Upgrading Braid - Singapore's Bukit course renewed

Interesting times at Singapore Island Country Club, whose Bukit and Sime courses are to be redesigned by Californian architects Golfplan-Fream, Dale & Ramsey.

The Bukit course, one of only three James Braid designs outside the UK, is central to the club's plans. While the Sime course will essentially amount to a brand new golf course, the Bukit renovation will stay as close as possible to original design.

"The objective was to restore and upgrade the Bukit Course while retaining the original routing of the current layout as much as possible." the club has announced. "Also, we wanted to remodel and upgrade the Sime Course to improve playability, whilst at the same time preserving the character and heritage of both courses.
"The Bukit Course has borne witness to world acclaimed golfing tournaments. The 1969 World Cup. The 1993 Johnnie Walker Classic. Various Rolex Masters from 1973 to 1998. More than 28 Singapore Opens from 1962 to 1995 and the last commendable one was the inaugural Caltex Singapore Masters in 2001. It is time to bring the glory back to Bukit Course."

For their part, Golfplan believe that the tropical climate and the number of rounds played over the 80-year-old Bukit course "has greatly diminished Braid’s influence," according to partner David Dale, who adds that “We intend to bring the Braid character fully to bear in creating a highlands feel in a unique tropical setting.”

I am intrigued by this particular footnote - "And let’s be clear," Dale added, "While the James Braid Society recognizes the Bukit as a fully fledged Braid design, the man never set foot on site. He laid out the course using boundary and topographical maps."

I'm being mischievous here, I know, but could this be Golfplan getting its excuses in early, as in "Hey, if we think our idea beats the old guy's, then we're going with it. We're here; he wasn't..."?

Time will tell. It's interesting to note, though, that the 'absent architect' concept is not quite as new-fangled as some purists would have you believe...

The Dogwood stage is a' rollin' on over the plains...

There's a nice looking municipal in town, now that Dogwood Trace is open for business in Petersburg, Virginia.

Designed by Thomas E Clark, it seems to have a nice blend of holes, even if high-handicappers will have their hearts in their mouths at most of the par threes...
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Up for sale: Oakridge Country Club, Texas:

"Often described as North Dallas' best kept secret, Oakridge Country Club features 18 holes of championship golf with some of the finest greens in the Metroplex. The course features a variety of challenging holes with meticulously maintained fairways and manicured greens. The 6,516-yard, par 71 course is truly a delight to play for golfers of all skill levels. Scenic terrain, tight fairways, and the meandering Duck Creek combine to offer a beautiful and memorable golf experience. Water comes into play on 14 holes with over 50 strategically placed bunkers to keep your round exciting."

Described as "currently operating at 50% of capacity", offers are invited for this Jack Kidwell and Michael Hurdzan 18-holer. The routing plan is here - note the good use of the creek on 3 and, particularly, 18.

Don't be fooled by the lushness of the course in the routing plan. Take a look at another time of year and you begin to realise that for all the agonising as to whether US courses are too green, in certain parts of the country the debate is already redundant...
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A new slant on my Pic of the Day. Hell, if they're that good, you want to be able to do something with them, so from now on, they're 'Wallpapers of the Day' - only wallpaper size shots will be chosen. And here's today's...

Are these really golf people?

Regular readers will know that golf course websites that leave you more or less to guess at what the course is like, aren't exactly flavour of the month with this blog.

At Rancho Canada Golf Club, however, they really are taking the mickey.

What kind of golf club offers you nothing more than a scorecard for its two courses yet in the same breath provides a Virtual Tour of the Banquet Rooms...?

"There'll be no diversity outreach goin' on in our locker room, Mr Mayor..."

It was while examining the options for One Destination on Three Bankrolls: San Francisco that I came across the question mark currently hanging over municipal courses in the city by the bay:

"The City of San Francisco is currently conducting a three-month study to evaluate possible alternate uses of their golf courses"

While threats to golfing acres are never good news (although I don't see Harding Park being used for social housing any time soon) it's especially glum for a course like Lincoln Park, which has not only history like this but also views like this.

