The Golf Course As Art

Westchester CC and why golf is good on so many levels

2012-01-25T07:12:00.000-08:00

Image via Wikipedia

With new business for golf architects at a premium right now, there's a case to be made for a 'before and after' approach to their promotional strategy.

Admittedly, amidst all those high-resolution pictures of emerald fairways at sunset, a shot of ragged pasture with a cow on it might jar somewhat but then anyone with a clue who skims the brochure will appreciate that the latter image says as much, if not more, than the former.

For we can be easily seduced by an impressive finished product into underestimating the vision that saw it first, amid all the cattle and brambles and scrub. Were a picture of the finished hole accompanied by one of the blank canvas that met the designer on his first tour of the property, I think it would only enhance our appreciation of how he earns his crust.

You and I might gaze out across such virgin terrain and wonder "where do I start?" but he already knows. Having tackled Westchester Country Club's West Course (pictured) courtesy of Links 2003 this week, mind you, I'm a little more clued up as to what my own starting point would be.

I wasn't expecting great things of this Walter Travis design, to be honest. I think my spontaneous affection for whisky after a mere 48 years has been mirrored by a similarly out-of-the-blue appreciation of links golf over the manicured parkland courses I had previously preferred. Between its coasts, I've decided, America has a lot of inland country club layouts that are a little samey.

Then I came to the drive into the valley at the 3rd, the downhill run at the 5th and 12th and the 7th's adverse camber and in having my curiosity piqued, began to realise what I'd be looking for in virgin land before anything else.

Different elevations.

Slopes, ledges, drop-offs: playing down from the brink of a small escarpment or up to a green perched in a hillside. Anything that breaks a plane and departs from the flat and predictable. Give me that and we're in business.

Although you'll need to lose the cow.
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Pic of the Day - Scotland's Mar Hall Golf Course

Clayton takes dead aim on fate of golf

2012-01-23T05:26:00.000-08:00

Anyone with access to the UK version of Golf World should grab a copy of the latest issue as soon as possible, for if last month's feature on Tom Doak was absorbing, the interview with Mike Clayton (right) is gripping from start to finish.

This is a no-holds-barred assault on those with power to influence the architecture v technology debate. By the time you've read it, the mental image of Nero fiddling while Rome burns will be unavoidable.

To feature all the 'money quotes' here would lead me into copyright issues, so I will just leave it at this and urge you to buy:

"Someone like Adam Scott has to hit a 5-iron off every tee if he wants to play Swinley Forest. He can't go to Sunningdale and have fun anymore. He can't play it in the way Bobby Jones played it, or how Harry Colt wanted it to be played. I don't understand why the authorities don't care about something like that."

[Image via Wikipedia]

Tell me Alister MacKenzie wouldn't have loved these......?

2012-01-18T03:00:00.000-08:00

Sometimes, good golf architecture goes beyond the turf:

The thinking behind it here. I'm sensing a nailed-on endorsement opportunity for Dustin Hoffman, by the way.

Imagine golf's Golden Age lasting a week?

2012-01-15T14:35:00.000-08:00

Image via Wikipedia

I'm having to read between the lines here, because word of what could be the world's most chameleon golf course is currently out there in bite size chunks rather than in one comprehensive narrative.

Commissioned to make sport and the environment sit comfortably alongside each other among some of the most impressive dunes in the Sahara Desert, designers Fadi Massoud and Matthew Spremulli have submitted proposals that include a golf course whose fairway texture and outline will change with virtually each cycle of seasonal rain and calculated flooding from a dammed lake.

The location - "a site of intense parody," they call it - is in Morocco:

"An existing small dam in the area holds water in an artificial lake within a natural depression. Leaks in the structure and the confluence of a seasonal river allowed for accidental flourishing wetlands to occur. The design premise for the project is to capitalize on these `mistakes` by allowing new structures and programs to augment ecologies and advance site processes. By allowing terracing and certain openings within the dam itself, new spaces for occupation and circulation emerge."

The course will help stop dune advancement by creating a wetland system. While it seems to be intended that the tees and greens remain where they are, seasonal rains and the ephemeral nature of the river will cause the fairways to "evolve". How much "evolution" a feasible golf course can handle, mind you, is the million dollar question. I'm thinking superintendents probably have nightmares about courses like this.

