Cherry Valley GC leads golfers a merry dance

How on earth am I the only golf course purist to pick up on this story?

Robert Thompson, Geoff Shackelford, Jeff Mingay - come on, guys, you all appreciate some nice tweaks on a course, where's the coverage now that Cherry Valley GC ('Experience the Best') has gone about really challenging the old grey matter as you stand on the tee?

No mention as to which hole on the Pennsylvania course actually hosted this revolutionary hazard but just look at how the left side of the fairway has been taken out of the equation for the player who's suspect with wood in his hand.

No wonder the guys about to drive in the accompanying videos are deep in thought as they consider their opening play. They're being made to think before making their shot: the classic sign of a course you just want to come back to again and again.

That first Tom Fazio/CR Fanny Gentlemen's Club hook-up joint project can only be a matter of time.

Coeur d'Alene - the stakes are raised

It was just a matter of time before Coeur d'Alene's signature hole got golf architects thinking.

Now, in another place, the floating green concept enters a new dimension. A much bigger catchment area, to be sure but the downside has to be all those critical eyes gazing at you from the nearby clubhouse windows. Never a pleasant prospect and certainly not here, with a potentially formidable carry from the tee to negotiate.

See what you think.

Shouldn't this have been covered at the interview?

"I work as a caddy at the Seawane Club in Hewlett Harbor, New York. However I am new at the job. The website does not offer maps of the holes. Are there websites that post these? thanks!"

100 must-play courses - the real stars

Flicking through a magazine's Top 100 Courses You Must Play (Stop making excuses and book a tee time now) I could feel stirring deep within me that habitual irritation with people who assume that just because they have money to burn, so does everyone else.

This time, my exasperation turned to action and in a fit of bloody-mindedness, I went through this precious Top 100 to see if I could find the real elite; those distinguished courses that refuse to profiteer on their renown.

Leaving aside the courses that qualify largely through their novelty value (Kabul GC, mentioned previously, Uummanaq and Prison View) along with those that charge over $80 (£40) a round and those whose charms are reserved exlusively for their members, I was left with this fanfare for the common man:

• The Gezira Club Egypt (ranked 97 in the top 100) - £2


• Bjorkliden Arctic Sweden (86) - £5


• Shiskine Scotland (99) - £15 Mon-Fri, £19 weekends


• Musselburgh Scotland (93) - £20-£30


• Barnbougle Dunes Australia (73) - £25


• Carne Rep. Ireland (28) - £30


• Hans Merensky South Africa (47) - £30


• Highlands Links Canada (95) - £30-£40


• Nefyn & District GC Wales (87) - £31-£37


• Lost City South Africa (24) - £34


• Royal North Devon England (77) - £34 weekdays


• Durban CC South Africa (14) - £35


• Lindrick GC England (92) - £35 November-March


• Machrihanish Scotland (63) - £35 weekdays


• Donegal GC Rep. Ireland (96) - £35 Mon-Thu


• Crans sur Sierre Switzerland (55) - £38 weekdays

You'll wonder, I know, how some of these qualified in the first place but remember that this a list based on golf courses as experiences and not necessarily as examples of supreme architecture. Therefore, Gezira makes it because those aren't stadium mounds you can see from the tees, those are pyramids, while Bjorkliden is in because it's so far north you can tee it up at midnight.

Shiskine is a 12-hole eccentricity on the Isle of Arran and Musselburgh the world's oldest active links course.

Of the more famous courses, let's hear it for South Africa, which joins Scotland as the principal contributor to the 'budget' list, with three courses. Home to some of the world's most stunning scenery, South African golf could have easily come at a premium, but no, they leave that to those comparative money-grabbers at the sensational Fancourt Links, who ask all of £82.

This list is 18 months old now, so prices may have altered but as it looks the steal of the bunch, I double-checked the current price for Barnbougle Dunes and it still makes the cut at £37 a round. While it's a public course, it's a Tom Doak public course and one of the main reasons behind the American's current celebrity status.

"No doubt all who visit Barnbougle Dunes will applaud the wisdom of appointing Doak and [co-designer Mike] Clayton to design the course," wrote Matthew Mollica, in his review for Golf Club Atlas. "The efforts of all these men are to be celebrated; they have collectively delivered one of the finest golf courses in Australia, and a must-see course for anyone who takes golf seriously...Those travelling to Tasmania, and completing the hour’s drive from Launceston to Bridport are ensuring themselves of one of the great golfing pleasures on earth."

