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Dan Hixson Interview Excerpts on Wine Valley, Ballyneal, and Do-It-Yourself Design

DAN HIXSON, THE "LAND TROUT," AND WINE VALLEY

[Author's Note: This interview was over 17 pages long. Here are some fun and interesting excerpts. You'll have to buy the book for the rest:)]

Dan Hixson – Zen and the Art of the Do It Yourself Golf Design Career

MC Lars is actually wrong (for once!) Post-punk laptop rap isn’t the new DIY: golf course design is, at least if you’re Dan Hixson chasing a childhood dream.

Talk about doing it his way – he isn’t formally schooled in architecture, and he never apprenticed with another architect or firm, yet he’s got the hippest new design in the game, he designed another layout in the shadow of mighty Bandon Dunes which is enjoying remarkable success, (thank-you-very-much!), and he’s designing a fully reversible golf course at an idyllic Oregonian resort. Dude! Street cred overload!

He’s not chasing the dream any more, he’s living it. And he’s doing it in the most unique way of any golf course architect we’ve met.

JF: How did you decide you wanted to be a golf course architect?

DH: I remember this specifically. In 1968, when I was seven years old, Robert Trent Jones, Sr., was doing a massive remodel at Eugene Country Club, where they reversed the golf course – the 18th green became the 1st tee and so forth, all the way backwards.

So my dad took me out there because my grandparents were members, and dad and I followed the bulldozers around and saw the torn up course, with dad pointing everything out. I turned to dad and said, “That’s what I want to do!” Maybe I was too young to know what it meant, and even though I never had given much thought before about how they were built, I thought it was cool, and I said to myself I want to be the guy who builds golf courses.

JF: So then?

DH: So I played a lot of junior golf and scholarship golf and basketball in college – two years at a junior college outside Portland and then two years at Oregon State, and then I turned pro my first summer out and played the Aussie/New Zealand tour in 1984. I played horribly, nowhere near as well as I wanted to, but I got to see all the Mackenzie courses, like the composite at royal Melbourne and all the rest of his top courses, plus all the other great ones in the region, and I made drawings of some of my favorite holes and design features, like at Paraparaumu.

In those days I hadn’t played a lot of the great courses in the U.S., but I knew I was playing someplace special out there. They had a different view of building a course there: simpler and better maintenance too. Our U.S. courses were trying to be too perfect maintenance-wise, but in Australia, they have rugged edged bunkers that tie into the native vegetation on the far side of the bunkers. We hadn’t been doing that in the U.S. back then as much, you just didn’t see that here, and I really liked what I saw there a lot. I liked the rugged look.

So over the next few years I went back and forth between mini-tours and club pro jobs and the precursor to the Nationwide Tour. I tried Tour school in ’87 and got through Stage 1, but lost a playoff for Stage 2. But all through that era, I kept notes on what was good about golf courses and design and taught myself how to be a designer, all self taught. I made clear lines in my head as to what was good, what was bad, and what could have been had it been done differently.

JF: How did you make the jump?

DH: After my playing days, I became an assistant club pro at Columbia Edgewater Country Club, and I asked my boss, Jerry Mowlds, for time off to plan my jump to being an architect, and that’s when he informed me he was going to take a job at Pumpkin Ridge and I should stay on because I’d probably be head pro at Columbia Edgewater and so I stayed.

So I was there for another eight or nine years, (12 total), and during that time three big things happened:

1) I got divorced so it freed me up to do what I wanted, no more golden handcuffs;

2) the tax laws changed so I could sell my house for a big profit and fund a career change; and

3) the PGA changed its rules to expand categories for golf pros so I could be both a pro and an architect.

So then I was able to chase the dream. I’m 50 years old now, but I’m still the same as when I was a kid. I’m doing what I love. My interests have really never changed: golf, fly fishing, chasing girls, music, (I have 8 turntables), and biking for fun.

JF: Sorry to interrupt, but since you mentioned, I have to ask, what kind of music do you listen to?

DH: My favorites are old Jazz like Miles Davis, Sonny Rollins, and Dave Brubeck, (my dad was a Jazz drummer). I also like Lucinda Williams to John Prine, Van Morrison to Phoebe Snow.

JF: Okay, back to live action…

(Laughter)

DH: So one night in October of 1998, I had a meeting scheduled with my manager and it hit me…I decided to resign right then and there. I told him I wanted to get into design, I don’t know how I was going to do it, but I was going to pursue it. I stayed four or five more months to help the course transition, and then I went off to be a designer. Happily, they were cool about it, and I’m not only still a friend of the course, but I built the par-3 course and short game area there.

So I down-scaled my life and tried to get in the business. I talked to everyone in the biz around here – John Fought, Bunny Mason, John Harbottle, all the shapers and construction guys, writers, and friends of guys like Arthur Hills, Bill Robinson, Robert Muir Graves – I asked them all for advice.

It was clear quickly that I was better off going out on my own. I couldn’t just go to work for someone else because I didn’t know what I could do for them. But I knew the goal I wanted to achieve, and I trusted my instincts about what was a good golf hole. Now the technical and engineering side I figured out quickly that I could hire someone who knew that stuff or got advice and learned it myself.

JF: Sort of an analog player in a digital world?

DH: Yes, exactly! Now what I brought in that was different from others in the area was that I knew the operations end. I’d worked at a resort, at a high end club, and at smaller clubs, and that life long knowledge of golf gave me a different perspective. I also understood a budget. I had a strong idea on what to spend and how to save. You don’t have to spend $250,000 to do a green – you can do it for $40-50,000.

I started with short game areas and par-3 courses. I co-designed my first with Bunny Mason, and it came out great because we did it in house and it was inexpensive. Suddenly the nicer country clubs started saying, “Hey! Look what he did for less money! Maybe we should talk to him!”

THE FANTASTIC MOVEMENT OF THE 8TH GREEN AT WINE VALLEY

JF: So what was your first big break?

DH: Well the par-3 course and short game at Columbia got me calls from good clubs. That was big. Then next was the call for Bandon Crossings. At that time Bandon Dunes Resort had just two courses and they were just finishing up the Trails course. A long time friend called me and said his members want to build a public course in Bandon and I rolled my eyes to myself and thought, “Okay, sure, yeah right.”

JF: How tough was it building Bandon Crossings in the shadow of Bandon Dunes Golf Resort?

DH: It was definitely looming over me the whole time. But I played it a lot and knew a lot about the Resort and the courses and I knew what we were going to do was going to be different. Also, I’m friends with everybody over there at the Resort, and they were really supportive of us!

As for the differences between the courses, first we knew were would allow carts and that changed the complexion a lot. We knew we weren’t a fescue course and we were 1-1/4 miles inland, so that changed the turf discussion and, therefore, changes the design. But we also wanted it walkable. I’m walker, and the owner is a walker. We’re committed to it. Golf is a walking game. But a lot of players take carts, and there is some separation of holes and some elevation change, so it was quite an endeavor – two to three months of work just to get a routing plan that we all approved of.

Now the course has two parcels of land and there were lots of routing options.

JF: What are the two types of land?

DH: One side is open pastureland. Then a canyon divides that from a forested area. The whole site was ancient sand dunes, so we were able to use the on-site material for build and cap. The tees and greens are straight sand, for a great draining golf course

JF: What else is similar to what you’ll see at the Bandon Dunes Resort and what else is different?

DH: The property is more like Bandon Trails than the other three, it has similar vegetation and topography. The biggest thing is we spent very little building it – it was minimalistic design. We did have to blow up a couple of hills, but for 80-90 percent of the work, we scraped a tee box in, built a green on what was there, and the best thing is we built a course where the owners can build and sustain a business modal and make some money. The economy is such that you have to take chance to build, and we tried to be fiscally smart so they could succeed and run a really fun and interesting golf course.

JF: Who are your favorite classic designers and classic courses?

DH: Mackenzie. I’ve played more of his stuff than everybody else. I’ve only had some good glimpses of many other guys. I really like the two local guys here in the Northwest. Chandler Egan -I’m working on three or four of his courses – and I also like A.V. Macan. (Columbia Edgewater is a Macan!) The quality of their courses is so great: not as much as Mackenzie, but they still were amazing and they built so many courses. Virtually every older club in the area had their influence to some degree.

JF: How about your favorite modern designers and modern courses?

DH: Clearly Doak and Coore and Crenshaw more than anyone else, I’ve seen so much of their work in the region. I’ve never met Doak, but I’ve had some great sessions and talks with Coore, and he’s an incredible designer and wonderfully nice guy.

I love Pete Dye courses, he broke so many rules and his visuals are fascinating to look at, and I’ve played a lot of his courses like PGA West and the other Dyes in that Palm Springs area. He’s one of a kind. His courses are a visual feast. He re-revolutionized the popular architect. There was Trent Jones, and then Dye came along and took the hatchet out and started doing things completely differently. Dye is a master of frightening the golfer.

JF: But that’s what you want, isn’t it? You want players in tournaments thinking and confused and unsure of themselves because by getting in their heads, that’s how you make them make a mistake.

DH: Yes, that’s why Dye’s courses are remarkable in that way. Playing PGA West in a tournament is completely different than playing it for fun. I’ve played TPC Sawgrass, and it’s exactly the same thing, it’s fascinating. It’s fun for a casual round, but in a tournament you better be good and you better step up playing around all that water. You better be a good player then!

JF: What are the hallmarks of truly great golf architecture?

DH: I think the single most important thing is matching the course to the land and the situation. I see that screwed up so many times in remodels and new courses and all over the place. You have to come up with the right plan for the site and the people who will play it. How it’s maintained, how it’s going to survive economically. Too often you get people dreaming to build something grand, but they didn’t get the right model for the circumstances. There’s a lot going into designing a course and you have to match everything properly. Lots of courses fail because they didn’t think pragmatically. Too often projects don’t use logic, especially in remodels. It’s like someone first did an arts and crafts home and then threw in a French Colonial or modern kitchen or some modern wing and things start to not match and the whole thing becomes a mélange.

THE SKYLINE GREEN AT WINE VALLEY'S 15TH

JF: What is your definition of minimalism and explain why it’s so good for golf?

