'Kings' rightly in their Castle at St Andrews' new course

I'm sure Alistair Tate's general golfing knowledge far surpasses my own but he may need to brush up on his architecture before he's assigned to any more course reviews.

While he's entitled to his opinion on the new Castle Course at St Andrews, the following howler sticks out like a sore thumb:

"Then there is what I can only describe as the 'Don King Features' that adorn the course. How these were dreamt up is beyond me. Picture the boxing promoter’s distinctive head, with his hair sticking up. Mounds in the middle of fairways with footlong grass surrounding them abound. There’s a 'Don King' in the middle of the fifth fairway at about 265 yards. So you can hit a perfect tee shot up the middle and find your ball in knee-high grass. Sorry, but if I split the fairway I want a clean lie, thank you."

But that's just it, Alastair: you didn't split the fairway. That would have involved bisecting the short grass between the 'Don King' and the rough, either side of the hazard.

If the 'King' in question was invisible from the tee then Tait has a point. If not, then architects trying to breathe some life back into course design without simply going down the elongation route, have a tougher job on their hands than I thought, if this reaction is typical.

Maybe it was always thus, or why would Alister Mackenzie have felt the need to justify the strategy so many years ago?

“A hazard placed in the exact position where a player would naturally go is frequently the most interesting situation, as then special effort is needed to get over or avoid it”

Ian Andrew eloquently continues the case for the defence here, with regard to bunkers, and his post contains photos of some classic examples of the species. To this argument, I would add only my previous post on Woking GC, one more course of which, by the sound of it, Alastair Tait might do well to steer clear...

Golf course ratings - 'rank' is the word

In theory, it should be the nature of this blog that I give a stuff about golf course rankings.

In reality, I don't. There is, to my knowledge, no ranking system for orchestral symphonies, nor is there one for paintings by the great masters and I often wish golf magazines would take the hint.

Have your readers vote for their favourite courses each year if you must but trying to apply numbers and criteria to an essentially subjective exercise always strikes me as a project that achieves nothing other than the annual creation of an almighty talking shop that invariably gets us nowhere.

As proof of how long this tail-chasing has gone on, this article is perfect: a 1926 defence of his methods by American renaissance man and course-rater Joshua Crane (pictured).

The Harvard alumnus' attempts to catch lightning in a bottle, you will notice, had left St Andrews firmly bottom of his ratings system as applied to the great courses of Britain. Not surprisingly, this hadn't gone down terribly well with the natives, hence Crane's endeavours here to defend his rationale.

Fill your boots with it if you must, you'll find more of the same in this thread from the Golf Club Atlas forum, where they wallow in such stuff like Cleopatra in asses' milk but I must confess, what grabs my attention in the article is Crane's resume as set out beneath his photograph:

"Classical degree, Harvard; engineering degree, Massachusetts Institute Technology. Full-back, Harvard and Tech. football teams. Member college track teams, winning over 100 prizes hurdling, broad jumping and pole vaulting. Captain Dedham Polo Club team. Won some fifty cups at polo. Won National Tennis championship 1901-2-3-4. Club champion of both New York and Boston Racquet clubs for many years. Won many yacht races with boats he designed and sails. Says that he is rather mediocre at golf," but last summer his score at Gleneagles was 72; Hoylake, 74; St. Andrews, 75, etc. For five years captain of the Lesley Cup team of Boston"

Whatever you might think of his rating methods (and I know what I think of the grating false modesty of single-figure handicappers who still attempt self-deprecation) you can't fault him when it comes to making the most of life's rich tapestry.

Many references to Crane invariably touch upon his famous use of a miniature putter and I am delighted to say I have uncovered a photograph of the famous implement in action, star of which must surely be the caddie pictured in the background. If you happen to be studying body language, this is what contempt looks like.

Justin Timberlake's golfing roots no longer up the Creek

At a time when the game is said to be in something of a recession, let's hear it for Justin Timberlake, whom I've just learnt has stepped into the fraught world of golf course ownership.

The singer stumped up to buy Big Creek Golf Club in Millington, Tennessee, on which his father taught him the game, when he discovered it was earmarked as a site for apartments by developers. Now, there's a major face lift under way which, as far as the environment is concerned, will all be in the best possible taste (though what the bejasus is a 'cart cottage'?).

