At 80-years-old, a face-lift might be considered desperate, but for Baltimore Country Club’s East Course at Five Farms, a multi-million dollar restoration was just what the greens keeper ordered.

It will need to look its best, too, as it will host the PGA Champions Tour’s Constellation Energy Senior Players Championship from Oct. 1-7.

“It is all coming together nicely with the golf course,” said Steve Schoenfeld, the Executive Director of the Senior Players Championship. “The players and fans will enjoy it.”

It was announced in January of last year the Senior Players Championship, the final event on the tour’s calendar, would move to Baltimore Country Club before the club had begun the final phase of restoration. The club’s restoration was completed this April and will be ready for the throngs of fans and national television coverage that will arrive on the course in October.

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The plan for the restoration was to bring the course back to its original form, but also maintain the course’s degree of difficulty in-line with today’s superior clubs and balls that allow players to hit shots much further than when the course opened in September of 1926. The course had several of its holes realigned, all 96 bunkers rebuilt and was lengthened by 200 yards.

“We have gotten an overwhelming positive response from our membership,” said Club General Manager Michael Stott of the restoration. “We are proud of our heritage and our history of hosting of major championships.”

The Baltimore Country Club will become the second course — New York’s Winged Foot Golf Club is the other — to host one major tournament in the three major golf tours. The club’s East Course hosted the 1928 PGA Championship, the 1988 U.S. Women’s Open and the 1932 U.S. Amateur Championship. It also hosted the Walker Cup in 1965.

“There are very few blind spots,” Schoenfeld said. “It is a pure course. There are hazards, but they are laid out in front of you so there are not many surprises. It plays like a traditional course.”

ALREADY A SELL OUT

» All 1,500 clubhouse passes, granting access to the course and clubhouse during the Constellation Energy Senior Players Tour have already been sold out. Schoenfeld has also nearly filled his 1,000 volunteer positions, with roughly 250 remaining.