That's the trouble with golf: it's so pornographic

It can be a bewildering business, keeping all those mental balls in the air when trying to decide just how good a course is.

With so many factors to address, you begin to sympathise with the Supreme Court judge who declared that he couldn't define pornography but he knew what it was when he saw it.

As primers go, however, this 10-point checklist from Ron Whitten is the best I've seen so far. Point 2 might seem a statement of the obvious but if I were to summarise the point made I would say, "does the course make me genuinely think about what I'm trying to achieve, every time I stand over my ball?".

I like point 3 about routing. I agree that two nine-hole loops shouldn't be a given just because a course is new. Golf to me is a voyage: I like the idea of leaving the clubhouse behind and not returning to it until my ball hits the 18th green. I like the idea of being as far from it as I can be when I hole out on the 9th, then the feeling of turning for home as you move to the 10th tee.

All purely psychological of course, but what the hell?

Against the grains: you take your bunkers black?

I'm reading Robert Trent Jones' book, Golf's Magnificent Challenge, whose purchase was one of the early signs that Mrs P and I were made for each other. Before either of us really knew just how much I was into golf course architecture, she bought it for my birthday one year and got very little conversation out of me for the rest of the evening.

A photographic joy, the coffee-table tome is sprinkled with superb colour pictures of Jones' courses, although it must be said there are also one or two double-page photos so blurred and grainy, I can only assume they got through on the picture editor's day off.

Money well spent, nonetheless and on reading through it last night, I was struck by the great man's comment that the bunkers at Royal Sotogrande are not filled with sand - local supplies were felt to be inadequate - but with crushed marble from Andalusian quarries.

This struck me as rather grand, although Googling 'bunkers' and 'crushed marble' reveals that it is hardly a novelty nowadays, even if it was back in the 1960s.

Looking into bunker contents in general, however, took me to this informative thread on the GolfClubAtlas.com forum, where I was fascinated to learn that some courses have even felt obliged to forego sandy-looking materials altogether when it comes to filling their traps.

Some purists, you'll note, aren't thrilled by the idea of black or red bunkers but I'm surprised to find myself rather open to the idea. If it's making use of what would otherwise be local waste material, then I'm all in favour.

Just once in your life, surely, you'd love to be able to play out of black sand...?

Index linked to class distinction

You do indeed learn something every day.

Hopefully, I'm not the only golfer who's always assumed that the Stroke Index
column on a scorecard reflected the absolute difficulty of a hole.

Not so, according to this Houston Chronicle article:

"The No. 1 handicap hole often is not the most difficult hole on a course. The No. 1 handicap hole is the hole where the higher handicap player is most likely to need a stroke for an equalizer. If a low-handicap golfer is just as likely to make bogey as a high-handicapper, a stroke isn't needed...

"It's based on whether the high-handicapper is going to need that stroke to equalize things. It's the differential between the low-handicap score and the high-handicap score over a period of time."

In other words, I guess, if Billy Boom routinely clears that fairway bunker or dogleg pond to set himself up for a short pitch, while you're forced to lay up and take a 4-iron for your second shot, then that's what claims a low SI number.

I stand corrected.

They check your card at the 9th, as well...

Most golfers anticipate a drinks cart at the 10th tee but if a new Cambodia-Vietnamese golf course project goes ahead, you may have to hand over your passport in return for a Coke.

Nine holes of the proposed course will be situated on each side of the border between the two countries but already there is controversy involved, with claims that Cambodians have been forced to sell their land to make way for the new track. Not sure about the mention of "deep rooted hostilities that exist between the two countries," either. Let's hope 'shooting low on the back nine' doesn't acquire a whole new meaning.

On the subject of Vietnamese golf, those of you who:

1. have done the Robert Trent Jones Golf Trail and

2. aren't Vietnam War veterans

might like to consider this alternative. The name won't exactly thrill a generation of Americans but the courses involved and their websites are very easy on the eye.

Domesticity draws Myrtle Beach venom

"The Grand Strand’s most daunting course; this modern Russel Breeden design is surrounded by unspoiled natural wetlands and Lowcountry forest. The absence of homes makes a journey around Diamond Back a pure golf experience."

So said GolfHoliday.com of South Carolina's Diamond Back GC. Once.

What euphemism it will find for "impure golf experience", we wait to discover, now that houses are no longer to be in absentia.

"Diamond Back Golf Club will have a less intimidating name beginning Sept. 1. Course owners are changing the name of the Russell Breeden design that opened in 1999 to Woodland Valley Country Club to correspond with the name of the housing development being built around the course."

Why does it sound a little chilling, for once, when a representative of the management company says, "It's going to really be a nice place out there"?

Is it all going a bit soft down Myrtle Beach way? Reporting on other local golf course name-changes, the same article reveals that in the last few years, Buck Creek has mellowed into 'Aberdeen Country Club', The Gauntlet is now the altogether-more-genteel 'Founders Club at St. James Plantation', and Rolling Hills has been emasculated into 'West Kingston and Green Acres'.

So let's hear it for the one-time 'Myrtle West', now known as 'Black Bear Golf Club'. And home to real men, no doubt...

WorldGolf.com looking at the wrong stars in Texas

Now see, this is why we have Internet journalism. The media isn't about preaching to the masses anymore; it's now a two-way conversation.

So when WorldGolf.com goes looking for the best of Texas golf, two readers respond at the foot of the article to the effect that the journalist has been looking in the wrong places.

That's 'wrong' as in 'members only'.

And now I, for my part, chip in with the websites for the alternative courses suggested by one of those readers as the accessible face of Texan golf:

Texas Star Golf Course (see photo above)


Bridlewood Golf Club (below)








Tierra Verde Golf Club

and Tangle Ridge Golf Club (below)

Fitting crescendo for Major finale

Derek Lawrenson, writing in the UK's Daily Mail today, makes the point that maybe golf should consider spacing its major championships out a little more, as tennis does with its Grand Slam tournaments.

