Delray Beach Golf Club Reopening: Ross and Wilson Nines

South of the clubhouse on Highland Avenue, a canal runs north to south through the middle of the course. The par-3 8th hole plays across it to a raised, volcano-style green. When architect John Sanford played high school and junior golf here in the 1970s, that was the hole that stuck with him. It is also one of the few things on the renovated Delray Beach Golf Club that sits where Donald Ross drew it in his 1925 routing plan, according to Golf Course Industry.

The city's renovation site says the goal is to restore the course "in step with the vision of its original architects, Donald Ross and Dick Wilson." When Sanford Ferris Golf Design and contractor NMP Golf Construction broke ground in December 2025, though, they found no Ross or Wilson features left to save. Golf Course Industry calls the finished work "tantamount to an original design, an interpretive tribute." So the course reopening this season is one no one has played before, built to look like the course that existed before the 1960s.

A century of courses on one piece of land

The pedigree is real. Golf Course Industry describes Delray's municipal course as the only 18 holes known to combine original work by Ross and Wilson. But a lot has happened on the site since either man finished:

1. 1923: The city buys the land.
2. 1926: Ross's city-owned nine opens. He had taken the commission in 1924. A second Ross nine was planned but never built, mainly because of the Great Depression. Through many of those lean years, the club's pro and greenkeeper was Dick Wilson.
3. 1950: After a World War II closure, Wilson's own nine opens north of the clubhouse. It was one of his first solo designs.
4. 1962: Red Lawrence expands the property to 27 holes. Soon after, the family of Robert Bruce Harris buys the whole property, and Harris remakes all three nines, wiping out the work of Ross, Wilson and Lawrence.
5. 1979 to the 1990s: The city buys the course back. In 1981 the Lawrence nine is sold to commercial developers, and Karl Litton renovates the remaining 18 in the 1990s.
6. November 3, 2025: The course closes for the current renovation.

By the time Sanford and partner David Ferris started, Ross had left behind a routing plan and some site notes. Wilson had left nothing. Decades of heavy municipal play, several renovations and hurricanes had left almost no original features anywhere on the routing. The Ross and Wilson course existed for about a dozen years, from 1950 until Harris took over. Anyone who played the muni in the decades since was playing someone else's course.

Two architects' styles, rebuilt from the ground up

Since there was nothing to preserve, the designers split the property by architect. The south nine is all Ross and the north nine is all Wilson. Bobby Jones Links, which now manages the course, lists the new layout at par 72, playing from 4,611 to 7,111 yards.

You will see the difference first in the bunkers. Ferris told Golf Course Industry that in Florida, Ross typically called for low sand lines, flat bunker floors and grass faces. Wilson built irregular bunker lines with small capes and bays, and on flat, open ground he grouped bunkers into large clusters to give the holes some definition. The Wilson nine shows this right away. Its first hole is a par 5 where bunker clusters frame both the landing areas and the green.

The greens differ too. Sanford says Wilson's contours follow the high and low points around the edge of each green, with three or four exit points between the bunkers. Ross's greens rely on small internal rolls and more convex crowns. According to NMP, all 18 greens are being cored out and rebuilt to USGA specifications.

The grass is what ties the two nines together. The greens are TifEagle Bermuda, the fairways are Bimini, and the outer, unirrigated areas are Pensacola Bahia. Sanford says 1953 aerial photos showed Wilson leaving a lot of exposed sand between holes. NMP's shapers carved what he calls windswept "blowouts" into the local white sand, and the team liked the result enough to extend it across about 25 acres of both nines. NMP's Darryl Bartlett said the Bahia is being used almost like a "Southern fescue" and called the look "very different from the typical manicured South Florida golf presentation."

"These were very different nines, designed by two legends 25 years apart. But the finished product will flow, and this wide-angle framing will really pull the two loops together." John Sanford, speaking to Golf Course Industry

The crew also dug into the old greens to see how much of the original work survived. While rebuilding the Ross greens, they peeled back layers from earlier reconstructions, looking for the black moisture-holding layer Ross had installed. Sanford said what they found was too incomplete to use as a historical reference because earlier renovations had removed or altered the original Ross green pads. The same pattern held across the property. Only the routing and the canal crossing at the 8th were left to build around.

When public play resumes

The work moved fast by Florida standards. Crews started in December, and the course was mostly grassed by mid-summer, while a typical Florida project breaks ground in April. The reopening date is less clear, and the official sources give slightly different answers:

• City of Delray Beach, December 2025 update: course, practice facilities and clubhouse expected back in November 2026.
• Boca Magazine, September 2026: estimated reopening in late November 2026.
• The city's renovation site, current schedule: course and clubhouse both expected back "late fall/early winter."
• Bobby Jones Links' club profile: reopening in early 2027.

The remaining construction explains the spread. Bartlett said the rest of the civil work, including the maintenance building, the Lake Worth Canal work and the clubhouse, should be finished by December. Bobby Jones Links is managing the grow-in, and the city will decide when the grand reopening happens and when public play resumes. As of this week, none of these sources has set a specific opening day.

This time, golfers pay for the course

The financing explains why this round of work went ahead. Before the bond, the City Commission considered a public-private partnership in which a developer would rebuild the course in exchange for part of the land. Six developers submitted proposals. Boca Magazine reported that the commission rejected them after pushback from residents and golfers.

The city used a revenue bond instead. According to The Coastal Star, the commission approved a $28.5 million construction contract with NMP on October 14, 2025, and a $33 million bond issue a week later, on October 21. In October 2025, City Manager Terrence Moore told WPTV that the bond would be "supported by user fees or rates via golfers and other patrons of the facility once the renovation is completed," and not paid for directly by taxpayers.

That puts green fees at the center of the project, and the city hasn't adopted a rate schedule for the reopened course yet. The only published numbers come from a consultant's proposal presented in August 2025. As Boca Magazine reported it, the proposal called for 18-hole peak-season rates of $80 for residents and $105 for nonresidents. Off-season rates would be $39 and $47. Residents could buy a $67 permit for lower rates, and fees would rise 5% a year through 2031, then 2% a year after that. Boca Magazine defines peak season as November through April, so if those rates are adopted, they would start right around the reopening.

The proposed rates are modest next to other renovated municipal courses nearby. Golf Course Industry notes that at The Park in West Palm Beach and North Palm Beach Country Club, two other recently refurbished municipal courses, tee times run from $200 to $350.

Lakeview is open in the meantime

Delray's other city course was never closed. Lakeview Golf Club is a public, par-60 executive course of 3,006 yards with online tee-time booking. Bobby Jones Links was hired to run both city courses, so the same company manages Lakeview's short game while the big course finishes growing in. The latest construction footage on the city's renovation site is dated July 28, 2026, if you want to see how the sand blowouts and Bahia look before your first round.

A city amenity rebuilt with $33 million in bond money is the kind of local investment our team tracks closely across Delray Beach and the North Shore. If you'd like to talk about what a reopened course a few minutes west of downtown means for homes nearby, Abbie Homes Group is glad to talk it through. Request Your Home Valuation.