Those views, it must be said, are what make it, for a dazzling test of golf it isn't (or a pristine one: count those daisies...) but if it's the kind of place that allows those to dip their toe in golf's waters who might otherwise have been economically forced to do something else with their Saturdays, then it deserves both survival and a revamp.

The course where it all began for me was no Augusta, either, yet it owns a corner of my heart forever.


[pic courtesy of grismarengo]

Golf architects meet: more taste, less speed?

Interesting points arising from a recent meeting of the American Society of Golf Course Architects, where design tweaks that speed up play were the subject of debate:

“A properly designed, well-drained course with ample playable areas, properly placed bunkers, visible water hazards and smaller greens usually plays fastest,” says ASGCA president Steve Forrest.

“Common sense tells us that shorter, wider courses will play faster than longer, narrow ones, particularly for the average and beginning players,” Forrest says. “But, other design elements should also be taken into account.”

While I've no problem with any plea for wider fairways, which gives an architect scope to plot two or even three different routes to the green, I hear just the faintest of alarm bells with two other suggestions raised at the meeting: containment mounding and flatter greens.

"When greens have fewer severe undulations, three putt frequency is reduced," runs the ASGCA line (excuse the pun). Fine and dandy if you're talking about recreational courses but if the course concerned has championship aspirations, I've long thought that tough greens are one of the alternatives to the knee-jerk strategy of cranking the yardage north of 7,000. With pace of play something of a hot potato after the Masters, I'd hate to think that architects might be persuaded to dismiss the option altogether.

As for mounding, "Fairways can be designed to contain slightly errant shots by strategic mound placement." About this topic, I feel the way I do about embryo research - the principle might be sound but in the wrong hands you could end up with a monster, as Ian Andrew explains here.

I shan't lie; there was a time when I would have thrilled at the sight of a hole neatly defined by mounding along its perimeter. Then I read more about my subject and learnt how a game without such limits can be even more beautiful.

Don't punish the guy who's dragged his tee shot a mile wide with anything more than a tricky line for his recovery shot. Keep the grass short enough for him to find his ball easily and cut back the foliage so that he at least has a shot of sorts. There's just as much fun in rising to that challenge as there is in keeping your tee shot straight to start with.

Mounding is a question of degree, as so many things are.
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Pic of the Day

Great Afterlife Punch-ups - Castro v Donald Ross

To paraphrase Oscar Wilde, "to lose one Donald Ross course may be regarded as a misfortune. To lose two is a disgrace."

As talk grows of Cuba becoming the next corner of the planet to be charged with the task of keeping golf architects in work, the full horror of the Castro regime is revealed. Let's just say Donald may want words when Fidel shows at the Pearly Gates...

"When the revolution triumphed in 1959, Havana had three courses. Fidel, though not keen on the game, played [Che] Guevara in 1962 as a publicity stunt...Fidel, a bad loser, resented being beaten...

The course, Colinas de Villareal, was ripped up and converted into a barracks. Another course, the Havana Biltmore Golf Club, was turned into an arts school, leaving only the Havana Golf Club. Its grandeur has faded. These days the bar is musty, tee-flags are missing and staff spend idle moments knocking fruit from the trees." - Rory Carroll, The Guardian

The Biltmore's course was designed by Ross, as was the Country Club of Havana, whose course was similarly ploughed under once Castro came to power. Some delightful postcards of the Country Club course in its prime can be found here, while part of the obsolete Biltmore course can be seen in the background of this picture.

A possible measure of the Country Club's challenge can be found in this ancient New York Times report from 1913; former US Amateur champion Walter Travis shooting 83, 81 and 76 on his way to winning Cuba's first golf tournament. Not exactly 'burning it up'...

On a more positive note, there is proof of the country's golfing potential at Les Furber's eye-catching design at Varadero Golf Club (pictured above: background story here):



I suspect the best part of this course is the one you can't deduce from a map: the wind factor, but Furber looks to have used different tee locations well on several holes, altering the character of the challenge depending on where you start from. The 15th and 16th look as though they make for a daunting run-in, too.