There's an aerial of the course here, although if Justin's update is in any way inspired by his current club in Los Angeles (website here), regulars may not recognise it by the time he's done.

'The Golf Course as Art' is one today

Yes, it was 12 months ago today that this blog limped onto the scene with a look at that well known shrine to the Royal & Ancient game, Kabul Golf Club.

To everyone who has passed this way since, particularly if you paused to lend me your opinions, good bad or indifferent, many thanks.

And now, onwards and upwards. Ain't no such thing as anterior cruciate ligaments in golf blog land, no sir...

[Pic courtesy of yogi]

Golf simulators: a good walk foiled

Say one thing for golf simulation firms, their websites are a wonderful means of getting a feel for holes you might never set foot upon in your life.

No arty-farty angles here: these guys have product to sell, so the photography is strictly of the you-are-there variety.

Wandering through High Definition Golf's selection of courses, for example, I defy you not to feel the wind in your hair at Kiawah Island or the salt on your lips at Caso de Campo. It also includes the lowest angle from which I've ever seen Stanley Thompson's Devil's Cauldron hole at Banff Springs photographed. Dare I say that it looks markedly less scary than usual...?

Poor relation has to be Wooden Sticks, which has tried to reproduce 18 famous holes from elsewhere and on the evidence of those offered here, succeeds only in making us yearn for the originals. I persist in my exasperation with architects who believe lightning can strike twice in this way: life really is far too short.

Look at the stab at Augusta's 12th, for example. You know how you feel when a rapper bastardises your favourite '70s song...?

The only thing shakier than Tiger's knee

You were drab this year. As you were last year.

Even your biggest admirers quietly concede this now, because if the Players Championship showed them how much fun big-time golf can be, the US Open showed them in glorious technicolour and threw in an extra 19-hole fanfare for good measure.

So much so that even those of us watching from six thousand miles away in an armchair still felt privileged to have done so.

And before you say it, no we're not drunk on the moment: we know that if Tiger's knee was right, he may well have wrapped up number 14 in regulation.

It's the details we're excited about: the way no-one moaned about the rough so much; the way a superlative player could once again play two of his most sensational shots despite being so wide of the fairway; the way Torrey Pines could make both a boomer and a shortie feel like they belonged there; the way the whoops from the gallery weren't just perfunctory, habitual things but visceral, all-consuming releases that probably startled even some of those producing them.

All that used to be you, remember?

Well, you have 10 more months to reflect, which should come easier now that you're on your own in the naughty corner. Torrey Pines made sure of that. Everyone loves the US Open again. Now, more than anything, we want to love you too.

But it's tough love time. Go back to being what you were; vulnerable to the golfer who excels but scary the moment he doesn't. Don't resent 63s; just relish the roars that accompany them.

And if you haven't already, be big enough to pick up the phone and call Mike Davis. Just to talk some things through.

Augusta National, you have a problem. A third consecutive so-so Masters and it will be a crisis.

Torrey Pines made sure of that.

Torrey Pines - good as any; better than most

Over at Golf ClubAtlas, where golf architecture lovers occasionally become indistinguishable from wine critics in their snootiness, the carping has begun. Perhaps the only surprise about the thread Is torrey pines the worst course to host a US open in recent memory? is that it currently only runs to two pages.

Most of us, of course, will never get to play it other than through a computer but for us at least, I would argue that this year's Open venue is no worse than most other courses on the rota and will be better than many, thanks to its backdrop of the dazzling Pacific.

They may be fine courses to play but Shinnecock Hills and Pebble Beach apart, I can't think of any US Open venue of my lifetime that has imprinted itself indelibly on my memory as an onlooker. If I had to sum up the typical Open course in three words, they would be earnest, worthy and arduous.

Until Daily Mail golf correspondent Derek Lawrenson said much the same thing several years ago, I had written myself off as just a ghastly philistine but before you add 'biased' to the charge sheet, let me say that once you remove St Andrews, Turnberry and Royal Birkdale from the equation, my summation of British Open tracks would be shaggy, lumpy and windy...

