Golfer to architect - Ogilvy sounds like one who'll really make the jump

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Augusta's open spaces. How can you miss, eh, Rory?

At the end of a week in which I heard of yet another 'signature' course travesty - a track that bears a Major champion's name in its subtitle without ever once being honoured with the great man's presence - Jay Flemma's excellent interview with Geoff Ogilvy and design partner Mike Clayton came as a breath of fresh air.

Ogilvy, I think we can say, is a player who gets it where course design is concerned: a man who sees golf architecture as a means of making a mark rather than simply making a living. His comment on Royal Melbourne - "Like most great courses, there's nothing narrow about it" - should go straight onto the shortlist of anyone collecting such architectural axioms for a book.

Great holes aren't pinched, bitter, grudging affairs, like some Victorian dowager. They are open, inviting Jezebels that play fast and loose with your powers of self-delusion. "Look at all this space," the 10th at Riviera, or 18th at the Old Course whisper breathlessly in your ear. "What can possibly go wrong...?"

Interesting, too, that when pressed for examples of good risk-and-reward holes, Ogilvy plumps for two numbers not normally among the usual suspects when the Old Course and Cypress Point are being held up as flagships of their genre - St Andrew's 4th and the Monterey classic's 9th.

Rather like recently-retired star footballers being rushed into team management, the transition from golfer to architect is sometimes based on the false assumption that excellence on one side of the divide will always migrate effortlessly to the other. On the strength of this interview, Ogilvy is shaping up nicely to be an exception. I bet he even shows up at the courses he's working on.

And on a personal note, I'm grateful to him for finally easing my guilt. Having had my rear fittingly kicked by some of the great courses whenever I've tackled them on computer simulations, it's always perturbed me that Royal Melbourne and Kingston Heath (Tiger Woods 2003 for pc) were plundered with comparative ease.

Now I know why.

"Ernie Els once shot 60 [at Royal Melbourne] but that was on a perfect day and perfect conditions during the Heineken," Ogilvy explains.;"But if the wind its blowing 10 mph, like it almost always does, and it's firm and fast, and the pins are tough, that's not gonna happen. A couple under par will be great."

I've just tweaked the course settings accordingly on TW2003. My days of plundering appear to be over. Alister MacKenzie is a genius once more and God is in his heaven.