Westchester CC and why golf is good on so many levels

Image via Wikipedia

With new business for golf architects at a premium right now, there's a case to be made for a 'before and after' approach to their promotional strategy.

Admittedly, amidst all those high-resolution pictures of emerald fairways at sunset, a shot of ragged pasture with a cow on it might jar somewhat but then anyone with a clue who skims the brochure will appreciate that the latter image says as much, if not more, than the former.

For we can be easily seduced by an impressive finished product into underestimating the vision that saw it first, amid all the cattle and brambles and scrub. Were a picture of the finished hole accompanied by one of the blank canvas that met the designer on his first tour of the property, I think it would only enhance our appreciation of how he earns his crust.

You and I might gaze out across such virgin terrain and wonder "where do I start?" but he already knows. Having tackled Westchester Country Club's West Course (pictured) courtesy of Links 2003 this week, mind you, I'm a little more clued up as to what my own starting point would be.

I wasn't expecting great things of this Walter Travis design, to be honest. I think my spontaneous affection for whisky after a mere 48 years has been mirrored by a similarly out-of-the-blue appreciation of links golf over the manicured parkland courses I had previously preferred. Between its coasts, I've decided, America has a lot of inland country club layouts that are a little samey.

Then I came to the drive into the valley at the 3rd, the downhill run at the 5th and 12th and the 7th's adverse camber and in having my curiosity piqued, began to realise what I'd be looking for in virgin land before anything else.

Different elevations.

Slopes, ledges, drop-offs: playing down from the brink of a small escarpment or up to a green perched in a hillside. Anything that breaks a plane and departs from the flat and predictable. Give me that and we're in business.

Although you'll need to lose the cow.
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Pic of the Day - Scotland's Mar Hall Golf Course

Clayton takes dead aim on fate of golf

Anyone with access to the UK version of Golf World should grab a copy of the latest issue as soon as possible, for if last month's feature on Tom Doak was absorbing, the interview with Mike Clayton (right) is gripping from start to finish.

This is a no-holds-barred assault on those with power to influence the architecture v technology debate. By the time you've read it, the mental image of Nero fiddling while Rome burns will be unavoidable.

To feature all the 'money quotes' here would lead me into copyright issues, so I will just leave it at this and urge you to buy:

"Someone like Adam Scott has to hit a 5-iron off every tee if he wants to play Swinley Forest. He can't go to Sunningdale and have fun anymore. He can't play it in the way Bobby Jones played it, or how Harry Colt wanted it to be played. I don't understand why the authorities don't care about something like that."

[Image via Wikipedia]

Tell me Alister MacKenzie wouldn't have loved these......?

Sometimes, good golf architecture goes beyond the turf:

The thinking behind it here. I'm sensing a nailed-on endorsement opportunity for Dustin Hoffman, by the way.

Imagine golf's Golden Age lasting a week?

Image via Wikipedia

I'm having to read between the lines here, because word of what could be the world's most chameleon golf course is currently out there in bite size chunks rather than in one comprehensive narrative.

Commissioned to make sport and the environment sit comfortably alongside each other among some of the most impressive dunes in the Sahara Desert, designers Fadi Massoud and Matthew Spremulli have submitted proposals that include a golf course whose fairway texture and outline will change with virtually each cycle of seasonal rain and calculated flooding from a dammed lake.

The location - "a site of intense parody," they call it - is in Morocco:

"An existing small dam in the area holds water in an artificial lake within a natural depression. Leaks in the structure and the confluence of a seasonal river allowed for accidental flourishing wetlands to occur. The design premise for the project is to capitalize on these `mistakes` by allowing new structures and programs to augment ecologies and advance site processes. By allowing terracing and certain openings within the dam itself, new spaces for occupation and circulation emerge."

The course will help stop dune advancement by creating a wetland system. While it seems to be intended that the tees and greens remain where they are, seasonal rains and the ephemeral nature of the river will cause the fairways to "evolve". How much "evolution" a feasible golf course can handle, mind you, is the million dollar question. I'm thinking superintendents probably have nightmares about courses like this.

"I've heard it's a bit like TPC Scottsdale."

"Nah, that was last week. This week it's more La Quinta..."

A graphical illustration of the proposals can be found here.
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Pic of the Day - can ayone identify this beauty?

One for the notebook - Stevinson Ranch

It's usually other golf articles that alert me to appealing courses but the Harbottle and Kelley design at California's Stevinson Ranch is one I stumbled across while trying to find out why Royal Melbourne's 'greens' seemed as much 'blues' during the recent President's Cup.

I'm amazed I hadn't heard of it before, because as one reviewer notes:

"...despite not having any ocean view, glimpse of the Sierra Nevada, or any proximity to the great metropolitan regions, Stevinson Ranch remains as one of the best golf courses in California"

While some courses appear to pay mere lip service to the idea of being thought through, this is the real deal, its risks and rewards balanced, its options clearly defined, as highlighted in the notes regarding its principal holes. Not sure I'd go along with The Eden link, mind.

There's a flyover here but if the muzak accompaniment starts getting to you by the 4th, here's an aerial shot of the course - the 1st is in the top left corner, curving around the bottom of the practice area, while the 18th and 17th can be found on the top edge.

 
View Stevinson Ranch Golf Club, Ca, USA in a larger map

Crenshaw and the 'creative look'

Two things strike me about this clip of Ben Crenshaw, Tom Doak and Bill Coore discussing their project at Streamsong.

Firstly, the three bar stools in the middle of nowhere approach doesn't really suit this genre. Am I the only one who keeps expecting the three of them suddenly to produce microphones and break into a Rat Pack number?

Secondly, and more intriguingly, just what is going on with Ben Crenshaw's hair? Not that there's anything wrong with the extravagant flow to his greying mane; it's just that this was a man whom I remember being strictly short-back-and-sides during his playing career.

Could it be that the more luxuriant tonsorial approach is a natural extension to his creative line of work these days? And what on earth would Harvey Penick have made of it?

Watch this space. I feel a cravat coming on...

Doak - it's the club, not the ball

Little as ever in the way of fence-sitting from Tom Doak, interviewed recently in the UK edition of Golf World. Highlights:

• "I'd make the pros go back to hitting wooden drivers...Wooden drivers were really hard to hit...No-one swung at the ball with 100 per cent effort; it was just too risky. Most went at it at 90 per cent to make sure they hit the ball off the sweetspot. When that stopped mattering, the swings changed and the game changed...if we fixed the driver thing, I don't think we'd have to do much with the ball."

• "The design of a course doesn't happen from the tee forwards. It happens from the green back and from features in the landing area."

• On why architectural standards declined in the mid-1900s: "...there was a boom but no-one from the Golden Age was around to do the building...there were only a handful of 'name' guys left...So instead of building a small number of great courses, those guys were running around building 30 courses that were inevitably not as good."

• On reduced ball spin reducing the use of fades and draws on tour: "I'm sure a lot of [pros] are bored. They hit the same shot over and over...The giveaway is that not many of them play golf for fun any more." 

• On architecture revolving too much around the pro game: "That's why courses are set up for championships the way they are. They seem to want a really good score to be 68...[but] if nobody shoots 65 then that's a hard course. That's a course where three-handicappers won't break 80. Do we need a lot of that? No."

• "My bias is towards giving people more room and having more short-game interest.

• "We want everything to look as if it was always there...When I'm looking at a course built by someone else and they didn't try to do that, I'm driven crazy. But there are a few architects who don't care about that at all...they almost want their work to look unnatural."

• "The worst thing you can say to me is that my course was dull."

[Pic courtesy of CORE-Materials]