The Golf Course as Art

And now the end is here..

2008-10-19T21:19:00.003+01:00

My new golf architecture blog kicks off today at Cheap Golf's Finest Holes.

I still love golf course design but I wanted to write about it in a way which I felt delivered some practical use to many of those reading it, who - like me not so many years ago - don't know their Stanley Thompson from their Stanley Laurel.

More evolution than termination, then, and I do hope those of you who have been good enough to subscribe to The Golf Course as Art and comment upon my posts these last 16 months will make the jump to the new blog. As for its predecessor, TGCaA will hereafter lie dormant.

Change of direction

2008-09-11T06:27:00.002+01:00

Regular readers may have noticed a slowdown in posts on The Golf Course as Art of late. This is down to the fact that I am planning a change of direction.

While I don't want to let these pages go, I have begun to wonder if the market for blogs that are of an observational or commentary nature may be diminishing.

From my own experience, I know that pressure of time provides decreasing opportunity to set time aside for reading. I snapped up a year's subscription to the digital version of that fine publication The Sporting News earlier this year for a ridiculously cheap price , yet just as I feared, I've hardly had time to read a single issue.

I sense that the blogs that tend to work best in this climate are those that provide specific information, designed not merely to enlighten readers or engage debate, but to offer practical assistance. This is a hard criterion to meet where golf architecture is concerned but I've hit on an idea that I am hoping to put into practice in the near future.

Because I want to start with a clean sheet, it will appear on a different platform that may, in time, take over completely from where The Golf Course as Art left off.

Much as I hate cliche, watch this space...

No medals yet for Olympic Club overhaul

2008-09-02T06:32:00.009+01:00

I may not have played the Olympic Club as Geoff Shackelford has but I share his concern at the proposed course alterations.

The San Francisco course is to have all its greens changed from poa annua turf to a bentgrass strain, to stave off worm damage and the club has decided to take advantage of the upheaval by tweaking the course layout at the same time.

The 7th, 15th and 18th greens will be re-contoured, while the line of the 8th hole, a par 3, is to be pushed to the right of its current location, allowing the 7th green to be pushed further back.

As a consequence of these alterations, the 8th will change from a 137-yard tiddler to something around the 200-yard mark. Matt Cohn offers his visual interpretation of the proposed changes over at GolfClubAtlas, where you'll also find a nice little spat-ette over the people behind the changes ("It's absurd you would make that statement" is sooo GolfClubAtlas where abuse is concerned).

The World Atlas of Golf says the 8th "would be a rather easy par-three were it not for the branches overhanging the green on the right", while TSN's Phil Sokol calls it "the easiest hole on the course", so I'm prepared to stay open-minded on the proposed change. If Matt Cohn's diagram reflects the alteration correctly, it would at least seem to toughen the hole by presenting a shallower target.

Where I have reservations, however, is with supporting arguments such as this, from the chairman of the club's green committee, Pat Murphy:

"One short par-3 is fine," Murphy said, knowing No. 15 measures only 149 yards, "but two short par-3s just doesn't work in this day and age."

The corporate world's obsession with homogeneity has made me particularly sensitive on this count, I acknowledge, but I find Murphy's statement so depressingly formulaic, as if all courses have to bend to some universal architectural template.

Olympic, by all accounts, plays long at the best of times, because of the moist local climate. Top 100 Golfer, whom I assume from his epic travels is no slouch with a club in his hands, calls it "near-impossible to play for a non-scratch player". What better counterpoint could there be on such a course than two dinky par threes, briefly calling for finesse over power?

"How many times have we heard PGA Tour players talk recently about the beauty and difficulty of short par 3s and 4s?" Geoff Shackelford observes. "You can have more than one, Mr. Murphy. The beauty of Olympic Club is that the Lake course follows no formulas. Well, not anymore."

One must pray that the re-design team treads even more softly at the previous hole. The drivable, uphill, 288-yard par 4 seventh is one of Jeff Barr's 1001 Golf Holes You Must Play Before You Die, which describes it as "spectacular, memorable and very difficult" and assesses the three-tiered green as one of the toughest on the planet. Already, I'm perspiring at the thought that Pat Murphy might feel a 288-yard par 4 just doesn't work in this day and age...

But then I've never played Olympic. If you have, please leave a comment and let me know your views. If you haven't, study the front-nine video below and see what you think:

River's Edge GC - small tweak yields big returns

2008-08-22T23:22:00.000+01:00

I'm always on the lookout for something different where golf holes are concerned and from this list of the 5 toughest golf courses in Myrtle Beach, it's the third hole at River's Edge GC in Shallotte, North Carolina that caught my eye.