"I've heard it's a bit like TPC Scottsdale."

"Nah, that was last week. This week it's more La Quinta..."

A graphical illustration of the proposals can be found here.
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Pic of the Day - can ayone identify this beauty?

One for the notebook - Stevinson Ranch

2012-01-12T01:24:00.000-08:00

It's usually other golf articles that alert me to appealing courses but the Harbottle and Kelley design at California's Stevinson Ranch is one I stumbled across while trying to find out why Royal Melbourne's 'greens' seemed as much 'blues' during the recent President's Cup.

I'm amazed I hadn't heard of it before, because as one reviewer notes:

"...despite not having any ocean view, glimpse of the Sierra Nevada, or any proximity to the great metropolitan regions, Stevinson Ranch remains as one of the best golf courses in California"

While some courses appear to pay mere lip service to the idea of being thought through, this is the real deal, its risks and rewards balanced, its options clearly defined, as highlighted in the notes regarding its principal holes. Not sure I'd go along with The Eden link, mind.

There's a flyover here but if the muzak accompaniment starts getting to you by the 4th, here's an aerial shot of the course - the 1st is in the top left corner, curving around the bottom of the practice area, while the 18th and 17th can be found on the top edge.

View Stevinson Ranch Golf Club, Ca, USA in a larger map

Crenshaw and the 'creative look'

2012-01-09T00:05:00.000-08:00

Two things strike me about this clip of Ben Crenshaw, Tom Doak and Bill Coore discussing their project at Streamsong.

Firstly, the three bar stools in the middle of nowhere approach doesn't really suit this genre. Am I the only one who keeps expecting the three of them suddenly to produce microphones and break into a Rat Pack number?

Secondly, and more intriguingly, just what is going on with Ben Crenshaw's hair? Not that there's anything wrong with the extravagant flow to his greying mane; it's just that this was a man whom I remember being strictly short-back-and-sides during his playing career.

Could it be that the more luxuriant tonsorial approach is a natural extension to his creative line of work these days? And what on earth would Harvey Penick have made of it?

Watch this space. I feel a cravat coming on...

Doak - it's the club, not the ball

2012-01-06T03:35:00.000-08:00

Little as ever in the way of fence-sitting from Tom Doak, interviewed recently in the UK edition of Golf World. Highlights:

"I'd make the pros go back to hitting wooden drivers...Wooden drivers were really hard to hit...No-one swung at the ball with 100 per cent effort; it was just too risky. Most went at it at 90 per cent to make sure they hit the ball off the sweetspot. When that stopped mattering, the swings changed and the game changed...if we fixed the driver thing, I don't think we'd have to do much with the ball."

"The design of a course doesn't happen from the tee forwards. It happens from the green back and from features in the landing area."

On why architectural standards declined in the mid-1900s: "...there was a boom but no-one from the Golden Age was around to do the building...there were only a handful of 'name' guys left...So instead of building a small number of great courses, those guys were running around building 30 courses that were inevitably not as good."

On reduced ball spin reducing the use of fades and draws on tour: "I'm sure a lot of [pros] are bored. They hit the same shot over and over...The giveaway is that not many of them play golf for fun any more."

On architecture revolving too much around the pro game: "That's why courses are set up for championships the way they are. They seem to want a really good score to be 68...[but] if nobody shoots 65 then that's a hard course. That's a course where three-handicappers won't break 80. Do we need a lot of that? No."

"My bias is towards giving people more room and having more short-game interest.

"We want everything to look as if it was always there...When I'm looking at a course built by someone else and they didn't try to do that, I'm driven crazy. But there are a few architects who don't care about that at all...they almost want their work to look unnatural."

"The worst thing you can say to me is that my course was dull."

[Pic courtesy of CORE-Materials]

Max A. Mandel Municipal Golf Course - the 'sleeper' in the Class of '12

2012-01-03T01:27:00.000-08:00

It's not the catchiest name you'll ever hear and its municipal status may not help its perception as the poor relation on Travel's list of new courses to watch for in 2012, but don't be surprised if this Robert Trent Jones II project on the banks of Texas' Rio Grande River punches above its weight.

