Olde Beau Golf & Country Club - redefining 'slope'

Ah, that smorgasbord of opinion that keeps the world forever fresh.

"One of the greatest mountain courses ever built," says Curtis Strange of North Carolina's Old Beau G&CC

"This ridiculous golf hole is a par 5 with a blind tee shot that leads you to the top of the hill. Good luck on club selection from thereon out," says Iwowen on Flickr.com

I think his reverence is aimed at the 17th but overall I'm inclined to side with his scepticism.

In my last post, I talked about Ardglass GC being "quietly blended with the folds of the land". While I can only go on photographs where Olde Beau is concerned, the blending looks a much noisier process. In fact, I swear I can still hear the grunts and groans of 18 holes being prised into their environment, come what may.

It's a view I'd have kept to myself but for these damning and more qualified opinions via the GolfClubAtlas Forum:

"Built on a horribly severe piece of property and designed by the owner. I doubt if he could find a real architect who would take the job. Unfortunately, quite a few unsuspecting souls have bought some fairly upscale homes on the course. They must have not played the course in advance. If you have a fear of heights, stay away. In fact, stay away, period."

"...the worst collection of holes I have ever seen, by far! I hope that few, if any, members of this board have ever played it."

There are one or two others on the forum who love the place, though and the scenery is undoubtedly breathtaking. I just think that maybe there are some types of terrain to which a golf course cannot stay true without straying dangerously close to freak show territory.

When you have to scar your fairways with what looks like wooden/stonewall terracing, that could be God's way of trying to tell you something.
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Tips on playing golf in Thailand
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Pic of the Day

Why don't we hear more about Ardglass Golf Club?

But for a picture its 11th hole catching my eye in an Irish Tourist Board ad, I would still be none the wiser about the mouth-watering course they call Ardglass Golf Club.

Perched on a step, the 11th struck me as something a bit different but once I began the course tour at this Northern Ireland venue, I realised you could say the same of most of the holes. What a delightful combination of neat simplicity, quietly blended with the folds of the land and fringed with splashes of yellow and blue.

And a selection of par threes, by the looks of them, of which any course would be proud. Is it right, the recurrent feeling I get that the 7th at Pebble Beach hogs the scenic spotlight more than is strictly warranted?

Ardglass is a course that just makes me yearn to grab some clubs and play. You'll find a potted history and rave reviews here.
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Ranking the top ten North Carolina courses
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Pic of the Day - 17th at Sun Valley GC

Taba golf shows Middle East's nicer side

Some of them need tinkering with but there are some nice wallpapers to be had from this gallery showing off the Jordanian golf course at Taba Heights.

Designed by John Sanford, whose work at Juliette Falls led to one of The Golf Course as Art's most visited posts, you'll find the course map here.

At the more budget end of the Jordanian market, you' ll find Bisharat GC, complete with 'browns' where the greens are meant to be and its own cave...
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Best courses to play on a Maui vacation
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Pic of the Day - 16th at Braid Hills GC

There are no pixies at Muirfield

It's probably safe to say the goodwill golfers bear towards links golf will never fade.

It's where our game came in and the whole idea of God as architect, random undulation laden with rough justice and the raw, unsanitised caprice of it all strikes chords in anyone jaded by a cluttered world.

Sometimes, you'd think there really is no other stage that befits the sport but I think such a view is too narrow.

The above photo or something very similar is currently doing the rounds, accompanying double-page ads for Palmetto Bluff. Depicting the 14th at Jack Nicklaus' May River Golf Club, it is a reminder that the hand of man has added its own charms to golf's landscape.

I love secluded par 3s like these, particularly once the shadows lengthen. Grotto golf, I call it: detached havens cocooned from the rest of the course. You tiptoe in, play your shots and tiptoe out again, leaving them to birdsong and the pixies.

Links golf, occasionally, can wait. Give thanks for trees, leafy glades and grottoes. The game would be poorer without them.

You'll find a fine summary of the course as a whole at GolfClubAtlas.
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Golfing in Scandinavia? Excellent animated flyovers of a number of courses (also one in Estonia) can be found at LiveCaddie.