This isn't even the most talked about hole on this course, let alone in the Myrtle Beach area (that honour tends to go to the 9th) but I like the way in which a small sliver of creek can impose itself so markedly on the way in which you play the hole.

Contrast it, for example, with the ugly, 'overkill' beach bunkers on some of the holes at Jack Nicklaus' Pawley's Plantation course.

Even if you opt to play safe with your second shot, it's not a shot you play on auto-pilot. Bunkers at the end of the left-hand finger of fairway require you to focus as much on length as on accuracy.

For the brave boomer, meanwhile, that neck of fairway leading into the green looks even narrower when you study a photo of the hole
but a fine risk-reward challenge nonetheless and further evidence for my belief that small features exerting a disproportionately large influence on a hole's strategy make for pleasing architecture.

Three holes to savour from Maryland's best munis

2008-08-15T20:03:00.003+01:00

From Golf.com's Best Public Golf Courses in Maryland, I've picked the following three holes:

The 17th at Tom Doak's Beechtree GC. The course itself is worth a look just for the delightfully sparing use of sand but I like the simplicity of this par 4. Either take on the left-hand bunkers to open up the green or play safe to the right and take your chances with a cramped-looking approach over the greenside trap.

There's a similar theme to the 16th at Arthur Hills' Maryland National GC, which I have to say looks the best course of the bunch. Forget the approach shot here, though, the drive is everything. You're taking on overhanging branches, sand and a brook if you aim for the green, yet at a distance of 268-308 yards from the mere mortals' tees, look at that photo and tell me you don't know people who'd go for it every time...

Lighthouse Sound GC wins the 'Scenic' category and I love the par 5 7th on what is another Arthur Hills course. Nothing like a bunker or two slap bang on the line to the green to transform a beautiful hole into an engaging one.

Not so sour on Sweetgrass after all

2008-08-04T07:05:00.002+01:00

I owe architect Paul Albanese an apology. When I started reading his philosophy behind his new Sweetgrass Golf Club in Michigan, I had genuine doubts as to whether I'd finish it.

Many of us in Britain are a little weary of liberal-speak these days. We've seen 'celebrating diversity' and 'embracing differences' become such entrenched, knee-jerk mantras that too many people in important positions appear to have taken their eye off the ball when it comes to running the country with any semblance of common sense.

So when Albanese starts banging on thus...

"Because this golf course and the neighboring Island Resort & Casino are both owned and operated by the Hannahville Indian Community - a band of the Potawatomi Nation - we've also incorporated aspects of their proud culture and tribal legends."

...I have to be honest, I felt my toes start to curl. Just as they would were I a member of the Potawatomi Nation and was told some guy called Tillinghast wanted to coach my lacrosse team.

Sticking with it, however, I realised that I was unfair to judge Paul on the basis of what happens this side of the Pond. So let's put PC to one side and just focus on the golf.

To get you up to speed, here's a good taster of the course, and don't let the tense trio at the start of the broadcast put you off: I'm pleased to confirm that the man called Tony manfully ignores what looks like every nerve-ending in his body screaming at him to run away...

Sweetgrass isn't the most inspiring piece of land but I like the fact that Albanese hasn't tried to over- compensate with gimmicks. Ironically, a man whom I originally feared might be trying too hard, has tried just hard enough and stayed true to land he was given, subtly steeling the gentle terrain with bunkers in the middle of the fairway and others that gently nibble at the short grass, tempting the bigger hitters to take them on (see holes 5, 10, 11 and 13). You'll find redan and Biarritz greens at the 4th and 12th respectively and the course guide in full is here (with a collection of pictures here).

For all this, I can easily forgive the designer his occasionally funky bunker shapes, which are meant as abstract representations of deer and rabbits found in Potawatomi legend and history. I also like the fact that another part of the tribe's culture to which the course pays tribute is its dislike of waste. Abandoned old bridges in the area have been pressed into use, along with rocks and timbers from an old fort. At the other end of the timeline, meanwhile, you have to love a course irrigation system that can be operated by the superintendent's cell phone...

Ultimately, I can pick Albanese up on just one point:

"We took an idea, and through the process of iteration, we developed shapes derived from these stories. Many of the bunker personalities (in essence, 'bunkeralities') and forms on the golf course have been created through this process."

'Bunkeralities'?!

No.

No, no, no, no, no...

Otherwise, great job.

Great golf holes - 3rd at Windsor Park GC, Japan

2008-07-24T10:04:00.001+01:00

They may not be the most aesthetically scalloped bunkers in golf but this mid-fairway spine of hazards makes the third at Windsor Park Golf Club a challenge from the start.