Torrey Pines' South course has its moments: the cute par 3 3rd, the pond nibbling away at the front of the 18th green and the newly-doglegged 14th, with its green now pressed hard against the cliffs' edge as part of the redesign carried out by Rees Jones not long into the new millennium. According to Geoff Shackelford's report on the organisers' welcome proposals to inject variety into a Major that has become a route march, "they are 'contemplating' moving the 14th-hole tees up one day in hopes of introducing a drivable, eagle-prone hole".

Briefed to bring the course up to Open standard, I wouldn't say Jones has been merciless. While additional bunkering has made straitjackets of many fairways, he has opened up the entrance to a number of the greens on a course where the run-up shot was previously all but extinct. On the 8th, admittedly, he has gone to the other extreme, leaving a sliver of green sandwiched between bunkers at either end of the putting surface, transforming a ho-hum par 3 into something of a pig...

Here's Jones talking you through his revamp, hole by hole:


Rees Jones at Torrey Pines from California Golf News on Vimeo.













Elsewhere, Golf World's course coverage looks as good as any: with its own pictorial course tour and a fine piece by John Hawkins chronicling the course's history. Ron Whitten, meanwhile, has penned one of my favourite types of scene-setter: 6 Things You Didn't Know about Torrey Pines.

And because every course tart needs his Torrey Pines wallpaper...

Briar's Creek - could this be why it's lonely at the top?

Fresh in from the did-nobody-think-this-through? department, the ad for Briar's Creek Private Golf Retreat ("It's lonely at the top...but that's the point, right?") that features a wide angle photo of the par 5 10th.

The same photo is one of the cycle of pics at the top of the homepage - four guys looking across what seems like 150 yards of waist-high jungle separating them from the fairway. If designer Rees Jones has taken some account of Alister MacKenzie's principle that you should be able to play any hole with your putter, there is no sign of it on either the ad or the website's course tour.

It looks every inch the kind of hole you'd lie in bed thinking about for most of the night before if your handicap's anything south of 12. Not good thoughts, either.

What toll such a hole might take on your psyche and humour, when you have to face it most weekends and have paid an arm and a leg for the privilege, I shudder to think.

Is it really the best way to promote your course to the world, I wonder? Or are masochistic CEOs who play off 20 really that thick on the ground these days?
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On the subject of Rees Jones, he's featured here talking about the work his team have carried out on Torrey Pines, scene of this weekend's US Open.

"ASGCA Staff:

You mention the need to tailor the course to the advanced skills of a TOUR player. Where are these changes most significant and what specifically was altered?

Rees Jones:

The strategy of playing Torrey Pines’ South Course has been dramatically changed. We repositioned greens to bring in the natural hazards of the ocean cliff and the canyons. Most greens have alternate approaches of attack to an open entrance or to a fortified hole location."

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Pic of the Day

Old Course strategy - excuse the frosty reception

David Frost had me scurrying for my course plan when he explained why the 1st on the Old Course at St Andrews is his favourite hole.

"...if you hit a driver you're 80 yards from the hole with almost no shot," he told Golf World.

What?!

Maybe I just haven't being paying attention. Maybe there's 50-foot sand dune by the first green that has completely escaped my notice all these years. That was the only reason I could think of why a man could have "almost no shot" at what only looks like the most wide-open hole in world golf.

Then the penny dropped.

"You want to leave either 100 yards, a 52-degree wedge, or 120, a pitching wedge, so you can be aggressive with your approach...," explained the South African.

Ah, right. So "almost no shot" simply means "between clubs".

My heart bleeds for you, David. You who have the luxury of not just one but two wedges in your bag, yet can still find yourself faced with a shot that fits neither of them. Oh, the tragedy...

I don't follow the pro game much so I can only assume that the concept of the manufactured shot, so beloved of Severiano Ballesteros, is considered old hat now.

Ballesteros used to play a round with just two clubs when practising in his youth, an exercise that not only spared him lugging a heavy bag around in Spain's punishing heat but also taught him to adapt most clubs to a whole range of shots.

