sweden Swede Dreams

An aging Swedish beauty is getting major surgery, and a familiar face is holding the scalpel.

This summer, the Old Course at Vasatorps Golf Club in Helsingborg closes for an extreme makeover led by Steve Forrest, the Toledo, Ohio-based architect who designed the club’s celebrated, three-year-old Tournament course.

When it was younger and fresher, the Old Course –- a mostly flat, 18-hole track designed by Thure Bruce that opened in 1974 -– hosted an event on the European PGA Tour. Forrest aims to redesign and/or reroute a few of its holes, rebuild and relocate its bunkers, enlarge some ponds, and recontour some fairways. When Vasatorps’ members next play the Old Course, they’ll experience a layout with more character and more challenge.

“We were amazed by [the members’] openness to the changes we suggested, which some could fairly describe as quite radical,” said Forrest, a principal of Hills & Forrest International Golf Course Architects, in a press release.

The Old Course will be ready for its close-up in the spring of 2013.