Whoever put the routing plan on the Web didn't have small-screen folk in mind, so you'll have to alternate between a small version that's just too small and a magnified version that comes close to life size (tip - click the magnifying glass icon over the hole you want to see in more detail).

It would be silly to try and offer a definitive opinion without more visuals to hand so let's just say the following have piqued my interest...

shared fairway on 3rd and 7th
lengthwise strip bunker at the front of the 4th
tightening of the 6th green from the gentle one-shotter available off the forward tees to a pin front-left, to a back-tee, back-right pin combo that looks like it could test the finest
the southernmost prong of that first, tuning-fork shaped section of fairway on the 10th and how it might change the way you play the hole
the 14th, partly because short par-fours are my favourite (especially when the designer sets himself the added burden of defending them with a lone bunker - that's five fewer than the daddy of the genre at Riviera gets, incidentally) and partly because I'm curious to know whether that knot of contours in front of the green represents a knoll or a Texas-style Valley of Sin
would I be right in thinking that 'signature hole' and '17th' will eventually be heard in the same sentence on the banks of the Rio Grande?

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Pic of the Day - the 11th at Mississippi Dunes

La Costa revamp ditches passive bunkers

2012-01-01T16:33:00.000-08:00

Following on from my last post about the face lift at La Costa, the resort's website now offers flyovers for both revised courses, with the bulk of the modifications having been carried out to the North Course, or Champions Course, as it's now known.

What is immediately apparent is the extent to which the fairway bunkering has been tightened up, not so much in its menace as in its involvement in the course as a whole. Like the flabby kids in PE, ordered to stop lounging against the wall bars and to get stuck in with the rest of the class, the fairway traps have been brought into the heart of the hole, defining its challenge and attendant options.

How passive their predecessors seem now, looking back at the original course: lurking in the shadows and only a factor when drives went awry. Now, at the very least, they nudge into the fairway to focus the mind and at best, as on the 4th, 5th and 7th, they call on you not merely to avoid them but to negotiate them.

Much of the course's famed six-hole closing stretch seems to have been left largely intact, although I'm not quite sure why the fairway sand has swapped sides on 14. I would have thought the creek alone was sufficient counterbalance to the long, left-side drive and with a drive to the right opening up the green somewhat, the original bunkering seemed more logical.

I would be interested to know what visitors feel about the 18th. While it certainly looks an improvement on the rather plain original, I just wonder whether the lakes make it a little too 'busy'.

The abiding impression, though, is just how far the industry has come with its approach to bunkering since Dick Wilson and Joe Lee first got to work here. Champions, North Course - call it what you will: it looks lean and mean again and I wish it well.
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Pic of the Day - The Bahamas' Ocean Golf Club

Of mice and men at Manawatu Golf Club

2011-12-30T04:35:00.000-08:00

Image by jurvetson via Flickr

Now this is a tough par 3...

I can understand the need to keep flooding at bay but I'm a little nonplussed at the golf factors behind the decision to revamp the par 3 16th at New Zealand's Manawatu Golf Club...

'Palmerston North golf course architect Tommy Cushnahan was engaged by the club to do the re-design...
...As far as Cushnahan is concerned, it allows him to design an improved hole. "The trick in golf course design is to make it playable for any golfer without taking it away from the top golfers."
As it is now, everyone has to fly the ball on to the green to avoid the bunkers, and that's too tough for many.
"It's a very difficult golf hole for any members to play and for the majority of people who pay their dues," Cushnahan said. "You want the golf experience to be fun."
He wants the bump-and-run shot to become an option.'

The hole measures 145 yards from the middle tee to the centre of the green. Personally, when I can no longer hit a ball 145 yards on the fly with any club, I'll give up the game for fear of what I'm doing for the blood pressure of those behind me. I cannot believe that in the land of Colin Meads and Jonah Lomu, there are grumbles about a 145-yard par 3.

What might have happened were floods not a factor? Would Mr Cushnahan have still been briefed for a full-scale revamp, or would reducing that front bunker, making it teasing rather than terrifying, have sufficed? Or might the members might have had a brainwave, opened up the green by playing the hole as a 120-yarder from the forward tees and saved the club a few grand in the process?

