In recent months, status reports involving Tiger Woods have focused largely on his latest round of rehab. Here’s a more uplifting update. It concerns Trout National-The Reserve, Woods’ collaboration with baseball star Mike Trout.
If you keep up with golf headlines, you’re likely familiar with the outline of the project, a private destination golf club in Trout’s hometown of Vineland in southern New Jersey, featuring a championship course by Woods’ golf architecture firm, TGR Design. In the nearly two years since word of Trout National first got out, details about the property have been kept on the down-low. But as work progresses, a clearer picture of the club has taken shape.
The course itself was finished in October, and, thanks to a stretch of forgiving weather, all 18 holes are now fully grassed. They make up a brawny par-72 layout that tips out 7,455 yards, with a routing that takes advantage of the rumpled terrain of what used to be a silica sand mining site. The course design is meant to bring out imaginative shot-making, with many greens accessible by the ground game and runoffs around them that allow for creative recoveries.
“It’s going to be challenging,” says Tyler Trout, Mike’s brother, who heads the club’s development team. “But I don’t see people losing a lot of balls around here.”
As the turf takes deeper root, construction continues on a slate of Trout-inspired amenities. In a cap-tip to baseball, a comfort station called the Dugout is nearing completion behind the 14th and 16th teeing areas. True to its name, its design mirrors that of dugouts in MLB stadiums, with stadium seating as a perch to watch shots from ground level and a digital scoreboard displaying scores from players around the course.
A more expansive stopping point, meanwhile, is already finished. A full food-and-beverage hangout (it’s called Aaron’s, in honor of Mike’s late brother-in-law, who enjoyed a life-of-the-party reputation) is set between the 6th and 11th holes in a location that golfers pass several times throughout a round and boasts wrap-around terraces, fire pits, outdoor cooking and an indoor-outdoor bar that is meant to be a place where members and their guests can kick back, spectate and, if the spirit moves them, treat their friends in other groups to light-hearted heckles.
Trout National is situated within easy striking distance of Philadelphia and Atlantic City, in a region that is home to some of the country’s most storied courses, but it aims to strike a classic-contemporary balance by appealing to golfers with a course designed for purists in a setting free of stuffiness or starch.
“It’s going to have a feel that has been growing in golf over the past decade or so,” Trout says. “It’s pure golf. You don’t see any houses. But the culture and vibe are more modern and relaxed.”