DH: What most people call minimalism to me is naturalism. Wine Valley is minimalistic because we didn’t move dirt, but it’s also natural. To me true minimalism means a course almost mowed out of the ground with 20-30 bunkers, not 80-90 and definitely not 200. You have to work harder to make it good when you don’t have a big budget. You have to be more creative. You get better at problem solving that way. If we stretch the dollar as much as possible, more people can play it and the course can maintain itself well. The problem in the ’80s was that no one wanted to leave the site alone. They wanted to build what they wanted to build.

But if you leave natural grades, you save time, money, energy, and the soil is better and the course is better. Mounds for example – I don’t do mounds, and I tell my jobs that. Just to build mounds because nothing is there – mounds for mounds sake – wastes money.

So for me minimalism is simple golf courses. Dan Proctor and Dave Axland built Wild Horse, and they just left the ground alone and fit the features into the land and it came out great. I learned a lot from Dan Proctor when he was with me on Wine Valley, he’s another great guy.
Also, Bill Coore is a great example to follow.

JF: What’s the zaniest, craziest, most laughable thing you’ve seen or had happen to you in the course of building a golf course?

DH: (Laughs) When we built Wine Valley, I purchased a small beat-up Mazda pickup for the job instead of a nice truck so I could ride around the site with my dog Milo, a corgie. Go to the Bandon Crossings website and there is a Milo story on there.

Anyway I bought the pickup with a totaled front end, but it works for staking and driving around the course. We called it the “Land Trout.”

So we were all hanging out at this house on the property having a few beers, and I just off-handedly said, “Before this project is over, we have to shoot this truck to put it out of its misery.”

Next thing I know, there’s someone loading a gun, and eventually the truck had 100 bullet holes in it! Then I would go away, and while I was gone, they crushed it with a bulldozer, dumped boulders on it, ran it into bulldozers, basically destroyed it, they mangled it. They went medieval on it.

So then I’d come back into town and ask, “Where’s my truck?” and they’d all be smirking knowing what horror I’d find. Here I am trying to operate it, and it had smoke coming out of it, totally trashed. But it was great fun while it lasted.

LAST CALL BEGINS FOR THE LAND TROUT

JF: Let’s talk about Wine Valley. Walk us through the routing process. What holes jumped out at you from the start and why?

DH: The beauty of Wine Valley is that from every square foot of that property you could make a good golf hole in any direction. However, holes 16, 17, 18, and 1 were right there from the beginning, and the clubhouse fit there ergonomically as well. Also 13 green was always there from the beginning – that hole was also always in the routing plan.

So fairly quickly once we got the clubhouse site, we came up with the idea for the second hole coming back to the clubhouse, which is an old school idea from the old match play days. That way in sudden death you play one, then two, and you’re right back at the clubhouse. It was an old school idea from the match play era that I liked.

The other good thing about it is if you drank to much wine – which happens here! – and missed your tee time, you can catch your group on number three. It’s also convenient if you need something else – another drink or shoes, a change of clothes, lip balm, whatever – it’s convenient.

Plus you get the advantage of playing downwind and then back into the wind right out of the chute.

Now again, we didn’t just want to just build up and down the valleys, and we didn’t want repetition. We wanted to use the valleys in different ways. Now fairly late we used the wash which goes down 12, across 14 over to five, and across the fairways. That’s a man-made feature that works strategically and drains the rain and snowfall. It looks natural and it works for all those holes. That brought all those holes into sharp relief. They are much better instead of just being bunker holes. That feature really tied in the west side of the project.

JF: What are the strongest holes there and what are their inspirations?

DH: Well one of my favorites is number one, I love it. The strategy of the right hand bunker is the more you bite off, the more distance you can gain, but don’t go too far because it wraps around.

I think four and five are the holes most commonly remembered by players, and I think they are great too. I can only take credit for four a little: Kye Goalby, Bob Goalby’s son and our lead shaper gets much of the credit. There’s a half-acre sized bunker on left. It was different from what we planned, but I stepped back and realized this was a lot better than what I had designed. I edited it a little, but the final product is a lot of Kye’s, and I’m happy to swallow my pride and say, “Hey Kye, it’s a much better hole.”

JF: Where did you find the inspiration for the greens? Why such great contours?

DH: I knew they’d be big and we’d have fast, firm conditions, with a lack of rain and hard, good soil. Kye was part of the crew that did the greens at Ballyneal, and he’s a bold shaper, and I never told him to turn down the volume. We never made one bland green and then one really crazy one, they are all crazy! Lots of movement! Kye is one of the big reasons they are so good. I recognized really quickly that Kye had a lot of talent and I said “Let him go! Let it roll!” I’ll just edit him, and we’ll be fine.

JF: There are a lot of Ballyneal comparisons…

DH: You know I haven’t seen Ballyneal yet! It looks to me like it has even more elevation change than Wine Valley, but I don’t know. I hear it has even more going on, but if it is similar, I think it’s because of the natural landscapes there.

JF: Also the same design theories too?

DH: Yes and no. Kye and I would have conversations about what he did with Doak, and while I didn’t want it to look like anyone else’s course but its own place, we blended our ideas. I had the grand scheme, they did the rough shaping and conceptual ideas, and Dan Proctor finished the details. I did a couple of hours detail work on the greens to finish them. I did the same thing at Bandon Crossings. Dan did the same work at Sand Hills and Wild Horse. It’s not so much “Ballyneal,” but a course worked by the same guys. What I like to do differently, though, is put my own personality on it.

JF: Where and how?

DH: Only 50-some bunkers, (though the wash is a whole mile long!), and also in the rest of the bunkering. I didn’t put in 80-100. I have fewer bunkers, and they aren’t wasted strategically or visually. Those elements are my personality, and in the way they are executed as well, like five-foot walls.

JF: Some think three is a split fairway and the long hitters are supposed to use the left side, others think the fairway bunker is a center line hazard intended to be carried and that the left is not the ideal line. Who is right?

DH: Ah! I saw that discussion on GolfClubAtlas. Nobody is right! The intent always for that hole was to have the centerline bunkers, but also to make something that had virtually unlimited options. It can play a mile long with wind blowing, or play really short with no wind, so the options for what you do depend on the circumstances.

JF: But isn’t left worse? You have to come in over water.

DH: It depends on the player. Some would rather play over the pond at a perpendicular angle rather than come down the right parallel to the water and risk the wind blowing the shot off-line. There is also extra roll on the left side that makes the hole play shorter.

The idea was to mess with people minds, like the third bunker on the corner of the lake and the slope on the right of the green. The farther you hit to the green, the harder the shot is. There are a million subtleties to that hole. People disagree on what’s the best way to play it, and that’s what I want. I want that hole to be ambiguous so you have to think and work your way up the hole.

JF: What inspired the punchbowl green at seven?

DH: That hole was laid out for a long time. That’s the flattest valley on the property, and we knew we’d put that green where the valley ended and, again, Kye gets a ton of credit. I didn’t visualize it, but then he said, “I think we could do a punchbowl,” and I said go for it. And it’s so much fun.

Now some people think a punchbowl is easy, but the center hump changes everything! It’s great seeing all the balls ending up in all kinds of crazy places. Yes, I’ve seen more eagles on that hole than any hole I’ve ever played, but you hit that hump, and you could be so off direction it’ll mess with your mind! The pin could be in the middle of the bowl, yet you hit the hump and carom 30 feet away. Seve Ballesteros would love that hole and manage it better than anyone because he’s creative. That’s why he was so good at Augusta.

JF: How do we make more people aware of what constitutes great golf architecture?

DH: That’s a great question! I think to a certain degree the recent trends in the 2000s show that, percentage-wise, the courses built are extremely good. There’s much less “mail it in from the office” design now.

I also think taking the Pete Dye concept – not his style – but the idea of pushing the envelope, is god for golf design, and I hope my next project shows that and starts a trend. I’m building a reversible golf course that you play in a different direction each day. So I like to think that might be a trend or wave that grabs people’s imagination.

JF: You read my mind because my next question was “What’s next for you and your team?” Tell us more about that project.

DH: It’s out in far rural eastern Oregon; I’ve been working on it for two and a half years. It’s called “Silvies Valley Ranch.” The courses have working titles, but no official names yet. It’s 36 holes, 27 greens, 9 which you play twice, but not on the same day. One day you play hole from one side, the next day from the opposite direction. They can and will change it each day. It’s like when they reverse the Old Course at St. Andrews. Tom Simpson, the great architect of the 1920s wrote about the benefits of a reversible golf course; you get 36 holes on 18 holes worth of land!

It’s a 130,000 acre ranch, so we aren’t land starved. We’re taking our time with it, we won’t open till 2015.

JF: Where do you play golf for fun? For vacation?

DH: I haven’t played any vacation golf in many years, but typically I’d go to Bandon or Phoenix, or Palm Springs.

JF: Well, which courses in particular?

DH: I really like Talking Stick (North). That was pretty inspiring. It was different than anything else, so nice and low profile and natural. Clearly Coore and Crenshaw were doing things way different from everyone way back then and I like that. I like TPC Scottsdale, (just to play that finishing stretch you see on TV), then in Palm Springs I really like the Pete Dye La Quinta (Mountain Course). I played that a lot in tourneys and casually. Then there’s Bermuda Dunes, one of the old school Tour courses from back in the day.

JF: Tiger, Phil, Ernie and Retief play one public hole of yours for $100,000 of their own money – which hole is it?

DH: Another great question!

JF: That’s what I’m here for.

DH: Probably a long hole. I’d say 3 at Wine Valley. There’s so many different ways to play it, but it must be windy.

JF: You just won the Masters. What are you serving for dinner?

DH: I’m boring – T-bone steak, baked potatoes, and hors d’oeuvres.

JF: What hors d’oeuvres?

DH: Nothing fancy, but excellent versions of sautéed mushrooms and crab looie, shrimp cocktail, and cucumber salad with sushi.

On that note, here’s something for you: I’ve been to two Super Bowls, (the only two pro football games I’ve been into in my life. I saw the one where the Giants beat the Bills, (I was attending a PGA golf course architecture education class during the golf show, and that year the game was in Tampa. The second one was in Minneapolis in the Metrodome the following year when the Redskins beat the Bills.

