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NORTON - Shortly after the fourth annual Deutsche Bank Championship ended last Labor Day, PGA Tour officials decided improvements were needed to their golf course off Route 140.

The second round of the FedEx Cup, the tour's new four-week playoffs, would be held at the Tournament Players Club of Boston this Labor Day weekend, making the Deutsche Bank Championship a "mini-major" likely to attract the sport's biggest stars.

"It was already a big theater," said Ric Clarson, senior vice president of the PGA Tour, "but now a Broadway show was coming to town, so we needed to make it even bigger."

In just six months, the TPC Boston has undergone more than a renovation. It has undergone a transformation that not only is expected to make for an exciting tournament but could also start a trend in golf course construction across the country.

The course, which celebrated its fifth birthday earlier this summer, looks dramatically different from the one designed by golf legend Arnold Palmer's company. Gone are many of the sharply-cut bunkers, the enormous greens and the crisply-drawn fairways. Replacing them are fewer but much larger sand traps with wispy grass along the edges, smaller but more layered greens and high hay-like grass known as fescue.

In short, the TPC Boston's new look has a very retro feel, an early 21st century course that appears to be a late 19th century New England layout.

"Where would you rather see a game, Shea Stadium or Fenway Park?" asked Seth Waugh, CEO of Deutsche Bank North America, comparing New York's often derided cookie-cutter stadium to Boston's park with its many idiosyncracies. "We're trying to instill the same character at this golf course."

Clarson said the PGA Tour created a trend in the 1970s when it built the TPC Sawgrass, a modern-looking Florida course that featured one hole that had a green sitting in an island in the middle of a pond. Since then, all of the other TPC courses scattered around the country as well as many other golf courses have adopted this modern look.

A different approach was taken when the decision was made to overhaul the TPC Boston. Waugh said the idea was to take an approach much like that at Camden Yards, the Baltimore baseball park which launched a trend in that sport. The Camden Yard architects replaced shiny steel with bricks and symmetrical dimensions with odd corners, much like old urban parks such as Fenway.

The PGA Tour hired golf course architect Gil Hanse to create an old-time New England feel to the TPC Boston. Hanse, helped by New England native and PGA Tour veteran Brad Faxon, borrowed ideas found at some of New England's oldest golf courses. The four previous winners of the Deutsche Bank Championship - Tiger Woods, Vijay Singh, Adam Scott and Olin Browne - were also asked for their input.

Hanse said it is more than appearance that will change when Woods and the rest of the PGA Tour tee it up in Norton Aug. 31-Sept. 3. He hopes TPC Boston will become a thinking player's course, rather than a long-hitter layout as it has in the past.

"All of these guys have such great skills," Hanse said. "The place where they're most vulnerable is in their minds. If we can create some doubt in their mind over whether this club or that club is the right one for each shot, then we've been successful. ... As (famed golf course architect) Pete Dye once said, 'Once you get these guys thinking, they're in trouble.' "

Faxon called the Norton layout "THE best TPC course in the country" and sees the retro idea catching on at other golf courses. He also marveled that entire project, from conception to finish, took little more than six months.

"You know, this place wasn't even built to be a (PGA Tour) tournament course," he said. "To think it will now host a mini-major is just amazing." MIKE KIRBY can be reached at 508-236-0344 or at mkirby@thesunchronicle.com.