And then there's that big patch of open turf between the two bunkers. Controlled fade, anyone?

All right, I'm on the other side of the world but I've seen the thing on Google Earth and as greens go, I think it has a good shape, with plenty of pin placement options. I'm a high-handicapper and I still say I've seen far tougher things than this on a golf course.
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Pic of the Day - Washington's Skamania Lodge Golf Course

Golf course design's most iconic picture?

2011-12-27T01:37:00.000-08:00

Reading Geoff Shackelford's pithy jabs at human foible on his eponymous blog (the digs at PGA Tour suits alone are worth the visit) it's easy to overlook the fact that this is far more than just another voice churning out snapshots of opinion in the blogosphere.

Shackelford has a serious body of work to his name and is one of golf course architecture's great champions among the press pack.

Certainly, if you're looking to get a handle on the subject for the first time, or even if you're just after a refresher course on what's right and what's not in the industry, Grounds for Golf: The History and Fundamentals of Golf Course Design, notwithstanding the slightly forbidding feel of its 300 pages, will ease you into your topic as well as anything else I've read to date.

Beautifully complemented by aerial hole layouts from architect Gil Hanse, the text examines the Old Course's influence on the game, the various schools of design thought and the factors that go into creating a memorable golf hole, with several classic holes and courses examined in detail to support the author's arguments. Not quite sure I share Shackelford's thoughts on the need for 'humour' in course design, mind: I'll grant him 'quirkiness' but it may be that your handicap has to reach a certain level of distinction before you can see the funny side.

It's heartening, however, to see him become the first architecture maven I've come across who's prepared to acknowledge the existence of computer games as a means of enhancing your understanding of what makes good piece of golfing real estate. Like a political candidate with an alcoholic cousin, I've tended to keep fairly quiet about my own collection of 400 courses on three different computers (am I the only person still getting a buzz out of Tiger Woods 2000?) but not any more...

On the subject of of 'buzz', one of the things for which I will remain most indebted to Shackelford's book, is the introduction it has given me to this photograph.

It shows Alister Mackenzie preparing to tee off at the 16th on his masterpiece at Cypress Point and I stared at it for some time, struck by the way in which the creator is so magnificently dwarfed by that which he has created. Did the enormity of his own achievements ever confront Mozart so graphically, I wonder? Was Rembrandt ever wowed like this, no matter how big the canvas on which he worked?

It's hard to know how Mackenzie felt in this picture, whether the artist in him gave him pause over his ball, or whether Scottish pragmatism saw him swing away without a second thought, reflecting merely on one of his better days at the office.

Whatever, when I think of golf course designers from now on and what they might be striving for beyond the pay cheque, this is the image that will forever spring to mind.
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Pic of the Day - Utah's Soldier Hollow Golf Course

After years of tacky Chinese exports, guess who's reversing the trend?

2011-12-13T15:12:00.000-08:00

Take a look at this.

Struggling to make it out? It's a green in the shape of an eagle. The head's that white bit at the top.

I want you to see it, to soak it all in before I give you the full link to the accompanying article. That way, you get to judge it without any preconceptions.

If you think it's cute, neat or - shudder - 'the future', get the hell away from this blog. We're never going to get along.

Still here? Then here's the article. You may not be entirely surprised to note the ~~culprit's~~ designer's surname. Let's just say the family trade is like the little girl in Longfellow's poem. When it's good, it's very good but when it's bad, it's horrid.

I don't care how 'marquee' a name you are, there is only one step further down from animal-shaped greens.

Tee shots through the vanes of a windmill.

May this 'marketing tool' gets precisely the clientele it deserves.

Bunker mentality mars golf's great thrill

2011-12-07T16:25:00.000-08:00

Much as the solitary, small bunker dimpling the green's front border is one of my favourite design teasers, I'm right with Jeff Mingay when it comes to deriding the sandy fetish that sees the approach to too many greens reduced to air travel only.

Sure, the running shot onto the putting surface hearkens back to golf's formative years and that's all well and good but it also provides a simpler, more mouthwatering piece of theatre.

For when you hit even the most exquisite flighted approach, with the best will in the world you only really get to savour the last few seconds, when your ball finally descends and pitches within a foot or two of the hole.

