Black Sheep by name, black sheep by nature?

Architecturally, I have no quibbles with Illinois' Black Sheep Golf Club being ranked as one of America's Best 100 Modern Courses by Golfweek magazine, for a fourth straight year.

Okay, so it's never going to win a Best Logo prize judged by anyone above the age of six but a mere glimpse at the photo gallery suggests a course that is progressing by going backwards - to days when courses blended into the landscape, instead of the other way round.

There is a wonderful sense of space about the course, as its website explains:

"Strategic design along with the sheer breadth of the property enabled [architect David] Esler to design golf holes that have unusually wide fairways that give players of varying abilities several risk/reward options off the tee. In essence, the more a player risks in terms of hitting his tee shot in the direction of a primary hazard (water, prairie grass, fescue, wetlands, bunkers, etc) the greater his reward – i.e. a second shot that provides a better angle of approach to the green, better visibility of the next shot, and/or a shorter approach to the green."

So why do I also wince a little at the news of Black Sheep's award? Because the club that has gone back to the future in so many good ways - no housing, no hotel, no swimming pool, no tennis courts - has also opted for one bad one.

No women.

Black Sheep is men-only and if you want to read a pretty good example of someone damned by his own mouth, study club president Vince Solano's stab at defending the policy here:

"We're not the first all-male golf club in the Chicago area."

Ah yes; the old "but everyone does it" defence. Can we please bury this cop-out once and for all? Seventeen million Germans voted for the Nazi Party in 1933. That didn't make Fascism right.

"For us, it wasn't a sexist or political decision not to admit women; it was a business decision. With equity memberships costing $85,000 apiece, there simply wasn't a market for a golf-only club that women would join. In 1988 one of the courses we built was the Royal Fox Golf Club in St. Charles, Ill. Membership was "open" - in other words, a man or a woman could be the club member of record and have full privileges. In 12 years, only seven women had memberships, and the last I heard the club was down to three. That's not much of a market.

"...We have few amenities, which probably wouldn't appeal to women. For example, if the ladies wanted to come out to the club for lunch or tea, well, we don't do that. All we have is a grill on the veranda and a refrigerator stocked with sandwiches."

All of which misses the point by a country mile. It's not that your club doesn't have much to offer women, Mr Solano; it's the fact that they don't get a choice to make their own mind up on the subject like men do.

Let me be clear on this. I don't recoil from men-only clubs out of deference to women. In fact I have little patience with women who can only moan about such places.

This is 2008 and I'm sure there are enough wealthy golfing businesswomen out there to fight fire with fire. Pool your resources, build a club to die for and then stick a huge sign over the main entrance that's visible for miles around:

'WELCOME TO ... LADIES GOLF CLUB. MEN ALSO WELCOME (THE MINUTE HELL FREEZES OVER)'

Don't get mad, girls. Get even.

No, I sneer at men-only clubs because I've been there and done it. And it sucks.

For six hours, 10 years ago, I had temporary member status to watch a game at at Lord's Cricket Ground in London: the Yankee Stadium of Britain's summer game. While more enlightened times now pertain, the pavilion was strictly an adult male preserve back then and once the novelty of finding myself in the Vatican of world cricket had worn off, my abiding memory is of the crushing sterility of the place: fossilised ex-military types and the City/public school Old Boy network, side by side.

By four o'clock that afternoon, I would have gladly paid money to hear soft female laughter, or to see the glint in the eye of a five-year-old making imitation posterior noises with his armpit.

I learnt a lesson that day that has never left me - that women and children are the river that flows through an otherwise arid landscape of five o'clock shadow, stale breath and the murmured debate of a thousand offside flags.

Can't live with 'em; can't live without 'em. It's a cliche because it's true.

So, while I know it's testimony to the course, rather than the club, I am forced to shake my head and smile ruefully at Black Sheep's 'modern' accolade and at yet more classic foot-in-mouth wizardry from Vince Solano:

"Our course designer, David Esler...has provided our members [with] a pure golf experience reminiscent of a bygone era."

Amply aided and abetted by those who drew up the club constitution, it must be said.

And as for you, Golfweek: if there's an irony alarm in your office, I suspect the batteries need changing.

Michelangelo the Cornerstone of Greg Norman's philosophy

When a golf architect reflects thus on his latest project:

“Michelangelo once said, ‘I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free’

I think we can be forgiven for expecting the worst. In Greg Norman's case, though, we'll let him off just this once.

His new course at Cornerstone, Colorado (flyovers and map here) is built along the lines of his 'least disturbance' design philosophy and looks to have stayed faithful to the landscape around it.

Either an altitude factor has been built in to some of the holes or I'm seriously out of touch with what's needed to play from the tips on today's generation of golf courses. Par 5s of 620 and 650 yards; a 553-yard par 4 at 11: it would be easy to see such bare numbers and dismiss the Australian as yet another pro incapable of designing for those outside his own comfort zone.

Not a bit of it. Not only has Norman provided multiple tees but he has carefully scattered them on several holes, to eliminate eye-of-a-needle drives or carries that are not so much daunting as downright forbidding (note the 250 yards needed for your drive from the stones over at 10).

You can make the course no more of a challenge than you want it to be and as a nice touch, there are "Tykes' tees" for kids, 50 yards from each green.

While some of the bunkers have an odd, angular look, there's a generally sparing use of sand around the course and while I'm sure it makes for some hellish caroms, I like the 'rockery' fronting the 10th green.

Overall, it looks an eminently playable course. Comments from any of you who've actually played it would be gratefully received, as always.

Cape crusaders don't always help...

If Rule no. 1 in the architect/client relationship reads "I'LL be the one who designs the course", then Rule no 2 should be "Let the course speak for itself".

