golf Writer. Read his recent “The Starter” on R.org, where he is their Lead Golf Writer. To stay updated on all of his latest work, sign up for his newsletter or visit his MuckRack Profile.