When do golf architects start peeing in the wind?

I'm assured it's one of the most photographed golf holes in the world, so I can only plead dumb ignorance that I have only just been officially blown away by the 13th at Glassy Golf Course.

Officially the yardage is 159 but the more relevant number is 75 - the number of miles you can see from the green on a clear day. Click on the photograph for an aerial view of the hole in its entirety.

Now here's my quandary, were I the architect, rather than Tom Jackson. If I have a breathtaking piece of terrain with which to work, how good, architecturally, should I make the hole?

This may sound an odd question but it stems from another I often ask myself: do great holes punctuated by several holes that are merely good, provide the ideal blend for a golf course, or must the objective always be 18 stellar holes?

As I see it, the good holes throw the great holes into stark relief in a player's mind, whereas if you confront your public with wall-to-wall excellence, they might struggle to take it all in.

The 13th at Glassy provides a variation on this theme: is there a point at which you accept that the view is king and so rein in the architecture to avoid a busy piece of landscape that throws too much at those who use it?

By way of analogy - certain sporting careers are so overwhelmingly successful, you can't grasp the full import of what you're looking at. There's an element of this, I think, in the growing chorus of Tiger-sniping. On the other hand, we often warm more readily to the sportsman whose career is touched by just occasional splashes of greatness (John Daly?) because we can assimilate his achievements more easily.

So, getting back to Glassy; is there any point in a hole jam-packed with options and strategy, when most of its patrons are likely to have eyes only for the horizon? The course notes talk of a deceptively sloping green and variable wind shifts funnelling through the gap in the trees. Might these defences be sufficient argument for losing the bunkers altogether and complementing the complexity of the view with the minimalism of the hole?

Would that be good architecture or just plain lazy?

Am I ever going to stop asking questions?

If so, when?

I'm not trying to second-guess Tom Jackson in any way here, I must stress: I'm just thinking aloud. Comments, particularly from any of you who are formally qualified in this field, would be most welcome, as always.

Play PGA Tour courses on the cheap

Stepping onto Tour courses doesn't have to mean slipping into the red.

For anyone whose favourite tales of PGA Tour history involve the kind of people and incidents the Tour will never see again (did someone say Ky Laffoon...?) Al Barkow has written a wonderful account of municipal courses that once hosted Tour events and whose tee-times now go for a comparative song:

"There still exist a number of courses where PGA Tour events were played when the circuit was far from today's multimillion dollar show of shows. We speak in particular of municipal golf courses, where you can get a walk-up tee time, pay a pittance of a green fee by today's standards, then take your shots in the shadow of American golf's most richly anecdotal, colorful, inventive era -- the old days of the pro tour."

Where do I start to capture the flavour of this joyous read..?

Keller GC - "Gangsters sneaking a break from the "heat" in Chicago, played regularly...in the '20s and '30s. They included John Dillinger, as legend has it, and one day, when Dillinger was playing the third hole, he saw FBI agents approaching his group. He jumped the fence and hopped a train that ran adjacent to the course. He left his clubs behind."

Memorial Park GC - "The curved concrete bench, called The Rail, is still in front of the pro shop where the "players" in the old days - cab drivers, night-club musicians, bookies, cops, pimps, even oil barons - sat waiting to get up a 'game'. They were guys named Red Nose, Runt and Spiz."

Brackenridge Park - "You know you're on a course packed into small acreage when you walk onto a green and fix a pitch mark from a ball that was going in the other direction."

El Rio - "An El Rio regular recalled recently that as a 9-year-old he caddied for Bill Ogden, and when asked what club to hit he told his pro: 'Anyone you want, there's a lot of them in there. He didn't get hot, and even gave me a nice tip.'"

Rancho Park - "[Palmer] won three times at Rancho, but also earned a plaque at the 18th tee from which he made a 12 on the 478-yard par 5 in the 1961 event...Palmer complained that the original plaque was too big, and somehow it disappeared. But course-proud Rancheros replaced it, albeit with a smaller one. Inscribed is how he did it: A fine drive, two sliced shots into the driving range, followed by two hooks onto Patricia Avenue. He finally hit the green with his sixth shot, and two-putted. Eight strokes plus four penalties...