Posted on February 7th, 2012 under Golf Course Architecture, Interviews, Public Courses - West | Comments: none

Jay’s Plays! NFL Picks Wrap-up

With last night’s win – we had the Giants +9 and UNDER 61.5 – we finish the season at 28-20-2, winning at a 57% clip for the year. We were a whopping 78-22-2 overall.

Our best friends this year were the Ravens (again) the Giants, Steelers, Panthers, 49ers, and Patriots. The Jets were a disappointment and, as always, avoid the NFC West teams as you never know what you’ll get week-to-week.

The Lions and the Raiders improved, while the Bengals and Bills proved streaky, sadly at the beginning of the season.

However, that also highlights the necessity of waiting until week 6 to bet the NFL because it takes that long for teams to identify themselves. Sadly, they flamed out after impressing bettors. You were smart to ditch them early.

Open questions for next year:

1. Over/Under date of Rex Ryan’s next Super Bowl prediction for the Jets: June 15

2. Over/Under 49ers wins next year – 10. Will they be an NFC dynasty again?

3. Who dethrones the Giants next year? Packers or Saints?

4. Will the injury bug finally stop biting Pittsburgh? If it does, they beat the Packers next year…

5. Is Denver really back? Or is Tebow another one-hit wonder a la Vince Young.

6. Who takes Norv Turner? Minnesota? St. Louis? Philly? Someone else who wants to tread water for three years?

7. With all the talent they get, can the Chargers finally play to the level they are capable of achieving?

8. Over/Under Jets wins: 10? They have a comparatively easy schedule next year (AFC South/NFC West).

Posted on February 6th, 2012 under NFL Picks, Other Sports | Comments: none

Q&A With Robert Trent Jones, Jr. on Chambers Bay

While I get a few more interviews and course reviews finshed, here’s some great insighta o Chambers Bay from Robert Trent Jones, Jr., who by this time next week = may pull a come from nehind victory in the Rio primary:) (I.E. The Olympics election…err…selection…)

JF: Now those hummocks look like berms that Seth Raynor did at flat courses like the Country Club of Charleston or some of those older courses from the early 1900s.

RTJ: True. They’re the same thing as hummocks, and you can see how at Chambers Bay, we’ve re-crafted how the wind came off Puget Sound from the north and would have deposited the sand. Now the flagstick positions there are what we call in the industry medium-sized, which is actually comparatively small. Some of the greens are “large” size, but they are sloping and have softer but more sweeping transitions than the segmented “little decks” of say, Torrey Pines.

We moved one and a half million cubic yards of material to craft the dunes, hummocks, fairways and other playable areas, and then veneered the playable area as well, so that the entire surface is like a sandy green in condition, playing firm, where the ball runs out on the ground. It is NOT target golf.

The site was a mined-out quarry over 100 years old for sand and gravel for roads. We’re on 250 acres out of a total 600 acre in the mined-out area. As golf designers, we’d kill for sand, and here’s a quarry! So we continued mining it. We took the sand and screened it to get all the stones out – then re-crafted the site. We mined it to get some better views of Puget Sound and we designed a terracing effect, where some holes are above others.

JF: They did that at Bayonne and Tall Grass. It also helps save space.

RTJ: That’s right, terracing can also save space. And I really liked Bayonne, by the way. You see, the best courses are on sand, but that’s rare, like the coasts and the middle of Nebraska. It’s easy to work unspoiled, sandy land.

Now we have created something new at Chambers Bay called “ribbon tees.” Instead of separate tees, think of a wrapped Christmas present that’s tied by a long wide ribbon. The tees are long, with little folds and irregularities as they run along seamlessly, connected to the fairways. The tees are integrated against the dunescape, but they are at different lengths and angles and flow through different grades as you go from tips to the forwards and the various markers in between. They are a cross between a free-form tee and walking path.

Ron Whitten gave us a nice compliment when he said the tees are the first creatively new idea of the original 21st century. It’s “into” the land and “of” the land – eminently natural – and it doesn’t feel like a tee “box,” and you have a many options for the markers. They may, however, be canted, so watch out. Find the place within the markers where it’s flat or where you can use the grade to help shape your shot. We wanted to try that experiment. I bet in the ancient days the tee boxes were wherever they could find them, flat lies or not. But the idea is functional, beautiful and natural. On the same hole, a different golfer with a different shot shape can hit the shot called for, or if he can’t, he can find another place on the tee to shape his shot the way he’d prefer. There are no cart paths – thank the golf gods we didn’t have to put black strokes of paint on the Mona Lisa. Chambers Bay is wide – everything is lateral – with 200 feet of up-and-down elevation change but completely open, with only one tree.

JF: What strains of grass are there?

RTJ: Fescue grass from tee to green and in the fairways and a little bit of bent for body on the green. Since people fight over green speeds, what we did at Chambers was to use grass you can’t ramp up to 14. The best you can get it to is 10. Fescue and sand make for hard surface – no ball marks – there’s that thump when the ball hits. Also, it allows the architect to keep the rhythm and flow to be one complete hole, no segmentation from tee to fairway to green.

Now the ball runs out, so you have to anticipate that. I’m excited about the U. S. Open there because Chambers Bay will ask the best players in the world to think! I’m in their brain, they are on the defensive, and that will separate the truly skilled players and thinkers from the home run hitters and the big-hitting limber backs. Another way we do this is to put bump-and-run shots back in play. If the terrain makes the pros think, they may freeze up. When we worked the site during construction, Beethoven’s Ninth was coursing through my veins and I thank the leadership of Pierce County for being brave enough to bless these ideas.

This was not just a job, but a passion. Chambers Bay is a place where many true believers in golf and in golf course architecture came together and built a marvelous golf course, but also gave a gift to the Pacific Northwest. It was a true team effort, and that team includes Bruce Charlton, my partner and colleague of 30 years who was the main leader on all technical issues, and Jay Blasi, his young apprentice. But most importantly, in my opinion, it wasn’t the concepts, the paperwork, or the paper drawings, but the shaping which makes Chambers Bay feel like such an epic golf adventure, and that was due to my team of shapers that I’ve worked with off and on for 30 or more years, Ed Tanno and Doug Ingram. Ed is coming back to re-craft the changes suggested by the USGA so they will feel like they are perfectly seamless to the original construction. That’s the team, along with John Ladenberg, who took on decision making for himself – like no carts, therefore no cartpaths, resulting in what you now see, play, and enjoy. It was a team effort to execute. It was like a symphony – everyone had their instrument to play, they hit all the high notes with both precision and passion, and together it created great links music.

Then I told Ron Read of the U.S.G.A. that we had a site Michelangelo would kill for, and Ron got Mike Davis out there to see it. Davis, as you know, is the personification of dedication, especially to the game and to golf course architecture. His work at the U.S.G.A. and at the U.S. Open has been marvelous.

JF: Talk to us about how you routed the course and how you were inspired to create the holes at Chambers Bay.

RTJ: The request for proposals wanted 27 holes originally. Now this course is built on some of the greatest land in the world – sandy soil by a body of water. It was an industrial site, and so we left the artifacts like the ruins of the sorting bins as a tribute to what was there before – sort of modern American industrial archaeological monuments.

The course is a more expansive example of ideas I’ve been working on for years. We did Spanish Bay, which is a links and has many similar characteristics, but it’s also got smaller bunkers and it’s built on a smaller site. We also did a links course in Australia called The National in Cape Schanck – great name – in Mournington Peninsula near Melbourne. So we had experience doing links courses and working on linksland before. And when we are on linksland, we do linksy things. Go see the Algarve Palmyras course in Portugal among the sand dunes by the sea for another spin on this.

55 architects responded to the RFP, and the competition was narrowed down to five and then two. We responded to the RFP as it was defined; they wanted 27 holes with irrigation and a field for the spray form the sewage plant. (The whole property is owned by the Sewage Authority.)

But then we did our own plan in the middle of the night. We pulled all-nighters like college kids! Bruce Charlton led the conceptual design and we came up with the routing that exists today. So we told them that we could give the 27 holes and an orthodox muni, or we can give them a world class 18 holes on the site. So we submitted it. We even brought bag tags to meetings that said “Chambers Creek – 2030 U.S. Open” (the name they thought they’d use at first). At first we thought that maybe we overstepped our bounds or over-stated the case…

JF: I guess you didn’t!

RTJ: Right! Later, John Ladenberg said that we showed we were passionate. So at that point we started working.

Now for years I’ve been an honorary member at Pine Valley. I love it as an inland links – really a heathland course, but it’s not the main course that gave me the inspiration, but the little ten hole course that replicates the holes at Pine Valley. Fazio and the president of the club designed it. I’ve admired it since I was New Jersey junior champion as a kid. I thought that what was interesting about it was there are no tees – you just drop a ball and play it. One hole is a replica of the second shot at 13, and that’s what gave me the idea for ribbon tees – just drop a ball and play it. More importantly, the tees and fairways at Chambers Bay are identical, just like the fairways at Pine Valley! You can hit driver off the deck or anything else.

Next, both the bunkering the waste areas are inspired by Pine Valley and to lesser extent Shinnecock Hills and the first five holes at Spyglass Hill, a flowing, sandy unkept wasteland. There are only six (now seven) actual bunkers. The rest are sandy areas, huge amounts of wasteland, but the actual bunkers are like exclamation points – they are very precise and emphasize shot values.

JF: Like the one greenside on number 5?

RTJ: Yes, and also like number 17 on the left side of the green on number 15. Now left and right of the green on number six there are coffin bunkers. They are like King Tut’s sarcophagus; you don’t want to be in them. What’s buried there? King Tut and his golf clubs that he brought with him into the next life!

JF: What about all his servants and cats?

(Laughter)

Bob: The caddies and cats are still here.

(More laughter)

So that’s one inspiration. The other is my long love affair with British Isles golf. There are only four true golf maritime climates in the world: the British Isles, New Zealand, the Pacific Northwest, and parts of South Africa. So I then consulted with my Irish turfgrass/agronomy friends on the proper fescues which would create firm and fast turf year round. At Chambers we have some tall fescues, some redtop, and Chewings fescue as well as others. The man I consulted with was Penn state grad Irishman John Clarke.

JF: Let’s talk about Chambers bay

RTJ: I like to open with Beethoven.

JF: What do you mean by that?