I'm ambivalent on the point: sure, we are still digesting the excitement of Carnoustie but that also means that I'm raring to go for this week's final Major at Southern Hills.

It was inevitable that I would have to make this confession at some point - while some of my fellow golf bloggers are able to write from the benefit of first-hand experience when analysing the world's great golfing playgrounds, I'm afraid my handicap is too high to allow me to do so. By 'handicap' I mean children; both of whom sacrificed a lot so that their old man could give up being a lawyer and write about games for a living instead.

The flip-side of that arrangement is that being in a position to allocate disposable income to the playing of golf is something of a nostalgia item in my household. As is disposable income, for that matter.

Consequently, I may be the only golf architecture blogger whose idea of a field test is cranking up Tiger Woods PGA Tour on the PC.

Hoot all you want: after sifting out the chaff, I now have 230 of the finest courses - fictional and replica - stored on my hard drive, courtesy of Coursedownloads.com and I have played enough of them to know that 'the next best thing to being there' is no idle boast.

I have therefore been playing Southern Hills regularly this week, while the rest of you could merely gaze on from afar. Ha!

I can heartily endorse the accepted wisdom that you don't want to be in the rough on this baby and the sooner you can get your approach to stop on the up-turned saucers that pass for greens, the better.

Here, for your viewing pleasure, are a selection of background links:

• Southern Hills CC website - the 'Hills' part may be something of a misnomer but such slopes as there are at least afford a great view of the Tulsa skyline from the first tee.
  
• Jay Flemma mounts a precise defence of this understated classic ("In an age where greens have been neglected by designers and rejected by touring pros if they have too much 'character', the genius of Maxwell's greens practically screams out to be replicated.") Not every course, indeed can have waves crashing at the foot of the tee or flowers ablaze behind the greens. Doesn't mean it's not fun...
  
• Audio and video hole-by-hole guide from club pro Dave Bryan.
• Geoff Shackelford's tournament preview offers the pick of the photographs
  
• Southern Hills timeline. I don't want to worry anyone but it's not a facility with a glowing Health & Safety pedigree: Hubert Green's death threat in 1977, a hitman killing in the car park four years later, golf ball-sized hail that destroyed greens in 1958 and the fatal heart attack suffered on-course by construction manager Wendell Miller when the course was being built in the mid-1930s. This isn't one of these "Oh-crap, it's-the-site-of-an-old-burial-ground" deals, is it...?
  
• The course review at GolfClubAtlas.com is, as usual, second to none ("Since the completion of the course, every course in Oklahoma has been held up to the standard of competing with Southern Hills, so it has been somewhat copied in style all across the state. It wasn’t until Pete Dye’s work at Oak Tree in the mid-80s that another style even registered with the critics around the state.")

• A profile of architect Perry Maxwell. ("By 1925, despite no training or college degree, Maxwell was a full-time golf course architect. He never drew plans, just walked sites and staked out features."). See also Ian Andrew's summary, here.
  

• Never let it be said I'm proud: blogger 'Top 100 Golfer' has played the real thing and offers his verdict, as well as a comparison with Maxwell's other masterpiece at Prairie Dunes.

• If it's a 'colour' piece you're after, instead of yardage and Stimpmeter readings, Tulsa World sportswriter Jimmie Tramel has penned this nice yarn-filled column for PGA.com ("Bob Hope...participated in a charity event at Southern Hills in 1974 and...played in a group with famous evangelist Oral Roberts...Joking about the wind, Hope said, "I told Oral to turn off that fan. But he said that was management's decision and he is in sales.")
• An article on the behind-the-scenes success story at Southern Hills ("It's hard to imagine there are many 70- plus-year-old private clubs that would have old-time rockers like Eddie Money perform a concert in their ballroom....")
• A glimpse of Southern Hills' 'kid brother', the West Nine, designed by Ben Crenshaw and Bill Coore. Home in on the satellite image available, not only to see the West Nine layout but also to get an idea of just how hot Tulsa becomes in high summer...
• Southern Hills, Prairie Dunes, renovation work on Augusta National, Pine Valley and Colonial Country Club - if you're taken with Maxwell's resume (and let's face it, how many bankers do you know who have 'diversified' like this?) this is the book ("Maxwell was a loving father and husband. He was kind and generous and spiritual. He pursued life and wisdom as if they were lost treasures.")

You know what they say about men with big mikes...

I don't know if amateurgolf.com's Peter Wlodkowski feels he has something to prove but do microphone collars get any more preposterous than this...?

Those people you can just make out behind it are golfers taking the chance to play Torrey Pines before it has its rough turned into a living hell and its fairways pinched tighter than Paris Hilton's waist hosts next year's US Open.

Zokol should give "boutique" the brush-off

I'm sure Richard Zokol is a great guy, I love the way he's going with his thoughts on minimalist course design and I hope Sagebrush Golf & Sporting Club will be everything he wants it to be.

I do, however, fear that he's keeping company with too many people in the public relations industry when he starts putting the word "boutique" in the same sentence as "golf".

When I hear the phrase "a private boutique destination", I don't care how good Zokol's routing and landscape use may be: suddenly all I can see are hairdressers and androgynous tailors advising me on pastels. Mentally, I'm already sprinting in the opposite direction.

Don't listen to those 'branding' buffoons, Richard: you don't need a new buzz-word every time you have a new idea to sell, particularly if it's a word that sounds a long way from its rightful home.

Just tell us what you're doing and why. In the case of Sagebrush, I suspect that will be more than enough to get the job done.