Country Club of Salisbury golfers will see some major changes on the course’s back nine when renovation is completed, according to one of the nation’s top golf course architects.

“I think, like any course that gets reworked, it will take the members a year or so to get used to it,” said Brian Silva of Cornish, Silva & Mungeam Inc. of Uxbridge, Mass.

“The players will have to relearn portions of the back nine. We have this random bunker effect on holes No. 11, 12 and 13 that I think they’re going to find is a lot of fun to work their way down the golf holes,” said Silva.

“On the 11th hole, if you were in the habit of hitting your ball down the right side of the fairway, well, you’re going to be in a bunker. And, if you are in the bunker, then you’ll say, ‘Why did I hit to that? There was 35 yards to the left of those bunkers,”’ said Silva.

The $1.1-$1.2 million project started in January. Silva and Course Crafters, a construction company from Gainesville, Fla., will have finished their work by July 1, when another project is scheduled at Augusta Country Club in Augusta, Ga.

Course superintendent Ron Bivins will then be in charge of getting the back nine ready for play. He hopes the renovated holes will be open sometime in October.

Silva, Golf World magazine’s 1999 architect of the year, specializes in renovating courses originally designed by the late Donald Ross and other architects of the early 1900s.

Ross was in Salisbury during the construction of the front nine, which was completed in 1925. His plans were followed for the back nine, which was opened in 1940, but he did not oversee the construction.

“The thing that’s really interesting, the more old courses you study, is that you realize the old-timers new all the shots and all the variety of holes. Current architects might spend more time than they need to invent something new, but you come back to realize that the old-timers had studied the game and studied the land. They knew all the shots. You need to kind of adapt their thoughts to today’s courses,” said Silva.

The architect’s goal, when he started the project and looked at the original plans,was to make the flatter back nine have more of a Ross flavor.

“I think the most noticeable thing is that there will be a lot more bunkers in the fairways than there used to be. Those flatter holes (Nos. 11, 12, 13 and 14) were much more heavily bunkered on his plan than any of the holes on the rest of the golf course,” he said.

“I think a lot of the greens on the back nine were kind of bunkered in a more repetitive style — a bunker on the right, a bunker on the left, a bunker to the rear — which you don’t see on a lot of these vintage courses. We’ve tried to make a guarded side of the green with a bunker and then maybe an open side of the green, where it’s just rough or some of these close-cut chipping areas, kind of like come into play at Pinehurst No. 2 (Ross’ most famous course),” Silva added.

“I think they (golfers) are going to see a little more movement in the fairways. The fairways kind of twist and turn as they go from tee to green. There’s always landing area there, but it comes down straight to a bunker. They(fairways) shift a little to the left going around the bunker. Once it gets behind the bunker, it shifts back again,” he explained.

Silva added that the back nine will have less greenside bunkers and more fairway bunkers and there will be raised greens that fall off sharp at the edges like at Pinehurst No. 2.

Silva calls the course a sleeping giant.

“Eventually, when the club reworks the front nine and puts back bunkers into play that have been taken out over time, and gets the improved grasses on the greens, on the fairways and on the tees, I think people are going to come to appreciate that this is a pretty strong golf course,” he said.

“I think this is a wonderful what I call vintage golf course that maybe doesn’t get the mention it should, because it hasn’t been a tournament site as frequently as other courses have,” he pointed out.

Silva, a 12-handicapper, says it’s important than an architect also be a golfer.

“I think it’s really important for having an appreciation of how the game is played at a higher level. I think what you do is design your courses for the accomplished players, then make alternate routes for the less accomplished players,” he said.

Bivins said seven of the nine greens have been seeded with the other two to be seeded soon and that eight tee boxes have been sodded. He expects sprigging of the fairways to start this week.

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