All of which makes you wonder at some of the courses not so favourably priced in this top 100. Three leap out at me as potential villains of the piece: Pebble Beach (c.£240 plus cart) The Wynn GC (c £250 plus cart) and the Wentworth Club (£285 June-Oct).

Let's excuse the Wynn first, in just three words: "It's Vegas, stupid."

Pebble gets a grudging nod thanks to something that isn't even part of the property. That five-hole flirtation with the Pacific (7th to the 10th and the 18th) makes this a genuine, life-enhancing golf pilgrimage and whatever they take from your wallet on the way in, you've had an ample return on your money by the time you make your way out.
No way can you say the same for Wentworth's West Course. Gateway to an English autumn as host to the World Matchplay Championship, I've watched it for years on TV, and I have refreshed my memory with this superb course tour. While it looks as if it might be a highly enjoyable test of your game, I see nothing there that grabs my imagination by the gonads and for £285, a little scrotal squeeze should be a given.

So Wentworth is the dog in this particular pound, I'm afraid, and its monstrous green fee probably tells you more about its location ("one of the most affluent counties in England") than about the course itself. Such is Britain's paranoia over any kind of prejudice these days, there are probably all sorts of laws that prohibit a 'Strictly No Riff-Raff' sign being erected in public view.

'Green fee - £285' is simply a more acceptable way of conveying the same message...

At least USGA doesn't have bunker mentality

Still not completely sold on the suggestion that the US Open is ruined by the organisers' horticulture, I smiled as I read an old Golf World (UK) feature on the bunkers of St Andrews' Old Course.

'Welcome to Bunker Hell', it announces.

The photo accompanying this post tells you everything you need to know about the sand at St Andrews. If you want flat and manageable, go to the nearby beach. On the links, golf and mining become almost indistiguishable.

The photo is of the notorious Road Hole bunker, christened the 'Sands of Nakajima' after it swallowed Japanese player Tommy Nakajima's birdie putt in 1978 and charged him four more strokes before letting him return to the putting surface.

That too says it all about many of the 112 traps that dot the Old Course. They acquire nicknames; just like serial killers.

Jack Nicklaus needed four strokes to get out of Hell Bunker in his 10 at the 14th in 1995. Hill Bunker, in front of the 11th green, cost Gene Sarazen a triple bogey in 1933 and golf writer Bernard Darwin called it "the most difficult bunker anywhere in the world".

There are parts of Hell Bunker where the turf wall between you and the fairway rears up to 10 feet in height. What that kind of profile means in practice was demonstrated in the 2000 Open, when both Mark Calcavecchia and Sergio Garcia found their ball hard up against the similarly daunting frontage of the Road Hole bunker and were reduced to using a putter to relocate the ball elsewhere in the sand for a more feasible chance of escape.

Nor is the Old Course alone in pushing the 'penal' philosophy to its utmost. Links golf throughout Britain features bunkers that seem specifically designed to commemorate former bomb craters. They are to golfers what Jaws is to surfers.

Yet when did this type of hazard ever take the same flak as the height of the USGA's grasscutters? Even in less enlightened times, American antipathy towards links golf seems to have focused more on the bleak aspect of the landscape than its bunkering.

Maybe that's a perk of having Mr G. Almighty as your principal architect. Who else would even try to get away with it, let alone succeed?

"I don't believe in steep faced bunkers that that often prohibit the player from escaping in the direction he wants to go," observed Robert Trent Jones in Golf's Magnificent Challenge. "That is too penal a design..."

Yet anyone with a dream of being Britain's public enemy number one could do a lot worse than publish a set of proposals to bring bunkering on the British Open Championship rota "more into line with modern practice". It wouldn't matter how he put it - 'replacing slapstick with options', merely lowering a part of each bunker lip to allow the top player an outside chance of getting close to the green, while confining the lesser player to a splash shot - still, the lynch mob would move heaven and earth to find out where he lived.

As Trent Jones says, "...that's the way the game began. Who is to say it is wrong?"

Tradition aside, I think another argument gets crippling bunkers and vicious rough off the hook. They are both once-a-year phenomena and just like the Formula One world championship embraces different types of circuit, why shouldn't golf tournaments involve different types of terrain? Neither the PGA nor European tours are exactly lacking in opportunities elsewhere to post 12-under totals.