Other courses mentioned are Fort Sam Houston, Willow Springs, and Randolph Park. Of all of them, Rancho Park gets my nod, partly because I love the logo and partly because every club should have a member called Johnny Disco...

This just in from the "Oh please..." Dept.

Bush: I quit golf over Iraq war

US President George W. Bush said in an interview out Tuesday that he quit playing golf in 2003 out of respect for the families of US soldiers killed in the conflict in Iraq, now in its sixth year.
"I think playing golf during a war just sends the wrong signal," he said...I don't want some mom whose son may have recently died to see the commander-in-chief playing golf. I feel I owe it to the families to be in solidarity as best as I can with them."

Thanks, George. If my child was dead at the whim of third-rate, warmongering politicians, you have no idea how much better this awareness of your own personal sacrifice would make me feel.

State of golf's Major nation - it's the course, stupid...

You could fill half-a-dozen posts with why The Players should be the fifth Major.

Here's one on why it could yet become the year's first.

If the grandeur of history underpins the reputation of the British and US Opens, the two Majors that bookend each season are all about the course. The recent rise in stock of the PGA Championship is due, I believe, in no small part to the tournament returning to courses of genuine quality, while the venue for the first Major of the year, like charity, covers a multitude of sins.

The Masters' field might be a closed shop; its host club might jar somewhat with modern social mores, but any reservations have traditionally withered to irrelevance once Georgian shadows shimmer across those familiar strands of emerald and white, the flowers are aflame behind the 13th green and an April Sunday afternoon rejoices with boundless possibility, thanks to the one Major each year that has traditionally hated long grass.

We may put our clocks forward a few days beforehand and baseball and cricket seasons may have already cleared their throats but nothing signals the arrival of summer like Masters weekend.

Tinker unfavourably with the Augusta National golf course and you hack at the tournament's very soul.

Not that I'm ready to damn the new-look Augusta just yet. If journalists routinely boarded aircraft as flimsy as some of the bandwagons upon which they gleefully leap, the average staff turnover in my line of work would be measured in days rather than months. Two dull Masters do not a sea-change make.

But I am concerned. Iconic moment for me at this year's tournament came when one commentator pointed out that the chance of Larry Mize's 1987 heroics being repeated had lurched from slim to non-existent, thanks to one side of the green being raised at the 11th.

Why would you mute so resonant a part of your history as this? I heard alarm bells at that point and anyone at Augusta National who watched The Players last weekend could be forgiven if he heard some too.

They do things differently at Sawgrass. They get their bitchin' out of the way nice and early, for starters. Scornfully dismissed as "90 percent horse manure and 10 percent luck" when it first hosted this event in 1982, Pete Dye's course now seems to get more respect with each passing year. In my opinion, it's merited.

I play an excellent reproduction of the course on my PC and offhand, I can't think of a hole that bores me. Augusta, on the other hand, has three visual flat spots in its back nine. The 14th, 17th and 18th might be great to play, for all I know, but none of them stir my blood as a spectator.

Maybe someone can statistically shoot me down in flames here but 17 and 18 in particular rarely provide spectacular viewing, in my experience. I find them doughty, unyielding holes to watch, where par seems too often pre-ordained and meekly accepted.

At Sawgrass, things are slightly different, water lacing the last three holes with opportunity and ruin. The 16th is the kind of par-5 Augusta's 13th once was and those who fashionably sneer at 17 overlook the simple fact that for this event and at this point in the round, it is perfect. Just about anywhere else, I grant you, the concept is rubbish.

And while I quibble slightly with the suggestion that the 18th is golf's toughest closing hole, it undoubtedly keeps the world best golfers on a tightrope to the bitter end.

So this is where we're at now. Someone asks "Augusta National vs. TPC Sawgrass - which is the better venue?" and the point is genuinely debated, whereas once it might have been laughed out of court.