Until then, your eyes are up and down like a fiddler's elbow, constantly flickering between the flag and your ball, high against the clouds, as you try to assimilate the two. It's like trying to enjoy a cabaret when the singer's in one room and the band in another.

With the low runner, on the other hand, it all unfolds right in front of you on a single plane - the distant flag, the ball scampering across the turf and the tantalising question of whether it has enough juice to get there.

There is a reason my heart sinks slightly whenever I see a green with a yellow doormat.

[Image via Wikipedia]
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Pic of the Day - Bermuda's Mid Ocean Club

So how does the Mile-Long Club view course design?

2011-12-05T01:29:00.000-08:00

Some nice soundbites in this Mark Leslie article, How penal is too penal? but while it's quite right that the view of the majority should prevail in any golf club's plan to renovate its course, that's not to say the minority view isn't of interest.

If you're a scratch golfer, hitting it further than Sam Snead ever dreamed possible, how do you view the state of golf course design today?

(a) "Just fine. There are still loads of perfectly accessible courses out there that challenge my game. You mid- to high-handicappers are so alarmist..."

(b) "Thanks to my hugely well-paid job, I just play where the pros play. Long as Phil and Tiger aren't getting bored , neither am I."

(c) "You know how Alexander the Great wept for a lack of fresh worlds to conquer? That's me."

OR

(d) "I WAS getting a little bored, then I had a brainwave. Instead of spending a small fortune on a new set of top-of-the-range clubs, I spent it on renovating my dad's clubs. I'm now off 10, 40 yards shorter and the laughing stock of the clubhouse but my love for the game has never been stronger."

Do tell...

[Image via Wikpedia]
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Pic of the Day - Scotland's Corrie Golf Club

Course design showdown inevitable

2011-12-02T09:00:00.000-08:00

I've always wondered what would ensue when a golf architecture purist came up against the Great Unwashed and chose to treat it as an exercise in evangelism.

This forum thread finally enlightened me. Awkwaaaard...
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Pic of the Day - Mt Huff pitch 'n' putt. Did I mention I'm not proud?

Saunton GC from the inside

2011-11-30T09:00:00.000-08:00

I was driven past it often enough when holidaying in Devon as a child but I never got to see much more than a passing blur of Saunton Golf Club in south-west England, so this video of a somewhat fresh day's golf on its East Course was a welcome discovery, even if you have to sit through one of the all-time ghastly swings to enjoy it...

The English Dornoch, insofar as its remote location has always effectively ruled it out of consideration as an Open venue, Saunton's site was commandeered for military training purposes during WWII, American tanks rumbling amid the dunes. Both East and West Courses were designed by Herbert Fowler but the latter course was redesigned by Frank Pennink in the 1970s.
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Pic of the Day

Nearmap - have Aussie golf courses ever looked better?

2011-11-27T14:25:00.000-08:00

It's not often I see Google trumped but the aerial views of Australian golf courses offered by Nearmap.com are superb, even if the website seems to focus on Australian urban areas.

Click on the orange panel on the homepage and then key in the course name in the search panel. Not only can you view a hole from several different angles (albeit with inferior quality photos in some cases) but you can also see them pictured at different times of year.
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Pic of the Day - proof that the golden age of golf course design wasn't echoed in the postcard industry.

Schmidt-Curley win the award but we get the prize

2011-11-22T16:19:00.000-08:00

But for this ASGCA announcement hailing the firm's Best Architect award at the 2011 Asia Pacific Golf Summit, I wouldn't have even known Schmidt-Curley Design had a Flickr photostream of project images.

It could be some time before you need go anywhere else for your golf porn wallpaper.
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Pic of the Day - how very a propos: Brian Curley jamming at Mission Hills, according to the caption. There's a series in this, I'm sure. I now await Tom Doak swimming with dolphins or Ben Crenshaw doing great things with salad...

"Jam session" to put the 'swing' in Swinkelsche

2011-11-17T01:00:00.000-08:00

Not a term I've heard used in a golf course design context before but I rather like it - Dutch architect Frank Pont on teaming up with Jeff Mingay and shaper Conor Walshe on the De Swinkelsche project in the Netherlands:

"I've always wanted to sort of do the equivalent of a jam session in building a golf course...being joined by Jeff and Conor...comes very close to that idea."