RTJ: Right away, you’re in for real music. You’ll be carried away on a strong, powerful, and moving journey complete with harmonies and percussion. You will ride the course you will not be coddled.

JF: Do you do that with all your courses?

RTJ: No, but I do that on the ones that are great properties that lend themselves to that, like the Prince course at Princeville.

The U.S.G.A. asked us to refine the entrance to the first green. I’m alert when I’m pushing the shot values, taking them to the edge, but then occasionally, you have to edit and refine like you and I do with poetry. The entrance to the first green was radical before the changes, and the green repelled the ball sharply left.

JF: I thought I saw a thumbprint in the left side of the green.

RTJ: Yes, there is a there a catcher’s mitt that would draw balls that were slightly mishit and send them almost all the way to the 18th tee. We want to give people options where to land the ball and yet have a seamless flow onto green. You still have to pick your spot where to land it on the approach, but you’re not going to get a random bounce any more.

JF: That was one of my favorite holes on the front, along with four and seven.

RTJ: Four is a wonderful par-5 that may play as a par-4 for the Open. I remember when David Fay went to see course for the first time, he turned the corner, and he sucked in his breath, because it was so dramatic. If you play directly towards green you have uneven lie in the fairway, but if you play wide left of fairway, the lie is gentle, but the angle of approach is more difficult and longer.

RTJ: Then you come back down the hill at five, which is a very strong hole. It’s an elevated tee bracketed by sandy wasteland on both sides, then you play to a horseshoe green with a with a single small pot bunker in the center which is lethal.

JF: That green reminded me of the Road Hole.

RTJ: It has similar elements, for sure.

Now seven is a Cape hole off the tee. You have to have choose your line carefully in order to place the tee shot just over the Cape bunker, but not too far left. You want to be like Geoff Oglivy, a thoughtful player with control off the tee. He would love this hole and this course. Than you play over hummocks, which I call the Alps.

JF: I do too, and it place to a green that has a bowl-ish features.

RTJ: Exactly. I also call the two mounds the “Olympic Mountains.” The green is elevated green 50 feet above you, and if you play too far left off the tee, you get semi-blind shot. Play just over the bunker and you get a better view and angle to the elevated green.

Then the front ends with a scenic par-3 with a dramatic drop.

JF: What about eight?

RTJ: Eight is a bunkerless par-5, and it’s not an easy hole, I’ve made eagle and I’ve made eight. You have to play the terrain. I didn’t need to decorate the hole with bunkering, but I just tried to follow the land. It’s like a hole at Royal Dornoch. The hole is more serene without bunkers.

Now 10 and 15 are the two beauty Holes; 10 is aesthetically wonderful, because you play among cathedral dunes for the entire hole. It looks like a birdie chance, but don’t lose your focus admiring the beauty of the hole.

Posted on January 31st, 2012 under Golf Course Architecture, Interviews, Public Courses - West, Robert Trent Jones, Jr. | Comments: none

Rock Rolls Over Woods

The re-coronation of Tiger Woods will have to wait at least another week as unheralded World Number 117 Robert Rock fired a 2-under 70 en route to winning the Abu Dhabi Championship. An erratic Woods, who started the day tied with Rock, fired a sloppy level par 72 to finish two strokes back. Woods still has not won a full-field, regular season event since his explosive sex scandal broke two years ago last Thanksgiving. Woods has not won a major since the 2008 U.S. Open at Torrey Pines.

According to AP reports from Abu Dhabi, “He started spraying his drives into the thick rough and fairway bunkers, resulting in the first of three bogeys. When Woods wasn’t missing the fairways, he was scrambling to save par as he did on the 11th when overshooting the green. As he approached his shot in deep rough just off the 11th green, he sighed heavily and let out a stream of obscenities under his breath.”

The loss is the second straight time Woods has failed to win with at least a share of the lead after 54 holes. He lost the Chevron World Challenge in 2010 after going into the final round with a four-shot lead over Graeme McDowell.

Woods will return to action in America at Pebble Beach.

Meanwhile Rock won for only the second time in his career. His earlier win was a European Tour event in Italy.

Posted on January 29th, 2012 under Chumps, Lunkheads, Dingbats, European Tour Players, PGA Tour | Comments: none

The Walla to Walla Tour (Part 2) Gold Mountain and Wine Valley

ANOTHER PHENOMENAL GREEN AT WINE VALLEY

Day 3 – Gold Mountain, (Olympic Course)

5:15 a.m., Seattle

No matter how many times I do it, waking up in darkness isn’t for me. My body clock is used to the California hours that all entertainment lawyers keep, even in New York. (If a Cali lawyer calls you at 4:59 his time and you’re not there, as Ian Faith said, “they start screaming like a bunch of Poncey hairdressers.”)

Once again Garmin tried it’s hardest to send me to Bandon Dunes instead of Gold Mountain, giving me bizarre instructions to leave the highway and take a route I knew to be longer and more circuitous. I’m lucky I got there at all. There are some serious woods up here, really tall timber. At one point, the fir trees were so thick it seemed the only person to ask directions from would be the Blair Witch. A winding road finally led past a sign for the facility and a few more turns through the woods brought me (finally) to Gold Mountain.

8:45 a.m., Bremerton

Gold Mountain has hosted a U.S.G.A. Junior Amateur (won by Peter Uihlein) and a U.S. Amateur Public Links, but it is best known for it’s excellent value. Walk-ups paid $24 to play today, $30 if they wanted to play all day long. The course’s highest rate in high season for non-locals is $60, but you can frequently get in a round for far less. Golf Digest once called it the second best value in America, and Golf Magazine praised its egalitarian price structure also. They are both right. A country-club-for-a-day atmosphere and high quality golf course at that price? As my dad would say, “That’s a bargain all day long!” Like Bowling for Soup rock ‘n’ roll – it’s champagne quality at beer prices.

The Olympic Course is the flagship at the facility and has an interesting story behind its creation. Back in the mid-‘90s a consulting firm did a study and determined that it would not be feasible to build a second course at Gold Mountain. That firm’s numbers all indicated that a second course just couldn’t sustain itself economically. Enter Director of Golf Scott Alexander and friends.

“I kept careful track of how many groups got turned away and showed my figures to the powers that be,” explained Alexander. “I found that we turned away 65,000 people in a single year. That’s not good business.” Faced with indisputable evidence that Washingtonians would be thrilled to have an additional course, they tapped hometown favorite John Harbottle to design it.

It’s a local-boy-done-good feel-good story. Harbottle has spent his life around golf. His mother is Pat Lesser Harbottle, one of the Pacific Northwest’s most recognizable and famous golf champions. She won the 1955 U.S. Women’s Amateur. His father was also a golf pro.

JOHN HARBOTTLE PLAYS OUT OF HIS OWN "DUNGEON"

It was only Harbottle’s third design on his own, but he learned at the elbow of Pete Dye and roomed with Tom Doak during that time, so you know he was encouraged to be creative.

“Pete taught me all about routing a golf course and about balancing lengths of shots and directions of shots, and requiring fade off the tee and draw into the green on one hole, and then draw off the tee, fade into the green on the next,” Harbottle stated energetically. “And he taught me to keep the ground game in play. Keep fairways wide, but require there to be a right side and wrong side of the fairway.”

And that’s exactly what you find at the Olympic Course at Gold Mountain. Extremely wide fairways, sometimes as much as 80 yards across, with excellent horizontal movement, (and therefore, multiple ways to play the hole), yet tightly guarded greens with good internal movement. Off the tee, bunkers are turned perpendicular to the line of play. The rolling terrain makes it easy to design bold holes that, nevertheless, follow the natural lay of the land. Oftentimes, Harbottle opt for deep grass bunkers as hazards, which he calls “dungeons,” as an interesting spin.

As an aside, both Harbottle and Alexander are well over six feet tall. I’m 5’7” and change, so playing with them is a little like when Frodo was travelling with Gandalf and Aragorn, but still as eager as gun dogs who heard their master take the firing piece of the shelf above the fireplace, we line up for golf on a cold, blustery January day, hot cocoa as well as golf clubs in our trolleys.

It was great fun, despite the cold. The short par-4 second has a bunker cut diagonally in the liner of play you can try to avoid or carry.

“It’s one of my favorites,” beams Harbottle, “a really interesting drive-and-a-pitch hole.”

My favorite on the front was the uphill par-4 4th hole which begins a tee shot meant to carry or avoid a perpendicularly turned bunker that juts into the fairway, followed by an approach over a deep center-line green to a shallow plateau green with interesting contours.

Yet another excellent perpendicularly-placed bunker appears at the par-5 11th, another of Harbottle’s favorites.

“You have to make a choice. You can safely lay up about 100 yards short of bunker, but that leaves you a full shot into a shallow plateau green that sits at diagonal to you,” Harbottle observes. Challenging the hazard and carrying the green presents you with a much better angle, straight into the deep part of the green.”

The finishing stretch provides the most interesting options on the golf course. At the par-3 16th, you get some of the elements of the architectural bloodline of Macdonald, Raynor, and Banks.

THE 9TH AT THE OLYMPIC COURSE

“This par-3 over water has elements of both Eden hole and the Lion’s Mouth, two of my favorite templates of Macdonald. The Eden part is that the green is wide to line of play, but you need to carry it over hazards and get close to pin to get birdie. Like the original at St. Andrews, over the green is dead,” Harbottle begins. The front bunker is the Lion’s Mouth bunker, with the gull wings of the green around it,” he concludes.

The par-4 17th has a fairway bisected diagonally by a stream. Long hitters can play down the left – the more dangerous side, but the shorter route to the green. Finally, the 300-yard closing hole features a green surrounded by water and sand and can serve up anything from eagle to triple bogey. It does what all great tempting holes do – gives you just enough rope to hang yourself.

As an aside, I usually prefer a tough finisher. A truly great golf course needs a sterling closing hole: a summary of all that came before. While you get everything but the kitchen sink at 18 at the Olympic Course, it can be a pushover if you want to play safe. It’s much stronger as a match play hole.

That being said, many great courses end on a hole which plays a “half stroke easier,” such as Cypress Point (a short par-4) and Bandon Dunes (a short par-5). 18 at Gold Mountain proved to be great fun for the Junior as it had all the kids thinking, and that’s the hallmark of a great golf hole.