We have Augusta National, for so long on the side of enterprising play, now seemingly moving away from it in a bid to stop one man out of ninety, while Sawgrass, once wicked uncle to Tour pros everywhere, now compassionately waters its greens on the players' behalf to counter a daunting wind. Whatever happened to "Star Wars golf, designed by Darth Vader"?

It is a reminder that everything can change and frequently does. That a tournament whose comparative youth is perpetually held against it by people apparently under the impression that Augusta National was born at the age of 50, is now 34 years old and will only get older. That sometimes when we least expect it, an emotional tipping point is reached where the unthinkable becomes accepted fact.

It will be a tragedy if The Masters' star dims and I don't wish it for one moment. At the same time, however, I'm pleased that the words "The Players will never be a major – and shouldn’t be..." are accompanied by Ian Andrew's name and not my own.

Why golfers are like search engines

There's a Google or Yahoo quality to most of us. Certain key words or phrases reach our eyes or ears and we simply have to spider our way to the golf course being talked about to see it for ourselves.

"looks like it's been here forever"

"options off the tee"

"this 5,000 yard monster"

Go on: tell me none of these phrases pique your curiosity...

I heard another one this week. Mowing my lawn on Monday's Bank Holiday, I was half-listening on my MP3 player to Brandon Tucker talk about a course on South Carolina's Waccamaw Golf Trail, when he mentioned not being able to tell whether it had been designed in the 1920s or the 1990s.

Key phrase. My search engine duly optimised, I decided the lawn could wait.

The course turned out to be Caledonia Golf and Fish Club, the architect is Mike Strantz and the break from cutting the grass was totally justified.

This is one of those courses where you can see what the architect is trying to do within seconds of clicking on the hole link. I'm an unashamed fan of Strantz golf courses - I'm not one of the ummers and aaahers where Tobacco Road is concerned - and Caledonia just raises his stock further in my book.

Anyway, mowing the lawn not being one of my favourite activities, one thing led to another and before I know it, I'm reading this about Caledonia:

"Caledonia was the product of a more restrained Strantz than we see in some of his creations. There are just a few forced carries and the mounding, while present, is generally more subdued than even what can be found just down the road at True Blue. In fact, in 2000, Strantz said that they moved the least amount of soil at Caledonia of any of his (then five) courses...

Still Caledonia has that "Strantz" feel - bold, challenging, but all the while artistic. There's a gentle sculpting of the natural terrain, with an occasional flair added to accentuate the setting. The final hole is one to remember. With the marsh off to your right, it's a fairway wood or hybrid to a landing area, and then a short to mid iron over water to a sloping green with water on two sides. It doesn't look difficult on paper, but it plays over its head (especially when the pin is back)."

Note the comment one reader has added about another Strantz design, at the end of the The Sand Trap piece: "Tot Hill Farm is plain crazy".

Plain crazy. Oh dear, more key words. I was off...

The Tot Hill Farm website is here and more great browsing it made, too. If this is plain crazy then bring me a straitjacket and a sand wedge.

I've come to the conclusion that Strantz (on whom Jay Flemma has a whole page of promising-looking links) is the George Gershwin of architects. If we lost him far too soon then at least we lost him at the top of his game. To paraphrase the line from Remembrance Day, age does not weary him, nor the years condemn.

Now this was how to spend a Bank Holiday.

You never forget how a great course drains...

We live in an age where the image industry leaves no stone unturned in its bid to find a new edge on which a product or organisation can build its reputation.

Am I right to wonder, though, if the people behind Rooster Run GC are getting ever so slightly desperate when they hail their track as 'The Best Draining Course in Northern California'?

In fairness, I'm a complete stranger to that part of the world, so maybe it's a bigger deal over there than I realise but where I come from, when grown men grow misty-eyed over St Andrews and Sunningdale, they're not thinking of pipework.

Credit where it's due, however. I've recently lambasted golf course websites that highlight every facility except the damn course itself, so hats off to Rooster Run for showing how course coverage should be done.

Great job, web designer. They should sack the brand manager and double your pay...