And now the end is here..

My new golf architecture blog kicks off today at Cheap Golf's Finest Holes.

I still love golf course design but I wanted to write about it in a way which I felt delivered some practical use to many of those reading it, who - like me not so many years ago - don't know their Stanley Thompson from their Stanley Laurel.

More evolution than termination, then, and I do hope those of you who have been good enough to subscribe to The Golf Course as Art and comment upon my posts these last 16 months will make the jump to the new blog. As for its predecessor, TGCaA will hereafter lie dormant.

Change of direction

Regular readers may have noticed a slowdown in posts on The Golf Course as Art of late. This is down to the fact that I am planning a change of direction.

While I don't want to let these pages go, I have begun to wonder if the market for blogs that are of an observational or commentary nature may be diminishing.

From my own experience, I know that pressure of time provides decreasing opportunity to set time aside for reading. I snapped up a year's subscription to the digital version of that fine publication The Sporting News earlier this year for a ridiculously cheap price , yet just as I feared, I've hardly had time to read a single issue.

I sense that the blogs that tend to work best in this climate are those that provide specific information, designed not merely to enlighten readers or engage debate, but to offer practical assistance. This is a hard criterion to meet where golf architecture is concerned but I've hit on an idea that I am hoping to put into practice in the near future.

Because I want to start with a clean sheet, it will appear on a different platform that may, in time, take over completely from where The Golf Course as Art left off.

Much as I hate cliche, watch this space...

No medals yet for Olympic Club overhaul

I may not have played the Olympic Club as Geoff Shackelford has but I share his concern at the proposed course alterations.

The San Francisco course is to have all its greens changed from poa annua turf to a bentgrass strain, to stave off worm damage and the club has decided to take advantage of the upheaval by tweaking the course layout at the same time.

The 7th, 15th and 18th greens will be re-contoured, while the line of the 8th hole, a par 3, is to be pushed to the right of its current location, allowing the 7th green to be pushed further back.

As a consequence of these alterations, the 8th will change from a 137-yard tiddler to something around the 200-yard mark. Matt Cohn offers his visual interpretation of the proposed changes over at GolfClubAtlas, where you'll also find a nice little spat-ette over the people behind the changes ("It's absurd you would make that statement" is sooo GolfClubAtlas where abuse is concerned).

The World Atlas of Golf says the 8th "would be a rather easy par-three were it not for the branches overhanging the green on the right", while TSN's Phil Sokol calls it "the easiest hole on the course", so I'm prepared to stay open-minded on the proposed change. If Matt Cohn's diagram reflects the alteration correctly, it would at least seem to toughen the hole by presenting a shallower target.

Where I have reservations, however, is with supporting arguments such as this, from the chairman of the club's green committee, Pat Murphy:

"One short par-3 is fine," Murphy said, knowing No. 15 measures only 149 yards, "but two short par-3s just doesn't work in this day and age."

The corporate world's obsession with homogeneity has made me particularly sensitive on this count, I acknowledge, but I find Murphy's statement so depressingly formulaic, as if all courses have to bend to some universal architectural template.

Olympic, by all accounts, plays long at the best of times, because of the moist local climate. Top 100 Golfer, whom I assume from his epic travels is no slouch with a club in his hands, calls it "near-impossible to play for a non-scratch player". What better counterpoint could there be on such a course than two dinky par threes, briefly calling for finesse over power?

"How many times have we heard PGA Tour players talk recently about the beauty and difficulty of short par 3s and 4s?" Geoff Shackelford observes. "You can have more than one, Mr. Murphy. The beauty of Olympic Club is that the Lake course follows no formulas. Well, not anymore."

One must pray that the re-design team treads even more softly at the previous hole. The drivable, uphill, 288-yard par 4 seventh is one of Jeff Barr's 1001 Golf Holes You Must Play Before You Die, which describes it as "spectacular, memorable and very difficult" and assesses the three-tiered green as one of the toughest on the planet. Already, I'm perspiring at the thought that Pat Murphy might feel a 288-yard par 4 just doesn't work in this day and age...

But then I've never played Olympic. If you have, please leave a comment and let me know your views. If you haven't, study the front-nine video below and see what you think:

River's Edge GC - small tweak yields big returns

I'm always on the lookout for something different where golf holes are concerned and from this list of the 5 toughest golf courses in Myrtle Beach, it's the third hole at River's Edge GC in Shallotte, North Carolina that caught my eye.

