The Mid Ocean Club has announced that famed golf course architect Gil Hanse will restore its famous golf course.

Work at Mid Ocean, which is ranked 44th in Golf Digest’s list of the 100 greatest golf courses outside the United States, will begin in autumn next year. This follows an infrastructure rehabilitation project, including necessary renovations to the clubhouse as well as amenity modernisation, with the course expected to reopen late in 2028.

A thorough environmental Management Plan has been developed with the Department of Environment and Natural Resources.

Key components include mangrove management and enhancement to deliver a 2:1 net gain; expansion of habitat for the endangered diamondback terrapin; the establishing of a shoreline population of Bermuda skink, one of the rarest lizards in the world; management of invasive plants and encouraging native beach lobelia and to improve nesting success of white-eyed vireo (also known as Chick of the Village), eastern bluebird and white-tailed tropicbird.

The Charles Blair Macdonald-designed course was opened in the 1920s and Hanse, who has worked on various restorations, is delighted to be given the chance to restore the course to its original look.

“The vision always comes down to, first and foremost, restoration,” Hanse said.

“It’s about trying to understand what Charles Blair Macdonald and Seth Raynor built, how things have changed over time and then do the best we can from a research standpoint to try to get it back to the original vision.

“Thankfully, the club had a lot of historical information and so that made our job much easier. We've had the good fortune of being entrusted at other Macdonald and Raynor golf courses, so we felt with that background and the specific information about Mid Ocean Club, we were going to be well prepared to present a plan to the membership to restore the golf course back to the original Macdonald and Raynor vision.”

Mid Ocean provides a significant challenge for an architect with the course undulations providing a unique test.

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“You can actually see the surf crashing up against the rocks at Mid Ocean Club,” Hanse said.

“People tend to think of seaside golf courses as being fairly flat, and that's the surprising thing. I hadn't been to Mid Ocean Club in almost 35 years from the time that I was there with my wife, Tracey, on our honeymoon.

“So coming back to see the golf course, I was really struck by the elevation change and the topography on the golf course was significant. I think Macdonald incorporated those template holes and created that ideal golf course in a landscape that was so very different than almost anything else he had worked on.

“The relationship between land and sea there is a completely different aspect than where he had been given the opportunity at places like National Golf Links or Lido. So from that standpoint, it's a truly special blending of that vision of ideal golf holes with a wonderfully unique canvas to work upon.”

The 5th hole at Mid Ocean has achieved fame around the world and Hanse calls it “one of the greatest holes in golf”, so it is no surprise that he is looking forward to working on the historic hole.

“The 5th is recognised as one of the greatest holes in the world of golf and appropriately so,” Hanse said.

“It’s the most audacious and interesting version of the Cape hole, where the theory is to take off as much as you can chew to gain an advantage.

“It starts off at this elevated tee looking down over Mangrove Lake. When you look at the original design and the scale of it, and without the mangroves lining the lake, you were able to take in the breadth of the hole and really understand what Macdonald was asking you to do.

“So it’s about the restoration of the lake edge and restoring the dramatic nature of the golf hole and connecting golf back to Mangrove Lake which, over time and evolution, it had become separated from.

“Ultimately, we’re looking at that restoration as being the high point, not only from a visual standpoint, but also from a design standpoint and restoring the tee shot. From the fairway you are in a position to play up into the elevated green, and we will be expanding that green, restoring bunkers back to the original scale and scope to match the beauty of the tee shot.

“Given the day when that golf course and that hole was built, it was a monumental challenge to overcome, hitting off of that from that perch. It is rightfully regarded as one of the greatest holes in golf.”

Hanse has been aided in his plans with photographs of the course taken by generations of members, which have proved especially valuable given the loss of the course’s original plans.

“We've been very lucky that we've had some great information and some archival footage,” he said.

“We’ve got great aerial photographs. Macdonald-Raynor plans don’t really exist. For whatever reason, they’ve been lost over time. Raynor being an engineer, you’d think they’d have much more detailed plans. But they really didn't do that, and I think they just relied more on sort of the initial concept and then fitting the ideal golf holes into the landscape around them.

“But the one thing that we have had, which is great — and you tend to find this at great old clubs that have long legacies of membership and family engagement — is we’ve actually had some members come forward with photographs of their grandparents playing golf out there.

“We actually had one member who provided us with photographs of Charles Blair Macdonald playing golf out there with one of his family members. So we have had a wealth of information that we normally don't get access to.

“It was well chronicled as a famous golf course when it opened and certainly Macdonald was very good at promoting his projects. We’ve got some photographs from during construction, we’ve got the great aerial photos, and then having some of these family heirlooms has been a treasure trove of information. We feel like we're armed with a lot of great stuff as we move into this restoration.”