Just one reservation: please don't let it be one of those 'free jazz'-style jam sessions, otherwise the De Swinkelsche patrons can look forward to 18 heavily tricked-up holes and a course that doesn't actually go anywhere.
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Pic of the Day - New York's Dryden Lake GC

La Costa changes - I'm all ears

2011-11-15T01:21:00.000-08:00

Hopefully, the resort's website will soon show the precise changes involved in the revamp of both courses at California's La Costa, bcause at present, I'm inclined to share the view that the venue's tournament lore rather outstrips the Dick Wilson / Joe Lee designs when it comes to charisma.

I wouldn't expect to get a full handle on any course from a study of flyover footage but the facility does at least provide a taster of a good course's appeal. In the case of La Costa's North and South courses, however (and I'm assuming the flyovers are of the original layouts) I see precious little that floats my boat.

Pascuzzo & Pate are the architects who'll hopefully make me eat my words.
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Pic of the Day - Musselburgh GC

Bringing golf course design home

2011-11-11T03:49:00.000-08:00

Key 'golf course' into your news search engine and you're usually led towards some fairly predictable themes.

Every once in a while, however, you find yourself 'off road' by some margin, as with the tale of the Equatorial Guinea Forestry Minister who has his very own four-hole golf course in the place where most of us are happy just to have rhododendrons and a bird bath.

Yes, let's hear it for Teodoro Nguema Obiang Mangue (I'm thinking 'Teddy' to his mates) and the fabulous world of the DIMBYs, or 'Definitely In My Back Yard'.

Flagging up the little matter of $100m allegedly extorted from his homeland by Mr Nguema, the New Zealand Herald kindly includes the full address of the Malibu home at which he ponders the state of Equatorial Guinea's woodlands. Or did, before the bailiffs moved in.

This leaves us just a Google Maps visit away from discovering what par 3 delights await at 3620 Sweetwater Mesa Rd.

View Larger Map

All right, so the bunkering isn't particularly imaginative and the Google Earth rendition shows it to be a bit penal for anything left but we'll dole out a few kudos points for the water hazard.

No news of the architect as yet.

Stevens Park - sometimes, the line of charm is rectangular

2011-11-10T05:57:00.000-08:00

You can never lay your hands on the damn thing when you need it, of course, but in my mind's eye, I still see the photograph that brought home to me exactly why the world needed Alister MacKenzie, Donald Ross & Co.

It was of an early English golf course, if I remember rightly; very much pre-Golden Age and providing an all-too-vivid echo of the military fortifications that shaped the early thoughts of architects when it came to defending a golf hole.

Aesthetically, the great designers moved on, of course, leaving this monstrosity as a jolting reminder of what came before all the sensual curves and undulations that delight us today. Ridged bunker lips jutted out from the flat, uninspiring terrain, as self-consciously as drill sergeants on a dance floor, their lines ramrod-straight.

Such patches of sand as I could make out were similarly angular and awkward. The notion that a good golf course should look like it'd evolved from the land of its own accord was still some way off.

Virtually none of this would be acceptable nowadays. So mentally scarred was I by the experience, indeed, that I probably view even Oakmont's Church Pew bunker with slightly less affection than many. I say 'virtually', however, because there remains one throwback to those geometric times that you can still get away with.

I thought it was just a case of the illustrator being lazy when my eye was caught by several unusual green shapes - rectangles, triangles and even a chevron - on the revamped Stevens Park Golf Course in Dallas.

It turns out, however, that these are no mistake. In transforming the early 20th century Jack Burke snr layout, (illustrated here) Colligan Golf Design decided that the course, otherwise outgrown by modern golf equipment, would retain one blast from the past.

"During Kemp's research, a 1930 aerial of the course was located and he noticed the variety of shapes each green on the course had back in the day. Square, rectangular, diamond, triangular and round. These same shapes were re-introduced into the classic green complexes for a more authentic retro appearance." - World Golf

(Somewhere, Jack Burke is breathing a sigh of relief, for little else seems to have survived a revamp that saw Colligan reverse the direction of play on several holes as well as converting a par-four to a par three in order to lengthen the 9th. With some great vistas of downtown Dallas now available, however, the end result looks as enhanced visually as it does strategically).

