Image via WikipediaWith 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

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]

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.

Image via WikipediaI'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?

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

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...

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]

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

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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

Image by jurvetson via FlickrNow 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

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

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.

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

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

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?

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

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.

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...

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