Readers of this blog in its previous guise (and of the sidekick and ultimate dead-end it spawned known as Cheap Golf's Finest Holes) may recall that I'm a little partial to downhill golf shots. Something about the delusion of optimistic grandeur they give you as you stand on the tee and persuade yourself that even a sharp rap with a putter might be good for 175 yards on a gradient like this.

So let's just say I'm impressed with the finishing hole at California's Glen Ivy.

Reminiscent of the kind of drop more commonly found in a rather different type of glen, that's a cool 200 - count them - yards of descent you're looking at there, people: supposedly the deepest tumble from tee to green anywhere in the USA. (Click on the hole diagram to take the tour of this Ted Robinson Sr. design).

Needless to say, I'm open to news of any rivals for that honour, provided it comes with pictures.

But please, no more of this freakshow. There's gradient lust and then there's altitude perversion and I do have some standards.
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Pic of the Day - New South Wales' The Coast GC

There's enough to be going on with where Templer Park Country Club's concerned, well before you reach the final tee.

Not only is Jumbo Ozaki's Selangor creation visually dominated by the Bukit Takun, a dramatic outcrop from the Malaysian topography but rumour has it that golfers may not be the course's only transient populace...
"Templar Park is renowned for being haunted....i found the changing room very eerie despite it being quite packed....there's a certain hole where the air is incredibly still with absolutely no sound at all....don't worry you'll know it when you play the hole...spooky!!!!.....rumour is that prisoners were executed and buried here during the 2nd. world war by the Japanese armyMy uncle played at night there and there were extra shadows on the fairway......." - from Golf RepublicHow this affects your average golf architect, I don't know, other than he might want to get his best work in before the fateful hole comes along. Not much point serving up a dazzler like Templer Park's 18th (below) if punters, by the time they get to it, are shaking so much they can barely manage their own signature, let alone the course's...

Even Templer's own website reports the closer as being "controversial" and "gimmicky". If "gimmicky" is modern golf-speak for "more than one way to be played", though, then let' hear it for gimmicks.

Presumably, the gonads-of-steel route sees you drive onto that spit of land extending into the lake, south-west of the green. Half-way house is to drive parallel with the lake at the bottom of the photograph before depositing your second shot in the area between the bunker fringing the lake and those by the green, leaving you with an open approach.

Aquaphobes who want land beneath the flight of their ball at all times, on the other hand, play around the lake but even they have their moment of decision, whether to go for the green with their second or lay up in front of the sand.

Four ways to play one hole. That's the spirit, Jumbo.  


View Templer Park Country Club, Selangor, Malaysia in a larger map

There's enough to be going on with where Templer Park Country Club's concerned, well before you reach the final tee.

Not only is Jumbo Ozaki's Selangor creation visually dominated by the Bukit Takun, a dramatic outcrop from the Malaysian topography but rumour has it that golfers may not be the course's only transient populace...
"Templar Park is renowned for being haunted....i found the changing room very eerie despite it being quite packed....there's a certain hole where the air is incredibly still with absolutely no sound at all....don't worry you'll know it when you play the hole...spooky!!!!.....rumour is that prisoners were executed and buried here during the 2nd. world war by the Japanese armyMy uncle played at night there and there were extra shadows on the fairway......." - from Golf RepublicHow this affects your average golf architect, I don't know, other than he might want to get his best work in before the fateful hole comes along. Not much point serving up a dazzler like Templer Park's 18th (below) if punters, by the time they get to it, are shaking so much they can barely manage their own signature, let alone the course's...

Even Templer's own website reports the closer as being "controversial" and "gimmicky". If "gimmicky" is modern golf-speak for "more than one way to be played", though, then let' hear it for gimmicks.

Presumably, the gonads-of-steel route sees you drive onto that spit of land extending into the lake, south-west of the green. Half-way house is to drive parallel with the lake at the bottom of the photograph before depositing your second shot in the area between the bunker fringing the lake and those by the green, leaving you with an open approach.

Aquaphobes who want land beneath the flight of their ball at all times, on the other hand, play around the lake but even they have their moment of decision, whether to go for the green with their second or lay up in front of the sand.

Four ways to play one hole. That's the spirit, Jumbo.  


View Templer Park Country Club, Selangor, Malaysia in a larger map

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

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

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]

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.

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?

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

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...

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]

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

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?

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

Pic of the Day - the 11th at Mississippi Dunes

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