Making Augusta National into a US Open-style track, on the other hand? Now you've got yourself an issue...

[Photo courtesy of Alan Stewart and licensed for reuse under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 licence]

Bunkers' revenge at Wild Dunes

This is the 18th on the Tom Fazio-designed Links Course at South Carolina's Wild Dunes Resort.

Make the most of it; it may not be around too much longer...

Armed courses now enlisting

"Many military courses have now opened play to civilians and veterans. Check each course for their policy."

But be warned, the penalties for collarless shirts are pretty stiff.

Hole in One Café & Bar - Czech it out

Europe's latest golfing epicentre. Where else but a restaurant at Prague Airport...?

"Tees, balls and rakes are scattered around for an as-close-to-a- golf-course-as-you- are-going- to- get- sitting-in-an-airport feel."

Okay, so it's not quite 'Bullitt'...

...but it's probably as close as golf will ever get. Someone decides to use the local course for motor cross and three cart owners object...

Russian golf: quick, before the Curtain rises...

Something of an unexpected bonus from a blog featuring Views and News on latest developments in equity financing market in Russia - a rather useful guide on where to swing a club in Putin country.

If Russian golf wallpaper would add a certain je ne sais quoi to your laptop, go here and click on a hole.

Architect Tom McBroom sweeping clean abroad

You might expect a mainstream newspaper to come up with something pretty unremarkable in trying to get to grips with the esoteric world of golf course design. Canada's Globe & Mail writer Michael Grange, however, would seem to know his stuff.

His profile of leading Canadian golf architect Tom McBroom, now in the process of establishing himself internationally, is an absorbing read, with some notable observations on the business:

'His modus operandi, then and now: Start with pencil on paper and rely heavily on the drama of the landscape to frame the journey.'

"My staff and I might do 20 or 30 routings internally before we show anything to the client.

'It is impossible to fashion an average of three courses a year and still hand-sculpt every bump and bunker.'

And don't miss the thought-provoking conclusion of the article, Does the designer matter?

Highlights of McBroom's resumé to date:

• Raven Golf Club, Ontario


• Deerhurst Highlands, Muskoka


• And [drumroll] Domaine Laforest, Sagard, Que. Just feast your eyes on this baby. "According to Mr. McBroom, the course’s condition rivals Augusta National, home of the Masters, and it plays through a dense forest next to the Desmarais’ summer home," reports Robert Thompson. "We also know one more fact about Domain Laforest — you won’t be getting an invite any time soon."

Wildcreek GC: watering the rough a burning issue

I'm not sure which is funnier: the fact that never again will they be able to talk about burning up the course at Wildcreek Golf Club, or the fact that their course is owned by the Reno-Sparks Convention & Visitors Authority...

Nicklaus & Caesar - time for an appraisal

As the Jack Nicklaus empire announces the latest extension to the Golden Bear's global footprint, surely some golf-mad history undergraduate now has ample scope for a thesis on Jack's empire and that of the Romans? Compare and contrast.

Here's Jack inking the deal and hearing the cash register tinkle and here's Jack having the Jeez-where-do-I-start moment that I'm sure must happen to the best of them. Even after 314 courses.

Oakmont: this bland is our bland...

If you think it must be easy, making one of the world's great courses look fab on film, think again, as Golf Course Industry Magazine staff grab a few, er, snaps of Oakmont, taken over Open weekend.

Don't give up the day jobs, people...

[The fine photo of the entrance plaque, on the other hand, is brought to you by the highly-accomplished pianoforte over at Flickr.com]

Kabul GC - adding shots to your game

I make no apologies for kicking off a blog on golf course aesthetics with a link to this report on Kabul Golf Club.

Stories like this inspire me; a reminder that the true art of golf is negotiating landscape with a small white ball - using those parts of the land that assist this process and avoiding those that don't.

How easy it is to think the frills have always come as standard - that Tom Morris and son played dainty flop shots from talcum powder bunkers while clad in pastel blue slacks. Of course they didn't: on land as wild and shaggy as Old Tom's beard, they played a game that only became a summer sport when the invention of grass cutters rendered the St Andrews links navigable during the growing season.

To them, the game was the thing - the cunning use of a greenside camber was no less thrilling because the slope in question happened to be dotted with sheep dung and a dead field mouse.

It's an unlikely trio, but Kabul GC and the Morrises keep us honest. For the same reason, I make no apologies for including Pasture Golf in my blogroll/links collection on the left.