This much, we can live with. Angular greens are like Payne Stewart's plus fours once were; their eccentricity softened by the nostalgia they bring with them. Everything else from those rudimentary times, however, should stay firmly in history's closet.

Come to think of it, being unable to find that photograph probably isn't the worse thing that will happen to me today.
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Pic of the Day - Patterson GC, location unknown

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

2011-11-07T01:02:00.000-08:00

Image via Wikipedia

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.

Course designer makes pact with the past - you listening, ball makers?

2011-11-04T03:00:00.000-07:00

How odd to meet such polarised opinions within the same context: while golf equipment makers press on relentlessly for more distance, oblivious to the great courses that are neutered by their blinkered fetish, here's course designer John Fought with an interesting aside while discussing his creation at Glaze Meadow Golf Course...

"I learnt quickly that some of the things we were doing were too modern. Yes, we had modern implements but we wanted it to look more natural...As we get back to that...the designs are better, the golf holes are better; they turn naturally with the land...That's the difference [in] that Golden Age - they didn't force anything; they couldn't. They didn't have big earth movers...

"I tell shapers all the time...I'll go, 'Do you think a horse could have built that?' and they get very quickly what I'm saying..."

In an age where politicians and business people bandy around the phrase "going forward" as much as we once did "please" and "thank you", something initially jars about such an emphatic covenant being made with the past as opposed to the future, particularly when it comes from a man with a living to make.

Yet when your raw material is a planet that tends to look best in its untouched form, what other philosophy is there? I remember being struck last year by the breathtaking work plastic surgeons performed on a casualty of the 7/7 London terrorist attacks, leaving merely the tiniest, faint scarring as the sole reminder of what their patient had been through.

What struck me was the contrast between the near-miracles achieved by doctors who work with Nature, merely seeking to restore it and the grotesque parodies of beauty that frequently result when their cosmetic brethren fight Nature, in their bid to turn the ageing process on its head.

Maybe the stakes aren't so high when you're designing a golf course but the parallel is nevertheless there. Golf architecture could be one of the few trades where sounding like a Luddite is the mark of a progressive.
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Pic of the Day - 11th at Kingsbarns Golf Links

No place in Olympics for beginner's luck

2011-11-02T02:00:00.000-07:00

I know that our ever more legalistic planet means that every possible 'i' had to be dotted when candidates to design the venue for golf's Olympian return were formally sought but one point, surely, we all took as an absolute given.

"Applicants must have prior course design experience..."

Oh please.

Let's think this through. What kind of professional death wish would prompt anyone looking to install the foundations of a fruitful career in golf architecture to put his credibility on the line from Day 1 with the one course that everybody in his peer group - and even some beyond it - will be scrutinising ad infinitum?

And, more pertinently, what kind of maniac would give him the chance?

[Image via Wikipedia]
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Pic of the Day - Sanibel Island, Florida

Too much risk at Engh's True North?

2011-11-01T02:00:00.000-07:00

I'm a big fan of Jim Engh's work and a peek at the layout of his design at Michigan's True North Golf Club only reminds me why.The sparing use of sand in cunningly-positioned pot bunkers is a welcome change from the splash-it-on variety and I like the low road, high road routes on the 18th.

I have my reservations about the par 5 7th, though. The minimalist in me likes to see a green guarded by one form of defence rather than two and while either pond or sand alone could have done the job, I just wonder whether an alliance of the two tips the risk-reward scales too much towards the risk end.

This is particularly so when you consider the type of bunker Engh has gone for, as he describes at 4:38 in the accompanying video. Sand is only part of the deal in this fissure bunker; even if you avoid it by a couple of feet, you still have a grim shot from sloping rough.

I just wonder if such an intense fortification might deter more people than the designer would wish from trying for the green with their second shot. I'd be interested to know what others think.

Interesting but gratifying, incidentally, that the observation "Typically, architects and engineers don't function well together" should survive the video edit...
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Pic of the Day - Bath Approach pitch and putt, England