Gold Mountain won’t beat up the bogey golfer, but will play tough for the expert. The wide fairways give you more room to play the game, tack your way around the course, and recover from the occasional bad shot. It’s not overly long – the 6,600 member tees are negotiable for the average golfer, so long as he plays intelligently.

If there is a one drawback, the course may get a little repetitive off the tee – you see the same “dip and a rise” to hit over on many tee boxes. We’re not averse to blind shots here, but there was a feel of sameness off the tee on some of the par-4s and par-5s.

That being said, the course is great fun and an even better deal. It’s definitely a source of great pride for Washington golfers and with good reason.

Day 4 – Wine Valley

5:00 a.m. Ugh. This 5 a.m. wake-up call is getting difficult and I desperately need coffee.

It’s a five hour drive across the state – from Seattle to Walla Walla – to get to one of the country’s hottest new golf destinations, and the road takes you across several diverse ecosystems. The road first climbs into the mountains and past two of Washington’s ski resorts. The snow, ice, and cold make for a tough drive, even on the four-lane highway, especially when semis come roaring by as ludicrous speeds.

Then the road takes you across high desert, past rugged, rolling hilltops and verdant gorges. At one point, you turn out of a hillside pass and city in a valley lies sleepily beneath you, tucked cozily in the vale. Finally, you arrive in wine country.

The drive out there was certainly worth the five hours. The golf course is a marvel. We’ll have a much more in-depth review next month and an interview with architect Dan Hixson to go along with it, but long-story-short, run don’t walk to Wine Valley. The greens are that good.

Some have called the course “a public Ballyneal.” While that may be a little strong, there are similarities. Both courses are in the middle of nowhere. Both courses have wild, hurly-burly greens with fierce contours. Both have a bold, natural look complete with blowout bunkers. Both are built over enormous areas, (Wine Valley is spread over 300 acres), yet both are minimalist in design, hardly any earth was moved during construction. Both courses play fast and firm. And both courses have an ardent cult following; each is the stuff of holy whispers by and among the golf cognoscenti.

THE TERRIFIC PUNCHBOWL AT THE PAR-5 7TH

Five and seven are the best holes on the front. At the long par-4 5th, a trench bunker runs along the left side off the tee, then cuts diagonally across the fairway. The seventh offers a marvelous punchbowl green with a mound shaped into the interior, a brilliantly original concept. I haven’t seen a green that good since Oakmont or Ballyhack.

On the back, you get a great cross-hazard at the par-4 12th, and a wondrous skyline green at the short, but uphill par-5 15th.

I also agree with local player Ken Cole from Waitsburg, Washington – the par-5s are the most memorable holes.

“My favorite holes are the par-5s,” he asserts. “Every one of them gives you a chance to go at it and get on in two, yet the bunkers are deep and penal. Those holes offer great risk-reward options, you can catch up in match play matches. Plus, the greens are fantastic.”

Wine Valley regular Mike White of greater Walla Walla also had some poignant observations.

“At this whole course you have options around the greens. You can bump and run, putt, or pitch. You have plenty of risk-reward options and you’re going to have birdie chances, maybe even eagle, but you can also get nailed on any hole,” explained White.

Then his eyes flash mischievously and he puckishly adds, “And you know the other great thing about this course? There’s no freakin’ trees! Old guys like me? We hate slogging around and punching out of the trees all day.”

That’s two other things Wine Valley has in common with Ballyneal: both allow the ground game and there’s no freakin’ trees.

As another aside, don’t you just love White’s enthusiasm? And his colorful assessment? Brilliantly laconic! “No freakin’ trees!” – It’s a catchphrase!

There’s no question that Wine Valley the second best course in the state of Washington – and to be spoken of in the same breath as Chambers Bay is rarified air indeed. There’s something for everyone at Wine Valley: Great views of the Blue Mountains, a rugged golf course, brilliantly conceived greens, multiple options on recovery shots, the grounds game, minimalism, “no freakin’ trees,” it’s the total package.

The drive back in the dark is long, with the climb through the mountains the worst. Semis fly by at ridiculous speedsduring a freak squall. Here, it’s snowing while at Wine Valley, miraculously, it was 50 degrees during the first week of January. My group played in windshirts. I played all three days even though weather reports called for occasional highs of 25. One week later, Seattle is in the vice like grip of winter, enduring its worst snowfall in five years – six inches and counting.

Meanwhile I had the best middle seat of my life on the flight back: the flight was supposed to be full, but the only person who missed the plane was the guy who had the window seat next to me. And if that’s not enough, the aisle seat was taken by a smokin’ hottie, a doctor with raven tresses, dusky eyes, and roller-coaster curves. I lost a little sleep, but ended up with her in my arms. Isn’t it great being single in New York?

Of course she did break one of the “Eight Simple Rules for Dating Jay Flemma.” Rule 8 clearly states “Don’t kiss me first and then tell me, you’ve had bronchitis for a week.” But whatever, I’ll give her a mulligan, she missed the memo when it came out.

6:40 a.m. Forest Hills

It’s warm in New York this morning, though it’s still dark. I hate winter. The sun rises too late, sets to early, and usually stays hidden behind grey, sullen, oppressive clouds. But this morning I’m basking in the afterglow.

Our great game gave me a timeless gift this week: the warm open-hearted camaraderie of Robert Trent Jones, Mike Davis, and Brian Simpson, the stunning beauty and originality of Chambers Bay, the easy-going friendship of John Harbottle and Scott Alexander, the wild beauty of Wine Valley, the gracious warmth of the Shelley family, and a shapely adorable at Trail’s End, the cherry on the sundae – BOO-YA!. Golf, God, and Country – add girl and sushi as needed. That’s what golf is all about – the people. In a few hours, it’s back to the law office, but for now, as my head hits the pillow for a well-earned rest, life is good.

Posted on January 28th, 2012 under Golf Course Architecture, Public Courses - West | Comments: none

Jay’s Plays! – NFL Picks Super Bowl edition

Well, we stand at 27-20-2 in teasers on the year, 76-22-2 overall.

It’s been a good year. Thanks go (mostly) to the Ravens, Steelers, and 49ers. They performed the best for me week-in and week-out. Had good runs with the Jets (till they ran out of gas), the Panthers (who kept getting lots of points, yet kept games close), and betting against the Lions and Browns.

THE SUPERBOWL TEASE

Giants +9 vs. Patriots
Giants-Patriots UNDER 61.5

The Giants are peaking at the right time. The Pats will run out of luck. Big Blue wins a laugher.

Posted on January 24th, 2012 under NFL Picks, Other Sports | Comments: none

The Walla to Walla Tour – a Cybergolf Diary (Part 1)

Day 1 – The Road to Chambers Bay

Warm clothes? Check. Laptop? Check. Clubs? That’s a big check! And we were off to Seattle for the Walla to Walla Tour – golf in Washington state during the first week of January. The weather report called for highs between 45 and 25 degrees, with lows in the teens, but no snow, thankfully. So I added four layers of fleece purchased from the country’s truly great fleece clothier, Goody’s of Vermont, and braced for the cold. As the song goes, “Now and again these things just go to be done.” After all, the USGA was making changes to Chambers Bay in preparation for the 2015 Open and architect Robert Trent Jones, Jr. would be there with various USGA and Pierce County executives. I could also knock off two other courses on my list for my book, so this was a rare opportunity to get in a trip during what are ordinarily the doldrums of the golfing calendar, at least to a Northeasterner. I wasn’t going to miss this.

1:30 p.m. EST, Jet Blue, JFK Terminal, NYC

It was the worst middle seat of my life. In fact, it was the first middle seat of my life, and I drew a short straw like you hear about in Seinfeld sketches. The fat woman from India on my right reeked of B.O. and pungent spices. She pulled out a take-out box of Indian food, and immediately half the plane stank of curry and cumin.

Those of you that know me, also know that while I have a broad palate, I loathe Indian food: green mush, red mush, or yellow mush, and coarsely chopped mystery meat segments. No, thank you. As Vonnegut once wrote, never eat cuisine from a country that not yet had its day in the Sun both historically and culturally. That’s similar to the time my ex-girlfriend Britt made me try Ethiopian food. I took two bites of a dish made with something called “Magma Hot Tectonic Sauce” and set my whole body on fire. It sat in my stomach like a warm brick for three days; I didn’t feel like eating at all during that time. That’s a sure cure for famine in and of itself…but I digress.

The guy in the seat on my left wore far too much of a particularly sickly-sweet cologne. He smelled of freshly cut grass and limes. I hope he keeps away from open flames and beehives. He coughed all over me.

“Do you have a cold?” I asked him as he blew his nose, then hocked a loogey into a Kleenex.

“No, the flu,” he responded. Directly behind me the baby screamed in my ear, a piercing wail. I had six hours of this, and dinner was not served on the flight.

6 p.m. PST, Seattle

But the good Lord smiled on me. I survived the flight without getting sick, and after a particularly good experience with the attendants at Enterprise Rental agency (Free upgrade! Cheaper rate! Great service! We like people who like us!), I arrived at the home of Jeff Shelley, my editor-in-chief at Cybergolf and my dear friend. Arriving at his house after such a long, tiring journey felt like watching a golden sunset. He and his wife Anni, a wonderfully kind person who brings the Sun with her wherever she goes, welcomed me warmly.

“Great to see you, Jay,” Jeff beamed. “You must be famished.”

I was. Food, glorious food was exactly what I needed to wash away a long day of travel dust.

“Let’s go get some Indian food!” he said excitedly.

The irony was not lost on me. The Devil smiles at everybody all the time, all a man can do is smile back. So I laughed. How about Thai instead? And after a native-hot Thai beef salad and some Thai iced tea, I felt myself again. Well enough for four days of waking in darkness, choc-a-bloc interviews, long hours driving, and of painting all you readers a picture…one good word at a time. As one of my friends puts it, there’s a wild cry calling from the highway, like the sound of a ragtime radio. Keeping one eye on the rearview, the other on the road, welcome to the travelin’ show.