This isn't even the most talked about hole on this course, let alone in the Myrtle Beach area (that honour tends to go to the 9th) but I like the way in which a small sliver of creek can impose itself so markedly on the way in which you play the hole.

Contrast it, for example, with the ugly, 'overkill' beach bunkers on some of the holes at Jack Nicklaus' Pawley's Plantation course.

Even if you opt to play safe with your second shot, it's not a shot you play on auto-pilot. Bunkers at the end of the left-hand finger of fairway require you to focus as much on length as on accuracy.

For the brave boomer, meanwhile, that neck of fairway leading into the green looks even narrower when you study a photo of the hole
but a fine risk-reward challenge nonetheless and further evidence for my belief that small features exerting a disproportionately large influence on a hole's strategy make for pleasing architecture.

Three holes to savour from Maryland's best munis

From Golf.com's Best Public Golf Courses in Maryland, I've picked the following three holes:

• The 17th at Tom Doak's Beechtree GC. The course itself is worth a look just for the delightfully sparing use of sand but I like the simplicity of this par 4. Either take on the left-hand bunkers to open up the green or play safe to the right and take your chances with a cramped-looking approach over the greenside trap.
  

• There's a similar theme to the 16th at Arthur Hills' Maryland National GC, which I have to say looks the best course of the bunch. Forget the approach shot here, though, the drive is everything. You're taking on overhanging branches, sand and a brook if you aim for the green, yet at a distance of 268-308 yards from the mere mortals' tees, look at that photo and tell me you don't know people who'd go for it every time...

• Lighthouse Sound GC wins the 'Scenic' category and I love the par 5 7th on what is another Arthur Hills course. Nothing like a bunker or two slap bang on the line to the green to transform a beautiful hole into an engaging one.

Not so sour on Sweetgrass after all

I owe architect Paul Albanese an apology. When I started reading his philosophy behind his new Sweetgrass Golf Club in Michigan, I had genuine doubts as to whether I'd finish it.

Many of us in Britain are a little weary of liberal-speak these days. We've seen 'celebrating diversity' and 'embracing differences' become such entrenched, knee-jerk mantras that too many people in important positions appear to have taken their eye off the ball when it comes to running the country with any semblance of common sense.

So when Albanese starts banging on thus...

"Because this golf course and the neighboring Island Resort & Casino are both owned and operated by the Hannahville Indian Community - a band of the Potawatomi Nation - we've also incorporated aspects of their proud culture and tribal legends."

...I have to be honest, I felt my toes start to curl. Just as they would were I a member of the Potawatomi Nation and was told some guy called Tillinghast wanted to coach my lacrosse team.

Sticking with it, however, I realised that I was unfair to judge Paul on the basis of what happens this side of the Pond. So let's put PC to one side and just focus on the golf.

To get you up to speed, here's a good taster of the course, and don't let the tense trio at the start of the broadcast put you off: I'm pleased to confirm that the man called Tony manfully ignores what looks like every nerve-ending in his body screaming at him to run away...



Sweetgrass isn't the most inspiring piece of land but I like the fact that Albanese hasn't tried to over- compensate with gimmicks. Ironically, a man whom I originally feared might be trying too hard, has tried just hard enough and stayed true to land he was given, subtly steeling the gentle terrain with bunkers in the middle of the fairway and others that gently nibble at the short grass, tempting the bigger hitters to take them on (see holes 5, 10, 11 and 13). You'll find redan and Biarritz greens at the 4th and 12th respectively and the course guide in full is here (with a collection of pictures here).

For all this, I can easily forgive the designer his occasionally funky bunker shapes, which are meant as abstract representations of deer and rabbits found in Potawatomi legend and history. I also like the fact that another part of the tribe's culture to which the course pays tribute is its dislike of waste. Abandoned old bridges in the area have been pressed into use, along with rocks and timbers from an old fort. At the other end of the timeline, meanwhile, you have to love a course irrigation system that can be operated by the superintendent's cell phone...

Ultimately, I can pick Albanese up on just one point:

"We took an idea, and through the process of iteration, we developed shapes derived from these stories. Many of the bunker personalities (in essence, 'bunkeralities') and forms on the golf course have been created through this process."

'Bunkeralities'?!

No.

No, no, no, no, no...