There's a closer look at the 18th - and at some highly-inadvisable white shorts - here and I would be failing in my duty as a golf architecture hack if I didn't report the enthusiastic reception for the course given by a visiting party of Royal & Ancient officials recently. The video's here and while my Spanish isn't great, I'm pretty sure I can hear "Kelly Tilghman can shove my sand wedge where the sun don't shine" somewhere in the chorus...


[Pic courtesy of PamIAm]
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Pic of the Day (no more numbers...). This month's competition may already be over.

A nice Donald Ross design but don't tell anyone...

While Golf.com names 10 great golf courses built during the Golden Age of golf course design that are playable by The Great Unwashed, the two that caught my eye are those I'd never heard of - Linville and Taconic.

Plenty of information to go on where the latter is concerned. Not only do we get a players' guide and layout gallery but we even get a welcome insight into how an architect sees the restoration of a course, with this in-depth Course Master Plan provided by Gil Hanse.

To complete the picture, here's the flyover:



What a shame those who oversee Donald Ross' creation at Linville don't deem it worthy of similar exposure.

By the time you've read the following on Golf Club Atlas:

A 1924 Ross design that was reportedly carved from the mountains using mules and drag pans! Another beautiful and peaceful course that will test everything you've got and more.

Or taken in Ron Green Jr's view that:

This is a classic, old-style mountain course that you could play every day without tiring of it. The par-4 third hole has been included on many best holes in the world lists and justifiably so. Linville doesn’t beat you up the way some courses can. It caresses you like a cashmere sweater.

You're pretty much itching to see the place for yourself. Unless I'm missing something on the website, however, you get a downloadable scorecard and a smattering of photographs. No flyovers, 3D hole images, gallery or course layout graphic.

Before the rant, let me atone as much as I can. There's an aerial shot here, a review if you scroll down here and a flyover here:



Brownie points added: it's another course that's not too heavy on the bunkers and it has just been unclogged by the removal of numerous trees, according to this interesting piece on golf's uneasy relationship with the leaf and branch.

Brownie points subtracted: Satanic greens, as per these comments from the Golf Club Atlas Forum:

There is a green at Old Linville (another Ross) that is so severe that if you are on the back tier you cannot putt down the hill without likely putting 40 yds back down the fairway.

I played at Linville GC in the NC mountains last week and saw both the blessing and curse of fast greens. The greens were flawless--the truest and fastest I've played--but they also rendered several of the pin positions downright ridiculous given the slope of the greens. It was impossible at times to keep the ball on the green, or even within 25 yards of the green, if you got above the hole.

I like Linville at least as much though they have some greens that are just too severe today.

Now for the rant. When your course is designed by Donald Ross and you're happy to list its umpteen accolades on your website, how on earth can you justify not having so much as a layout map on-line, in this day and age? Dare I suggest that this is what happens when golf courses are run by hotel people?

I wonder how management at the Eseeola Lodge would view a flyer for a new Broadway show that promised:

"...a starring role for one of the biggest names in Hollywood. We're not telling you who he is but here are some pictures of his ear lobe and the back of his left knee"

I suspect they wouldn't be overly impressed. If any of them are reading this, they might like to hold that thought.

You didn't walk in front of Bobby Jones if you knew what was good for you

Fascinating thread over at the Golf Club Atlas forum, asking Did Jones and Roberts Throw MacKenzie Under The Bus? A question that I'm sure regularly crosses all our minds...

The 'money post':

"ANGC was intended to be revolutionary. That's what MacK and Jones thought they were doing. That's what they thought they had built. That's how contemporary observers with any expertise in gca saw ANGC at its opening.

The heart of that revolution was taking the elements that they believed made TOC the best course in the world and emphasizing those to a degree that had never been done before. Specifically the idea was to stress

- width and playability,
- little rough, few bunkers,
- reliance on existing contours,
- large asymmetric greens that stressed angles of approach
- water hazards that inflict tough, disproportionate penalties because they are only engaged with longer clubs if you are trying for a sub-par score.