Day 2 – Chambers Bay

7:15 a.m. Puget Sound

The 5 a.m. wake-up call and hour drive were hell, but the sunrise was glorious. I’m as myopic as Mr. Magoo when driving at night. Want to take your life in your hands? Put me behind the wheel in darkness: Car-mageddon! The Garmin wasn’t useful at all, trying to take me around Robin Hood’s barn just to get to a place directly in front of me, and then falling off the dashboard into my lap time and again, so I used my handwritten directions instead. But my perseverance was rewarded. As I pulled into the parking lot the sky was slowly turning from a rich velvety purple to a royal blue, the course itself seemingly emerging from the Cimmerian fog of sleep to greet the new day as joyously as the golfers.

And there they were before me: eighteen precious jewels, each prim as a cameo, yet as cunningly and carefully designed as the many intricate facets of the gemstone. Yes, everything you’ve heard about Chambers Bay is true, and more so. It richly deserves the U.S. Open, and it will be a brilliant and memorable host for 2015 and (hopefully) many more to come.

Much of the thanks go to the single-minded dedication and tireless passion of former county executive John Ladenburg. When I write a more full analysis of the course, we’ll meet him in more detail. But John Ladenberg summed up his strategy for getting the USGA to pick Chambers Bay as the venue in one concise statement.

“Everything we did here, we did with one question in mind: Does this get us closer to or further away from getting a U.S. Open?”

And with that singular focus, the Pacific Northwest got its first National Championship in 120 years of American golf history.

Chambers Bay is built on the remains of and old sand and gravel quarry. Millions of cubic yards of sand were just waiting to be turned into perfect terrain for golf. Here were two of the most critical things you need to design one of the greatest golf courses in the world: sand for great drainage and easy shaping, and an ocean for views. No less a personage than Mike Davis Executive Director and Tournament Coordinator for the USGA said exactly the same thing.

Davis was actually at Chambers Bay this day, along with Bob Jones, Jr., much of the Chambers Bay staff, some Kemper Sports reps, and various county executives and departmental officials. A group of about 20 would tour the course and discuss changes to the course, particularly holes 1, 7, 13, and 18. I would play my round with Brian Simpson, one of the course’s assistant pros, and our two groups would meet up periodically during the round and compare notes.

Strictly as an aside, is there a better sports management group than Kemper? Possibly not. When you’ve got folks like Eric Christiansen, Simon Landon, Meg Godfrey running things not only do you get letter perfect arrangements, but a writer gets real information, useful and accurate, not warm over baboon dung half-baked by some chump who couldn’t write his name in the snow. Suzy Abrams Jones is another excellent pro over at Forgate C.C. and Tall Grass, but that’s a story for another day.

Though 1.4 million cubic yards of earth were moved and shaped to create the golf course, the site looks eminently natural. Robert Trent Jones, Jr. did a masterful job here; it is, arguably, his greatest masterpiece to date. I had the chance to ask Jones about the course after the round:

RTJ: Chambers Bay is a place where many true believers in golf and in golf course architecture came together and built a marvelous golf course, but also gave a gift to the Pacific Northwest…. It was a team effort to execute. It was like a symphony – everyone had their instrument to play, they hit all the high notes with both precision and passion, and together it created great links music….

It’s a big, vast, open golf course, with no water holes and no trees as hazards, with strongly contoured greens. The ribbon tees add flexibility in length and can be set up to accommodate wind or other weather factors. It’s a course for all seasons and it should play firm and fast.

JF: Why haven’t we seen a design like this from you before?

RTJ: It’s hard for owners to overcome their predispositions. Some people like what they’ve seen before and, as you said, they are afraid of change because that vision gets in their heads. Some designers take risks and they might not get the best reception, but you have to take risks. You can be different and still be dull, but you can also be different and unforgettable. If you’re going to be a leader, you have to take positions that are bold. Some people might like some of the holes or say they are unfair, but they have undeniable character.

Happily, Ladenburg and the rest of the Chambers Bay executives were more broad-minded than most, and welcomed all the undeniable and indelible character Jones infused into his golf holes. The routing winds in many directions, it’s not just two simple loops of nine. Winding and twisting within itself, it is as intricately conceived a routing as mighty Oakland Hills’s South Course, site of nine major golf championships. That’s rarified air. The tees, fairways and greens are all one entity – I have never seen any golf course in the world where the tie-ins between these features and are smoothly and flawlessly executed as at Chambers Bay.

The weather gave us a little bit of everything, all in the span of half a day. It stayed cold from sun-up to sun-down, but with the exception of one 40-minute squall that blew in when we were on 15 green, it was golfing weather, albeit in four layers of fleece and wick-away shirts.

Although every hole is great, and trying to pick “bests” or “favorites” is like giving a starving man a menu – you just want to look at it and say “okay” – to me, the best holes are 1, 4, 7, 12, 16, and 18.

I love false fronts and sides on greens, and the one at the first hole is one of the most severe in golf. Combined with a thumbprint in the green, on the left side which can actually help funnel balls of the green, poorly played shots can result in a 40-50 yards walk of shame for the hapless golfer. Again, from my interview:

RTJ: I like to open with Beethoven.

JF: What do you mean by that?

RTJ: Right away, you’re in for real music. You’ll be carried away on a strong, powerful, and moving journey complete with harmonies and percussion. You will ride the course you will not be coddled.

JF: Do you do that with all your courses?

RTJ: No, but I do that on the ones that are great properties that lend themselves to that, like the Prince course at Princeville.

The U.S.G.A. asked us to refine the entrance to the first green. I’m alert when I’m pushing the shot values, taking them to the edge, but then occasionally, you have to edit and refine like you and I do with poetry. The entrance to the first green was radical before the changes, and the green repelled the ball sharply left.

JF: I thought I saw a thumbprint in the left side of the green.

RTJ: Yes, there is a there a catcher’s mitt that would draw balls that were slightly mishit and send them almost all the way to the 18th tee. We want to give people options where to land the ball and yet have a seamless flow onto green. You still have to pick your spot where to land it on the approach, but you’re not going to get a random bounce any more.

The fourth is a short but severely uphill par-5 that wraps around a deep scrub-filled bunker, a waste area you must avoid at all costs because the lies in these areas are not the easy flat, simple lies you get in the waste areas you’ll see in Myrtle Beach. This is broken and uneven ground. If you get in there, there will be a penalty of a half-shot, possibly more. The fairway is rumpled and undulating, but also has steppes, flat areas you can play safely to tack your way up the hill to a tiny green perched on the edge of the hill.

The par-4 fifth cascades back down the hill. Feeling my oats after smartly playing my way up the fourth by hitting all those flat areas and scraping a par with a 1-putt, I came to the fifth tee with an audience of about 25, including Davis and Jones and every visiting dignitary.

Although I’ve known Jones for five years now and been to tournament with him, written about many of his courses, written poetry with the man and even worked with him as a lawyer, I had never hit a golf ball in front of him until then. So I didn’t need to hear the conversation that was certainly taking place.

“Well! Let’s see if Jay can play! No pressure!

So in front of everyone, I promptly hit a goofy slice into a bunker…the bunker on the adjacent fourth fairway.

“Hmm…” began one irreverent wag. “I guess that bunker is in play on this hole too.”

Hardy-har-har.

I tee up another ball without looking behind me and hit a good one, cleanly down the left side of the fairway, with a little draw. Not position A, but solid.

“Boy, the guy who plays after me sure is good,” I quipped. The tee box broke up in laughter. Oh well, if you can’t laugh at yourself, you can’t laugh at anybody.

The rest of the day was a joy. I got in the right fairway bunker on seven and almost never got back out, but didn’t fall victim to the false front which will drive the pros insane when they face it.

RTJ: Seven is a Cape hole off the tee. You have to have choose your line carefully in order to place the tee shot just over the Cape bunker, but not too far left. You want to be like Geoff Oglivy, a thoughtful player with control off the tee. He would love this hole and this course. Than you play over hummocks, which I call the Alps.

JF: I do too, and it place to a green that has a bowl-ish features.

RTJ: Exactly. I also call the two mounds the “Olympic Mountains.” The green is elevated green 50 feet above you, and if you play too far left off the tee, you get semi-blind shot. Play just over the bunker and you get a better view and angle to the elevated green.

I got my first par of the year at the scenic drop shot ninth, and first birdie of the year at the par-5 13th. In between, I was delighted to see the best green on the course at the short, but narrow and uphill par-4 12th.

Finally, we came to 18. I dropped a ball in Mike Davis’s new bunker, dubbed “Chambers Basement.” About 80 yards short of the green and 12 feet deep, with steep walls on all sides, it reminded me of a larger, deeper version of Travis’s coffin at the 18th at Garden City. I had heard only one person had ever reached the green from this bunker since it had been added. I took my 9-iron, determined to try to reach the green. My sand game is one of my strengths; I even made a sandie from Pete Dye’s fearsome San Andreas bunker at PGA West (Stadium Course), and had I been further left, where the face doesn’t cramp the airspace of the shot, I might have been even more successful. As it turned out, I got it out, though it hit the face in front of me, yet bounded about 40 yards down the fairway. But this time, I delighted my audience, instead of being comic relief. My pitch landed tight to the pin, checked and settled one foot to the pin. Finish with a flourish indeed.

This may be Jones’s greatest course to date, and though he’s in his 70s, he’s feeling his oats like a 30-year old. Word on the street is that the design he submitted for the Rio Olympics is another links-like masterpiece, with ribbon tees, wide double fairways, and great green and fairway undulations.

In the case of Chambers Bay, it clearly has more character and originality than the Straits Course at Whistling Straits (where Dye did an excellent job, yet wanted the nines to have a similar feel so pro golfers playing in majors who started on one side weren’t at a disadvantage than players starting on the other), is stronger than Arcadia Bluffs, and is proper rejoinder to Pacific Dunes, just easier to get to and more places to stay and things to do once you’re into town. There’s even talk of gigantic cruise liners camped off shore where patrons can stay. Imagine that: taking a cruise to a golf major championship! How’s that for a cool idea. But that’s your USGA under Mike Davis.

The rest of the afternoon was wondrous. Chatting with Bruce Charlton, the invaluable second-in-commend at RTJ2 Designs, and Mike Davis, who graciously sat for the first half of a long interview for my book, lots of spirited discussion with everyone for ideas to make the balls that roll back to the base of the Alps at seven not end up in divots, and general good feelings that only golf can bring: new friends to meet, old friends to greet, and that warm glow that only golf can bring.