Can you imagine Seve regarding 80 yards as "almost no shot"? He would have simply reached for the most comparable club, played an 80 yard pitch and thought nothing of it.

When your ball's down a rabbit hole at the foot of an oak tree between you and the green, David Frost, then we can start talking about "almost no shot".


[pic courtesy of bruce 89]

Too-slick greens the only glitch in the Village

I don't know if they've read different reports from the ones I've seen, over at GolfClubAtlas, but DJ Trahan's criticism of the 18th at Muirfield Village does seem to have become rather misrepresented.

Trahan clearly wasn't a happy bunny after being 10-over for that one hole over the four days of last weekend's Memorial Tournament but while my fellow GCA forumites seem to think he was attacking the hole in toto, the only reports I can find confine his rancour to the marble-like properties of the green and its surrounds.

And if this little lot is true...

"On Thursday, Trahan was between the two bunkers on the left side of the par-4 hole and chipped onto the green, the ball rolling all the way off and down the steep hill leading to the front of the green"

"The pin was on the front of the green Saturday...He popped up his third shot and it somehow defied gravity by stopping midway up the steep hill leading to the green...His fourth shot went to the green, made a U-turn, then came back at him, rolling into the valley. His fifth followed almost the same route: to the green, then back down the hill to within 3 inches of where he hit it.

...then I have a lot of sympathy for him.

Back in the days when the only thing about Augusta National that raised eyebrows from onlookers was the glassiness of its greens, TV commentator Peter Allis watched one poor chap's efforts there meet with a similarly disproportionate punishment and asked a simple question I always recall whenever a course crosses the line between being defended and being tricked-up.

"Is this golf?"

No, I don't think it is. Punishment fitting the crime is a key element of an ordered Society and sport is a microcosm of this.

You hit a bad chip or putt that any normal green would absorb without spitting your ball off the premises and your punishment is a lengthy return shot, possibly over awkward terrain. For such a shot to roll thirty yards back down the fairway is a sanction more befitting pinball than golf.

I'm all in favour of greens whose topography resembles a basket of eggs and whose firmness means that a pitch shot is not always the automatic play, especially if these features are employed as an alternative defence to tacking another fifty yards on the hole.

How, though, can you expect any golfer to rise to these challenges in a way that spectators enjoy if he's dogged by fears of his ball acquiring a lurid life of its own and disappearing over the horizon?

No, I'm not sure this DJ does need to change the record.

Tiger Woods PGA TOUR - it's '09 already?

While I remain stubbornly content with Tiger Woods PGA Tour 2000 on my PC, I couldn't resist this sneak preview of Tiger Woods PGA TOUR 09, which provides a side-by-side comparison of the last three holes at Sawgrass, as shown on the '08 game and the '09 version (click on middle video).

Not sure how replacing green with olive represents progress, mind...

When does a 'clubhouse' become something else?

"Fashions in golf courses, as in ladies' clothes, seem to be so frequently hopelessly exaggerated" - HS Colt

Blogger Top 100 Golfer's latest post, showing the new-look Sebonack Club House, brings to a head something that has been bothering me for a while - the point at which clubhouses become nothing of the sort.

I just don't think that warm, homeward-bound feeling as you walk down the 18th fairway is quite so marked when the building you can see in the distance looks more like a hotel. Look through the slide show of 'Most Expensive Private Golf Clubs', to which Top 100 Golfer links at the end of his post and you'll see further examples of what I'm getting at.

I know there's no hard and fast template where clubhouses are concerned but to me the word suggests somewhere discreet and cosy; a backwater tucked away from life's mainstream, where people with a shared interest go to hide for a few hours each week. I don't want the backdrop for my final approach shot to be an edifice that suggests there's muzak in its lobby and some git with a blazer and a plastic smile behind the reception desk, dedicated to maximising my user experience.

Given that the biggest offenders in this field tend to be those clubs whose exclusivity is reflected by their comparatively small membership, they clearly don't need that much space, which compels me to think the unthinkable...
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When the conversation flags at your 19th this weekend, lob in some golf course trivia. The world's longest par 7? America's remotest course? The only free nine-holer anywhere? You'll find them all here.
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Pic of the Day