Too many par-5s comprise a dull, two-shot slog before an interesting approach. Here, however, you either aim between the jaws of the two lines of bunkers guarding the right side of the fairway, your reward being to open up the green for your second, or you play comparatively safely down the left.

The longer hitters then have the option of playing well short of the green or else getting as close as they can but having to aim for a much narrower fairway.

Beauty and the Beast - Couples takes a rise out of 'resort golf'

2008-07-23T12:54:00.001+01:00

They say dog owners often end up resembling their dogs but it seems you can't say the same about golf course designers and their courses. Fred Couples might have been the Little Easy as a player but there's nothing laid-back about his track at The Rise, in British Columbia.

I'm using 'his' a little loosely here. If anyone noticed a certain irony in the man whose 'signature course' this is claimed to be admitting on camera that "My expertise is coming in and just touching the corners of a Picasso," he didn't mention it when the club's website was being put together.

But then this whole 'signature' concept has been largely rumbled, anyway, so credit where it's due to architect Gene Bates...

Maybe if Fred had been a little more hands-on, some of the club's older patrons wouldn't be stocking up on the Deep Heat, for it seems The Rise is well-named and as what goes up must come down, you'll also encounter The Fall, The Climb, The Drop, The Contour and The Exhaustion.

Factor in "the knee-high fescue that borders many of the fairways" - just what the senior citizens' fourball ordered - and you realise that "the ultimate in resort community living" comes at a price that is not just measured in dollars.

While we self-appointed course connoisseurs can get picky, though (and Robert Thompson doesn't hold back) I sometimes wonder if we overlook a certain innocence we once had and which many golfers still do - namely that when a course looks as gorgeous as this, we didn't actually give a rat's behind what the gradients were like, what the rough was like or whether the bunkers were a tad overdone.

We just played golf. And considered any aches afterwards as a reasonable tariff.

So even if it helps if the caddies here are of Nepalese extraction; even if a surfeit of blind shots rules out love at first sight and even if the regulars end up with calf muscles like a district nurse, I'm prepared to give it the benefit of the doubt. Those contours, climbs and plummets make The Rise look like an adventure and I can't dislike any course that plays like an adventure.

Birkdale designer and some home truths

2008-07-17T06:45:00.006+01:00

His grandson might be taking some flak for Royal Birkdale's revamp but there may be no more fitting a man to put his name to an Open Championship venue than Frederick Hawtree.

It seems that Fred, who knocked the Lancashire course into its current shape 77 years ago, was firmly of the view that golf should be open to all, once declaring that "manners matter and money does not". He was the co-founder of the National Association of Public Golf Courses and the Artisan Golfers' Association and had a bigger hand in my own golfing life than I realised.

I lived in Birmingham for 18 years and while I played golf much more then than I do now, I cared considerably less about golf architecture, so it never occurred to me to ask why the calibre of public courses in and around England's second city is so renowned.

According to this article, however, Fred Hawtree was responsible for all but one of them.

Further south, it is still possible to play his very first project, at the delightfully-appointed Croham Hurst club in Croydon, Surrey (reviews here; aerial here) which opened in 1912 and was a joint design venture with James Braid (although Golf Digest suggests that Braid was largely a figurehead).

Elsewhere in the Hawtree portfolio, it would be remiss of me to omit mention of his work at Sweden's Bastad Golf Club. Many of us have referred to the odd 'bastard golf course' in our time, of course, but this is the real deal...

Enjoy the Open. God is once more in his heaven.

The wait goes on for Ross's Rackham golf course

2008-07-14T23:42:00.001+01:00

Seems like those sweating on the fate of Detroit's Rackham Golf Course - a Donald Ross design - will have to sweat a little longer, as appeal court judges mull over the city council's proposal to sell the municipal course, which could leave it at the fate of housing developers.

You can zoom in on a sharp aerial of the course here. Tinkering to accommodate roadworks means that only the back nine remains of Ross's original work, which is reviewed at the latter end of this piece by golf architecture scribe Jeff Mingay. Lose Rackham, it must be said and you also lose the origin of one of the most beautiful golf course photographs you could wish to see...

The Save Rackham site has full details on the fight to save the course, while GolfWeek has been looking at the fate of municipal courses in general.

Vagabond comes good with book to Dye for

2008-07-11T09:00:00.000+01:00

Not only does Vagabond Golfer Joel Zuckerman have a new book out on the courses of Pete Dye but Joel's site and blog contains much useful stuff itself, particularly if you too are a travelling golfer.

.....................................................

And as if to prove the gorgeous seamlessness with which this blog is put together, Bill Fields has a fascinating look at the hole genre of which that pictured left is the undisputed flag-bearer...