I left as the sun set behind the Pacific. I wrote up my notes over sushi and sake, and got back to Jeff’s in time to unwind for an hour with him and Anni, and with Waldo the cat (a dead ringer for Morris from the cat food commercials) and Stella the Irish setter. In bed by 10; it’s another 5 a.m. wake-up call tomorrow, for another full day. It was a good start, but I was still a long way from home.

Next up: Gold Mountain with architect John Harbottle and Wine Valley

Posted on January 20th, 2012 under Golf Course Architecture, Public Courses - West, Robert Trent Jones, Jr. | Comments: none

Jaime Diaz Wins 2012 PGA Lifetime Achievement Award in Journalism

Golf Digest senior writer Jaime Diaz has been named the recipient of the 2012 PGA Lifetime Achievement Award in Journalism. The San Francisco native, 58, will be honored April 4 at the 40th Golf Writers Association of America Annual Spring Dinner and Awards ceremony at Savannah Rapids Pavilion in Augusta, Ga.

For more on this story, visit Cybergolf’s coverage here.

We love Jaime here at AWITP. First we made him laugh when we grilled Fred Couples like a swordfish at the 2006 U.S. Open.

“This should be interesting,” he chuckled to Tim Rosaforte. “Jay’s gonna chat up Boom-boom. Let’s see what happens:)” What happened was hilarious:)

Then I made him spit up soda through his nose at the U.S. Open last year. He sat down on my right at a table in the lunch room, and then we were joined by five British golf writers. Well all of a sudden, they start grinning, saying how much I made them laugh with something I wrote about Tiger.

Let’s just say…it was colorful.

That did it! Jaime’s eyebrows hit the ceiling and he turned beet-red holding in his laughter.

One thing about the PGA of America: they know how to pick a super human being as well as a great writer. Just look at this list of past winners. Looks like a Hall of Fame group to me…

PGA Lifetime Achievement Award in Journalism Recipients

1991 Dick Taylor
1992 Herbert Warren Wind
1993 Jim Murray
1994 Frank Chirkinian/Bob Green
1995 Dan Jenkins
1996 Furman Bisher
1997 Jack Whitaker
1998 Dave Anderson
1999 Ken Venturi
2000 Jim McKay
2001 Kaye Kessler
2002 Nick Seitz
2003 Renton Laidlaw
2004 Bob Verdi
2005 Al Barkow
2006 Ron Green Sr.
2007 Jack Berry
2008 Marino Parascenzo
2009 Art Spander
2010 Dave Kindred
2011 Jerry Tarde
2012 Jaime Diaz

So congratulations, Jaime. You richly deserve it. The only thing that surpasses your talent as a writer…is what a flat-out great guy you are.
Enjoy your night at Augusta. You richly deserve it.

Posted on January 18th, 2012 under Reading List, The Honor Roll | Comments: none

Texas Plus Scotland Equals Kelly Blake Moran

CENTER-LINE HAZARDS ARE THE ORDER OF THE DAY AT LEDERACH

Can you tell golf course architect Kelly Blake Moran is a Texan? He may not wear a ten gallon hat, but boy is he proud of the Lone Star State. Call him Amarillo Slim in a windshirt.

“And I’ll tell you another thing!” he roars disapprovingly. “Those Oklahoma teams that won those national championships a few years ago? I’ll give you one guess where half their roster is from.”

He doesn’t wait for an answer. “Texas, that’s where! If I had my way, those players that crossed the border would lose their citizenship and never be allowed back!” Funny thing about it is most of Texas is laughing and saying, “He’s right, you know.”

Moran is so proud of his Texas heritage, he even wore a jacket, tie and cowboy boots to dinner at fabled Muirfield in Scotland, while on a trip to see the great courses of the U.K.

Happily, Moran’s sense of humor and reverence for great design strategies is spilling over into his work and the results are commanding the attention and respect of the golf world. Half an hour north of Philly, his rough and tumble Lederach Golf Club, (pronounced “Let her rock”), is the most affordable and most interesting daily fee course in the region, possibly even in the entire Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. Much of the course’s success in drawing players on a national, not regional basis is due to importing design concepts from St. Andrews, Royal Dornoch, Muirfield and many other great U.K. Courses.

“Not a day goes by when I don’t try to use something I learned at St. Andrews” he recalls fondly. “That is why I am going through the exercise of analyzing some of the green features at TOC on my website: http://kellyblakemoran.com/TOC%20Blog.html. There is so much to learn from that course that can be applied to my design approach and I am trying to get the most out of it through my experiences there.”

JF: How did you first get into golf?

KBM: The reason I got into golf was my parents belonged to a private club.

JF: Which one?

KBM: Odessa Country Club. That was back in the good old days when company execs got that as a perk. So I would go with my parents out on the course. I was eight when I started playing.

We had a special group of kids that played together, and we had a lot of success playing in high school, where we won state championship for Permian H.S. You know the movie Friday night lights? That’s really Permian! We were there at that time the when it was the most successful H.S. program in the country for a lot of years. We even had a lighted practice field.

JF: How good a player were you?

KBM: I was a 2 back then…not on the greatest course in the world, but we were good golfers. One year we won the championship and then senior year we came in fourth in the state.

Now I played football as well. So as a ninth grader, before I went to Permian, at the end of that season, my coach called me into the office and even though he wanted me to play football at Permian, I said I wanted to play golf. The coach asked me what I was shooting, and so I told him I was shooting 76-77. He said, “Son, that’s not good enough to play golf at Permian. You should play football,” but I knew he just wanted to send a warm body to Permian to play football, (or be a blocking dummy, however you wanna look at it). I knew he was B.S.-ing me because he wanted to look good to the Permian coach, so told him I wanted to play golf for Permian anyway.

JF: What position were you in football?

KBM: I was what they called a “split guard” or a pulling guard.

JF: But you’re thin as a rail? How were you a lineman?

KBM: I was the fastest guy in the school as a kid – I could play some cornerback too – but I got slower as I got older, so they had nowhere to put me. I still remember I weighed 130 lbs in 9th grade and I once had to go against a 200 lb. kid! The coaches rode me all week saying I’d get annihilated that game.

JF: What happened?

KBM: I kicked his ass. They ran the ball behind me all night, we beat ‘em 37-0, maybe 38-0. I didn’t even know the kid, but the coach had me hating him. He was just a big marshmallow. They said he was all tough? He wasn’t so tough!

JF: What made you decide to become a golf course architect and what did you do to follow that career path?

KBM: I started at UT architecture school. I made the freshman golf team there, but tired of competitive golf and never went back to play competitively. I went through six rounds of qualifying and I made the team, but I decided to move on. But during college, I really missed golf and wanted to get back – not to play, but to design. I realized someone had to be designing these courses, and I was already in architecture school, so I applied that interest in golf design to architecture and that’s where I got the idea to do it.

So I did some research and found out landscape architecture was a better degree to do that and UT didn’t have one, so I had to transfer to Texas A&M.

JF: And you didn’t get your butt kicked for doing that?

KBM: Oh, I did! I did! I’m almost certain they disallowed some of my credits because I was coming from Texas! It was such bull! I had to take summer school at Odessa College. They made me take English and History that summer and I’m sure it was punishment for not going to A&M in the first place.

JF: is that why your first sports loyalty is still the Longhorns?

KBM: Yeah, it is. (And Jay, I love your new Longhorns golf bag by the way…)

Actually my first loyalty was Texas Tech, that’s where all my family went. I had lots of family that live near Lubbock, and I saw a lot of games in Jones Stadium. I hated Texas back then, and I remember screaming at Earl Campbell. But my senior year I got invited to Austin by a friend, and it blew me away. Austin was the most incredible town I’d ever seen.

JAY'S NEW BAG HAS KELLY YELLING "HOOK 'EM!"

JF: So what happened after A&M?

KBM: I had heard of von Hagge in college and saw a golf course he did called Crown Colony in Lufkin, Texas, really nice course. So I contacted von Hagge to do an interview for a class project and Bob was kind enough to allow me to come into the office and interview him, mostly over lunch. (He was eating salad when I came in. I still have the cassette tapes form the interview, but I have nothing to play ‘em in.)

So as the school year went on I pursued him for a job and eventually they hired me as a draftsman and told me that there were no openings for designers. They strictly needed draftsmen – turning the sketches into formal routing plans for presentations. Well they got very busy so six months later I had my own project to work on.

JF: Where was that?

KBM: The Cliffs in a place called Possum Kingdom Lake. Then I became a partner and was there for 11 years, from 1984-1995. Then my wife and I decided to move to the northeast, near her family.

JF: What did he teach you about designing good golf holes?

KBM: Well that really came from Scotland. One of the other reasons I moved away to PA was also a desire on my part to not be a corporate entity, but a true designer, someone who interacts more with the construction and creation of what you design. In the corporate world there was separation there. I wanted to be out in the field more, creating what it was I wanted to design.

JF: When did you go to the U.K. to study the great courses and what courses in the U.K. did you visit?

KBM: I went in 2004 and again in 2007. The first time I saw the Old Course, Cruden Bay, Nairn, Royal Dornoch, and Brora. The second time I went, I went to the Old Course, Muirfield, and North Berwick. These trips gave me the confidence to be a little more bold and daring in certain features on and around the greens and to be bolder in the placement and the construction of the bunkers.

For example, the bunkers at Lederach are a little more rustic. They are steep faced and the faces are grass: not manicured, but a little more “rough.” There are different types of grasses too, and they are not meant to be perfect. I wanted them to feel like Scotland.

I also want the ground game. I delight in seeing guys play those shots. I also want players to have lots of options around the greens. I keep the fronts open and allow the entrances to create interest in those shots, lots of different shots around the greens.

THE CANTED FWY OF LEDERACH NO. 1

JF: What courses did you study here in America?

KBM: The ones that most impress me the most are National Golf Links of America, Yale, (Yale was a very bold property that had impressive greens), and then more recently, Yeamans Hall in South Carolina, and Country Club of Charleston.

JF: Did you play Mike Strantz’s Bulls Bay while you were down there?