Those are the things usually cited in the abstract. But you got to look at the pictures in Byrdy's book to grasp how wild MacK's implementation was. It was strategic golf on acid. Terrific, edgy, gutsy stuff. It was almost a satire of strategic concepts. Over the top features that were and remain unprecedented in the history of gca. (ANGC was not the only place MacK was trying this wild stuff. See Pasa and Crystal Downs for slightly toned down versions.) There has never been anything like it. For that reason, because of the uniqueness of ANGC as an architectural experiment, it's loss hurts. Everyone, but especially the Ron Whitten's of this world, ought to feel that loss.

Very few people (thanks in part to the tireless efforts of gca commentators in the mass media) have an appreciation of the daring nature of that experiment. Yes, if ANGC has been kept closer to its original form and the Great Depression hadn't intervened, I think RTJ's Dark Ages might have turned out very differently. But who knows.

The urge to recover parts of ANGC is not just me being a purist about old gca. (In fact I'm not a purist about those things.) It's that ANGC was a special case. It was a unique architectural experiment carried out with great courage by the best golf architect ever to trod this mortal coil.

For those reasons I would would have thought people with a sense of the history of gca would pause a moment before cheering on the bulldozers."

Be warned, as philosophy briefly hijacks the debate, the thread disappears up its own rectum for a while but then this is the Golf Club Atlas forum: the forum which recently debated "which courses have the best feng shui?" with not a discernible shred of irony.
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Pic of the Day XVI. Winners for February and March, incidentally...

In search of the Poor Man's Masters

I have had cause to mention Dancing Rabbit GC's Azalea course before. Now it crops up again, this time due to a timely if daunting comparison to no less than Augusta National.

And once again, it fares well visually. Scroll down to find several more photographs here.

It made me wonder if any other courses made so bold as to claim a general, as opposed to partial resemblance to Georgia's finest. Here, in descending order of justification, are a few thrown up by Googling the phrase "reminiscent of Augusta":

1. Hilton Head National, South Carolina. They say, "Playing in the Spring months, Hilton Head National is reminiscent of Augusta National, with wide green fairways, and Azalea bushes and other shrubs." We say "getting warm". Tenuousness Rating *
2. Cambrian Ridge (The Loblolly Nine), Alabama. They say, "exudes a stately, Augusta-like quality". We say "white sand and a few more trees and we're starting to feel it" . Tenuousness Rating **
3. The Parklands at The Legends GC, South Carolina (more pics here). They say, "modeled after the style of Alister Mackenzie reminiscent of Augusta National & Pine Valley". We say "we're getting a bit more Pine than cathedral-in-the-pines." Tenuousness Rating ***
4. Rolling Oaks, Florida (pictures here). They say, "a landscape reminiscent of Augusta National (including Azaleas!)". We say "it starts and ends with the azaleas". Tenuousness Rating ****
5. Real Club de Golf Campoamor, Spain. They say "The sculptured greens and fairways of Campoamor are reminiscent of Augusta". We say "...and everything else is reminiscent of, er, Spain". Tenuousness Rating *****

More fun than a lighthouse - Nicklaus at Punta Mita

Just as I was discussing the origin of the island green, the latest issue of Golf World brought my attention to this extreme example of the species - said to be the world's only natural island green - at Jack Nicklaus' Punta Mita design, in Mexico.



Undeniably dramatic though 'The Tail of the Whale' is, I'm not overly sold on any hole that requires you to jump into a boat as a preliminary to putting out. High tide (see picture here) forces golfers to navigate the hole's 194 yards by way of amphibious shuttle ('boat' being far too humble a term for a premium course such as this, presumably).

I'd also love to hear from any agronomists reading this as to how the green holds up in the face of a saltwater drenching whenever the occasional storm blows in.

Brian McCallen looks at the course and resort as a whole here.