Club Spruced Up for Women Golfers

The Wood Ranch Golf Club is all spruced up and ready for guests. New sand lies in the bunker traps. More flowers abound all over the course. And there is a grandstand seating section on the 18th hole.

These are just some of changes that have been made at the golf club, site of this week’s Los Angeles Women’s Golf Championship, a sanctioned Ladies Professional Golf Assn. event.

Starting today with practice and qualifying rounds, Wood Ranch will be the hub of professional women’s golf for seven days.

The Golf Channel will televise the tournament, and golfers such as Dotty Pepper, Laura Davies and Se Ri Pak will be among the field of 132.

For the past week, renovations have been going on all over the course. In addition to fresh sand and flowers, algae from rocks in the course’s six lakes have been hosed off. Green paint has been put on the grass. And the fairways and golf tees have been modified and remodeled to suit LPGA regulations.

All in all, more than $100,000 has been spent by the club for the renovations and new course work, said Edward Kutt, the club supervisor. But he thinks it will be worth it.

“Many of [the] renovations needed to take place anyway,” Kutt said. “The tournament kind of just sped that along.”