I'm sure Tom Fazio has enough on his plate just designing the Corales course in the Dominican Republic resort of Punta Cana, without co-owner Frank Rainieri deciding to ramp up expectation with a little casual hyperbole.

Without a ball being struck in anger, the 18th, a par 4 cape hole, now carries the label 'The Mother of all Holes' , courtesy of Ranieri, who apparently believes this hole may become the most famous and memorable ocean hole in the world.

And you know what? It may well be but if so, the accolade should evolve naturally from the wonder of those who play it. Because if it turns out to be something short of "the most famous and memorable ocean hole in the world", I suspect it won't be Frank Rainieri who carries the can for the faux pas but Tom Fazio, a man not without his critics among the ranks of golf architecure devotees.

For a more measured, if not unbiased, assessment of the closer, try Fazio design associate, Thomas A Marzolf.
......................................................................................

This will do nicely: American Express's Preferred Golf Club courses list gives an immediate flavour of each course with a short gallery of pictures just a click away. Note how well the Mohegan Sun 'clubhouse' blends...
......................................................................................

Pic of the Day XV

The long and short of North Carolina golf

Clive Agran has written a nice summary of North Carolina golf offering his favourite, courses, holes and other things to do while vacationing in Pinehurst country.

If you have the time for a more exhaustive version, embracing both the geography and the history of the game in NC, follow the trail of excellent features written by the good folk at visitnc.com, whom I suspect leave not one stone unturned in finding places for you to play:

"Contrary to popular belief, the first golf course designer to work in Pinehurst wasn't Donald Ross. 'Actually, Dr. P. Leroy Culver did the first nine holes at the Number One course,' says Khristine Januzik, director of the Tufts Archives in Pinehurst.

'Of course, Dr. Culver wasn't technically an architect - I believe he was a public health doctor in New York City. But in those days, you didn't have to be an architect to design golf holes. You just had to be a pretty good golfer and to have been to Scotland...'"

......................................................................................

Pic of the Day XIV

Herbert's island green reveals Dye's true colours

That the 17th at TPC Sawgrass isn't the prototype island green doesn't ameliorate architect Pete Dye's reputation for sadism. It only makes it worse.

Reading this article by Mike Nuzzo, my eye was drawn to the routing map of Beaumont Country Club in Texas, in particular its island green at the 17th. Whether this was the work of original designer Alex Findlay or arose in Baxter Spann's subsequent renovation, I've asked Mike to clarify but it did make me wonder when and where the island green concept first arose.

Popular opinion places the culprit ironically next door to Sawgrass, just three miles up Florida's Highway 1A at Ponte Vedra Inn & Club (club website here, although pretty poor where the golf's concerned). Designed by British ex-pat Herbert Strong, its 9th hole measures 150 yards, yet alongside Dye's austere facsimile, the green is an island in the way Great Britain is an island.

Five bunkers to stop the errant shot? Run-off areas? Herbert clearly grew up in more compassionate times...
.......................................................................................

Pic of the Day XIII

Shannon Golf Club flies under the radar, like its designer

Don't be looking too far ahead of yourself at the start of your Irish golfing holiday. There's a golf course of distinction barely a stone's throw from Shannon airport that is hardly noticed, as new arrivals head for Ballybunion & Co.

So says Golf International's David Brice of Shannon Golf Club and while the course doesn't visually grab you, the strategy is there to see in a number of holes and there's a nice finishing stretch that takes in the Shannon estuary.

What caught my eye most was the identity of the architect - Englishman Commander John D Harris. Covering the golf architecture beat, most designer's names tend to hover on your radar, particularly if they have a number of courses to their name. Harris, however, was a new one on me.

The Surrey man was born in 1912 and became a full-time architect at 45, upon leaving his family's civil engineering business. Said to have been one of the first British architects to look beyond Europe for projects, he claimed to have worked on some 300 courses worldwide.

His trademark was bunkering cut into mounds and filled with white sand and he was a firm believer in making a hole's hazards clear from the tee.

Other courses in his portfolio:

Mt Irvine Bay GC, Tobago
Royal Canberra GC, Australia
Wairakei, New Zealand

"I was smokin' out there" - golf's best nine for lighting up

The excellent Cigar Aficionado picks the world's nine best golf courses for dropping some ash:

"What other sport has tees specifically made to keep cigars elevated from the turf? What other sport has a bag right at hand in which to carry a stash of cigars?...At the golf course, the smoking lamp is always on..."

How to play the Old Course

Alas, I've just blown the last of my Christmas money on a digital radio, otherwise I might just have gone after this promising little tome: caddie Tip Anderson's guide to finding your way around St Andrews Old Course.

Bunkers: the new breasts

Not much in the way of pictures so far but most of what I see of Nick Faldo's new design at Angkor Golf Resort, I like. Apart from the 13th.

I'm getting a real thing about big bunkers. Not a good thing, either. If there's one part of golf architecture where the phrase 'less is more' kicks in with me, it's bunkering and I think the course's own hole notes give the game away with these particular monstrosities:

"Massive bunkers on the tee shot and second shot give this hole a dramatic look..."

Ah, cosmetic. For golf's version of breast augmentation, think sand, not silicon.

Maybe it looks fine when you're actually standing on the fairway but I'm not sold on it just viewing the plans. I could also imagine some nit-pickers arguing that it's out of character with the bunkering employed on the other holes.

While looking to see if it was just me, I came across this interesting quote on Ian Andrew's blog regarding Stanley Thompson's use of large bunkers at Banff (unfortunately, the relevant post seems to have been removed from Ian's archive):

"Thompson used bunkers on a massive scale - they had to be large enough to compete evenly with the surrounding mountains"

Yet not even at Banff do we get the kind of 'smear' bunkering that's caught my eye at Angkor. As with breasts, it seems, there's massive and then there's massive...