Otherwise, great job.

Great golf holes - 3rd at Windsor Park GC, Japan

They may not be the most aesthetically scalloped bunkers in golf but this mid-fairway spine of hazards makes the third at Windsor Park Golf Club a challenge from the start.

Too many par-5s comprise a dull, two-shot slog before an interesting approach. Here, however, you either aim between the jaws of the two lines of bunkers guarding the right side of the fairway, your reward being to open up the green for your second, or you play comparatively safely down the left.

The longer hitters then have the option of playing well short of the green or else getting as close as they can but having to aim for a much narrower fairway.

Beauty and the Beast - Couples takes a rise out of 'resort golf'

They say dog owners often end up resembling their dogs but it seems you can't say the same about golf course designers and their courses. Fred Couples might have been the Little Easy as a player but there's nothing laid-back about his track at The Rise, in British Columbia.

I'm using 'his' a little loosely here. If anyone noticed a certain irony in the man whose 'signature course' this is claimed to be admitting on camera that "My expertise is coming in and just touching the corners of a Picasso," he didn't mention it when the club's website was being put together.

But then this whole 'signature' concept has been largely rumbled, anyway, so credit where it's due to architect Gene Bates...

Maybe if Fred had been a little more hands-on, some of the club's older patrons wouldn't be stocking up on the Deep Heat, for it seems The Rise is well-named and as what goes up must come down, you'll also encounter The Fall, The Climb, The Drop, The Contour and The Exhaustion.

Factor in "the knee-high fescue that borders many of the fairways" - just what the senior citizens' fourball ordered - and you realise that "the ultimate in resort community living" comes at a price that is not just measured in dollars.

While we self-appointed course connoisseurs can get picky, though (and Robert Thompson doesn't hold back) I sometimes wonder if we overlook a certain innocence we once had and which many golfers still do - namely that when a course looks as gorgeous as this, we didn't actually give a rat's behind what the gradients were like, what the rough was like or whether the bunkers were a tad overdone.

We just played golf. And considered any aches afterwards as a reasonable tariff.

So even if it helps if the caddies here are of Nepalese extraction; even if a surfeit of blind shots rules out love at first sight and even if the regulars end up with calf muscles like a district nurse, I'm prepared to give it the benefit of the doubt. Those contours, climbs and plummets make The Rise look like an adventure and I can't dislike any course that plays like an adventure.

Birkdale designer and some home truths

His grandson might be taking some flak for Royal Birkdale's revamp but there may be no more fitting a man to put his name to an Open Championship venue than Frederick Hawtree.

It seems that Fred, who knocked the Lancashire course into its current shape 77 years ago, was firmly of the view that golf should be open to all, once declaring that "manners matter and money does not". He was the co-founder of the National Association of Public Golf Courses and the Artisan Golfers' Association and had a bigger hand in my own golfing life than I realised.

I lived in Birmingham for 18 years and while I played golf much more then than I do now, I cared considerably less about golf architecture, so it never occurred to me to ask why the calibre of public courses in and around England's second city is so renowned.

According to this article, however, Fred Hawtree was responsible for all but one of them.

Further south, it is still possible to play his very first project, at the delightfully-appointed Croham Hurst club in Croydon, Surrey (reviews here; aerial here) which opened in 1912 and was a joint design venture with James Braid (although Golf Digest suggests that Braid was largely a figurehead).

Elsewhere in the Hawtree portfolio, it would be remiss of me to omit mention of his work at Sweden's Bastad Golf Club. Many of us have referred to the odd 'bastard golf course' in our time, of course, but this is the real deal...

Enjoy the Open. God is once more in his heaven.

The wait goes on for Ross's Rackham golf course

Seems like those sweating on the fate of Detroit's Rackham Golf Course - a Donald Ross design - will have to sweat a little longer, as appeal court judges mull over the city council's proposal to sell the municipal course, which could leave it at the fate of housing developers.

You can zoom in on a sharp aerial of the course here. Tinkering to accommodate roadworks means that only the back nine remains of Ross's original work, which is reviewed at the latter end of this piece by golf architecture scribe Jeff Mingay. Lose Rackham, it must be said and you also lose the origin of one of the most beautiful golf course photographs you could wish to see...

The Save Rackham site has full details on the fight to save the course, while GolfWeek has been looking at the fate of municipal courses in general.