"You can get too much water on a golf course," Hogan said late in his life. "I think every golf course needs a little water, on one or two or three holes, just for aesthetics..."

A hickory treasure chest of golfing history

2008-07-09T09:00:00.001+01:00

Lovers of golf in general will be delighted to discover this treasury of reading matter in The Society of Hickory Golfers' library but there are five architecture articles in particular, by James Braid, Harry Vardon and Pete Dye.
......................................................................................

Good to see my fellow golf blogger Jay Flemma getting some mainstream exposure, courtesy of this feature on golf in the Detroit area, for the Golf Channel.

Beer 'n' Browsin' Week on The Golf Course as Art

2008-07-07T09:00:00.001+01:00

I'm wearing my fisherman's hat in Scotland this week, so I'll keep the blog ticking over today, Wednesday and Friday with links to some good reading matter I've had on the back burner for just such a hiatus.

Ray Tennenbaum's archive gets us under way. Ray is my kind of scribbler; happy to write on a variety of subjects, such as travel, comedy and of course golf.

For those of us oldies who like our monitor to replicate the magazine experience, it would have been great if all his golf pieces were reproductions of the original layout, as with the first article - Golf and the City - but content is king and there is some interesting stuff here.
......................................................................................

It was while reading this article on Tiger Wood's course design project in Dubai that a thought occurred to me, quickly followed by a cursory search on Google.

Good news: it would seem there's no 'Wounded Knee Golf Club' out there as yet, Tiger. Claim it while you can...

[pic courtesy of Robert Brook]

Now that's what you call an outcrop...

2008-07-03T06:28:00.002+01:00

How strange that just a couple of days after considering the 15th at Pound Ridge Golf Club ("...roughly half the balls that hit the outcropping will bounce back onto the green, and half will ricochet 'somewhere else'") I should encounter the mother and father of outcrops at the 14th hole on southern California's Oak Quarry course.

Designed by former Tour pro Dr Gil Morgan and the Schmidt-Curley partnership, the course breathed new life into Jensen Quarry, which had supplied much of Los Angeles' limestone and marble since the early 1900s.

Nowhere is the contrast between old and new more dramatically manifest than on the course's signature hole at 14:

"This signature par 3 hole was rated the best in southern california. The tee shot spans the quarry and must land on a small peninsula like green. Intimidating but fair, it is best to trust your swing and go for it! The bail out area short right of the green is always an option when confidence is low."

Two Guys Who Golf describe it as "one of the most beautiful golf holes I have ever witnessed!...one that will remain embedded in your memory" and I'd say their course photographs actually do the place as a whole more justice than those on the club's own website.

Definitely Exhibit A for the defence when golf goes under the environmental microscope. And for the snappy Johnny Bristol soundtrack accompanying their homepage, Schmidt-Curley Design are The Golf Course As Art's architects of the month by a country mile...

Pound Ridge opens Saturday

2008-07-01T23:36:00.000+01:00

It's strange to think that Pound Ridge Golf Club is Pete Dye's first project in New York state but looking at the website for this public course, which opens on Saturday, you could almost take a stab at the designer even if you didn't know him, just by looking at the holes.

I don't doubt for a minute that Pound Ridge could be great fun to play, as long as you're perfectly honest as to which of the five tee boxes you'll fire from, but I find that a lot of Dye courses don't sit comfortably on the terrain.

I get the impression that if the great man thinks a hole must be tweaked a certain way to maximise its challenge and your pleasure in rising to it, then he's not overly fussy about the architectural convention of making that tweak look like it was part of the natural landscape.

Once again, some of the mounding in the hole photographs looks stark and lacks subtlety (see the 8th and 16th, for example, although the 7th looks a welcome exception) and the scattergun bunker placement is too faux links for my taste.

Credit to the club, though, for including a couple of press reviews on its website that don't gloss over Dye's eccentricities. Age is certainly not wearying his mercilessness - the 12th to 14th stretch looks like real eye-of-the-needle stuff, no matter which tee you start from.

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

2008-06-27T23:08:00.002+01:00

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

2008-06-25T22:11:00.004+01:00

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

2008-06-23T13:48:00.007+01:00

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

2008-06-19T23:42:00.008+01:00

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

2008-06-19T13:22:00.002+01:00

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

2008-06-18T13:34:00.006+01:00

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

2008-06-12T08:24:00.006+01:00

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?

2008-06-10T23:00:00.001+01:00

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?
......................................................................................

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."

......................................................................................

Pic of the Day

Old Course strategy - excuse the frosty reception

2008-06-09T13:39:00.008+01:00

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

2008-06-04T23:47:00.001+01:00

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.