KBM: No, but I did play Tobacco Road! I loved it through the greens. The greens were a mix, some bold, some a little more conventional as compared to everything before you got to the greens, but it was a joy to play.

JF: Who are some of your favorite architects and why?

KBM: I appreciate Macdonald because of what he did at National Golf Links. I appreciate Seth Raynor and his ability to manufacture those green sites and how he infused boldness around the greens with deep bunkering and great shaping in the putting surfaces. George Thomas wrote a great book – he has some real gold in “Golf architecture in America” regarding the Golden Age of Architecture and strategy in golf design, and great holes. I haven’t played a lot of his courses, only a few, but the book is very instructive.

JF: Other than your own designs, what are your favorite public courses to play in the U.S.?

KBM: I haven’t played too many when I’ve traveled, but in my area there are a lot, like Berkleigh C.C. in Kutztown, PA. Then for me, I’d say Reading Country Club.

JF: What public courses should my readers play to learn about great golf design and also have a great golf vacation?

KBM: You probably can’t get a better sampling than Bandon Dunes Resort. I don’t know how you to that other than Pinehurst. But you know what? Having grown up on not great architecture, I still had an appreciation for the game. People need to look for the courses in their area and find the special features there. That’s one way for them to improve their eye for architecture. It’s hard to teach that. I find it because it’s my job. Look for things that are unique and have character. Then go to St. Andrews – not just for the golf but for the town.

Your readers should not just try to cherry pick great courses, but also visit great places like New York City (Bethpage), and Chicago and its great public courses, and San Francisco. These places are where you get a flavor for the golf and the life of the region. For example, Sharp Park in San Francisco should be preserved not only for great architecture, but its history and environment. Travelling to play lots of great courses in great towns is more enriching than cherry picking the top 100 courses. Golf should be more about playing the game and meeting people and having enriching life experiences rather than racking up a number of great courses.

JF: Walk us through how you found the routing for Lederach.

KBM: I walked the land over and over. I spent four days in a row out there just walking.

It was a residential community, so I stressed to the owner that I needed to make the first run at the master plan. A land planner could try it, but he’d screw it up. They can’t lay out a workable golf course. I looked for the interesting features in the lower parts of property that I could capture, knowing that I had to have homes with good views of the golf holes. If there were no homes the course would be different. I had to find the areas best suited for the environment…there was no getting around it.

So I was walking the course, and there are lots of little creek areas that drain naturally well, so I incorporated them into the routing.

JF: What elements of courses from across the pond will we find at Lederach?

KBM: What you’ll find is wide openings into greens with broken terrain – terrain that moves, like swales and ridges, the blind bunker, and other bunkers that strategically make a lot of sense, but they aren’t constructed in an artificial way, but they fit into that position.

JF: There is a lot of center-line design as well.

KBM: Yes, there is, and that creates a lot of interest, character, and strategy.

JF: Tell us about “Large Marge,” your blind bunker on the third hole of Lederach.

KBM: I like that name! Good one, Jay! Yeah, Large Marge adds a lot of interest to the second shot on that par-5. It’s blind because you have to think. You have to make a bold play over or around it, or lay up. It’s blind because where it had to be positioned is where the hole goes over a ridge and into a swell. It’s shape required the face to be toward the green.

JF: Why were you brave and bold enough to try that?

KBM: It’s more that it makes the shot interesting. I wanted an interesting shot. Anyone can play a shot with no consequences. I wanted the player to think and then execute. I want people to play risk and reward golf. People remember that bunker after the round. You can also play the course 100 times and you’ll have a different shot on that hole with uncertainty when you get there, and that’s fun golf. That’s the beauty of the blindness, it raises doubt in your mind. So the bunker is in the best position for the slope and it has great strategy.

JF: What’s next for you?

KBM: Mexico. I’ve been doing reno work at a club in Central Mexico called Torreon. I’ve been working on the greens 7-10 days at a time.

It’s been a wild time. I almost got shot at during a soccer game we went to. They have a pro team in the town, and we went to a game and I guess there were some bad guys, some banditos coming through the area in vans, and they didn’t stop at a police road block set up at the game, so the cops opened fire. Well they were fully armed, and they came out of the van and returned fire with machine guns. We’re in the stadium when the machine gun fire breaks out, and though we were never in danger, the players ran off the field and we all ducked under our seats. We thought maybe they were trying to shoot their way in…we had no idea what the intention was.

That went on for five minutes, but eventually the gunfight ceased, they moved on, and we got ourselves together and walked out of the stadium. The minute the gunfire started the players left. It was scary. There were little kids frightened out of their minds. To have that happen was unfortunate.

JF: What is the strangest, zaniest thing you have ever had to deal with while trying to build a golf course?

KBM: Oh, that…

(Laughter)

JF: How about on a site?

KBM: Well again in Mexico at another course with a lot of water, they gathered all the crocodiles on the site in little canoes and roped them, and put them in the canoe one by one and transported them to a preserve a few miles away and – lo! and behold! – somehow all the crocs came back! So while I’m making site visits, I had to cross bridges and all they had installed were narrow pieces of metal to get over a 60 foot water way! So I’m on my hands and knees going across because I’m afraid I’m gonna fall and get eaten by crocs! I’m afraid of heights, and lemme tell you something – once you look down, you’re done!

JF: How can my readers tell the difference between a truly great golf course and a course that’s merely “pretty good?”

KBM: They need to pay careful attention to the green sites and the variety of pin placements and diversity of how to play approaches into the greens. That tells you a lot about whether you played a great course or just a decent course. Pay special attention to the green sites. So many courses are boiler plate, you don’t want that. You don’t want greens that are all the same. The greens and bunkers aren’t just dessert, they should be dinner as well, and evoke a response for you to play a good shot to make a good score. Eye candy isn’t enough.

JF: How much is too much for a public round of golf, and how do you know when you’ve over paid?

KBM: In my own view, normally I don’t feel comfortable paying more than $50-60. There is a lot of good golf out there for less money if you take the time to look for it. Berkleigh is a great example. I pay $30 for a really nice course with interesting greens. They even played an L.P.G.A. event there. I can also pay $75 for a country club for a day, but it better not be pedestrian with mundane greens and uninteresting bunkers. A fancy clubhouse with all those greeters and amenities? I don’t need it and it isn’t what I want.

JF: What is the first duty of a golf course architect?

KBM: To become as familiar with the land of your course as possible.

JF: You can take the pros to one of your public courses where they will play one hole for $100,000 of their own money. What hole do you make them play?

KBM: #18 at Lederach. Its short par-4, drivable, but it has water left, a green with pin positions that are really challenging, some may even say unfair, but challenging, and a center-line bunker. It has a safe route to the right. You can challenge the bunkers and gain a tremendous advantage, but if you are just slightly careless with your tee shot and it moves more left, you can end up in the pond. You have to be precise in order to go at the green. Or you can play conservatively, but have a more difficult approach into a green with significant slope and land forms in it.

JF: You just won the Masters. What do you serve for dinner?

KBM: Argentine Carne Asada BBQ. Not just Texas brisket for that occasion, but Argentinean beef.

Posted on January 17th, 2012 under Golf Course Architecture, Interviews, Public Courses - Mid-Atlantic | Comments: none

Jay’s Plays – NFL Picks Conference Championship Edition

Congrats to the Giants who found another gear last night against the Pack. You know, the regular season Giants play to the level of heir competition, but they hit another level altogether in the playoffs. Do you know they’ve never lost a conference championship game? (4-0)

We went 1-1 last week in teasers, 3-1 overall, bringing the season totals to 25-20-2 in teasers, 72-22-2 overall. Here’s this week’s pick:

Ravens +13.5 at PATRIOTS
PATRIOTS-Ravens UNDER 56.5

Sorry, Pats, but now you will face a defense. Game, set, match, Baltimore.

If you feel squeamish about either of those, (I don’t) take the Jints +8.5.

Posted on January 16th, 2012 under NFL Picks, Other Sports | Comments: none

Some of the Most Accurately Rated Courses in America

MIGHTY OAKMONT - A WONDER OF THE GOLF WORLD

On a Monday night in October 2006 Arizona Cardinals head coach Denny Green cemented his legacy in sports infamy with a tirade for the ages. His Cards had just blown a gargantuan lead to the Chicago Bears, and in his post-game press conference, he raved like a madman:

“The Bears are who we thought they were! They are who we thought they were!” he fumed in response to question after question. No Irish banshee wailed with more ferocity. Over and over again he raged.

“They are who we thought they were! You wanna crown ‘em, them crown ‘em! But they are…WHO WE THOUGHT THEY WERE!!”

Weeks later, Green was canned, and even the re-tread coaching carousel that brings back mediocre lugnuts like Norv Turner, Wade Phillips, and Cam Cameron time and again has shunned Green like a leper. But the tirade, however, has gone viral, spawning spoof after spoof. And it got me to thinking…

We always talk about what courses are overrated and underrated, but why have we never talked about the ones that are rated just where they should be? What courses are rated exactly right? What golf courses are…who we thought they were?! Let’s take a look. You wanna crown ‘em? Let’s crown ‘em!

Augusta National

It’s the first question everyone asks me: “Is Augusta National really all that great?” Yes, it is, absolutely. Wondrous golf course architecture, unmatched history worldwide, (excepting St. Andrews), and an apres golf that makes every day feel like Christmas, Augusta National richly deserves every golden laurel. It’s rated as one of the greatest courses in the World, and it lives up to its lofty reputation every day. Everyone loves Augusta. Everyone reveres Augusta. It’s the single most important golf course in America. It’s not under-rated. It’s not overrated. It’s exactly where it should be – the best, and we all know it.

Oakmont Country Club

Augusta National may be America’s most storied tournament venue, but Oakmont is my favorite. Wild, hurly-burly, canted greens, tilted fairways with side-hill lies, and a cloak and dagger claustrophobia due to rough in which you could lose Doctor Livingston, Private Ryan, Bigfoot, the Yeti, Amelia Earhart, Glenn Miller, the Roanoke colony and the crew of the Marie Celeste. It lives up to its reputation as America’s toughest tournament venue, but also as a century old masterpiece. Regarded as one of America’s most ancient golfing splendors, it’s as venerable as it is difficult. And nobody disputes that assertion.

“There’s no water at Oakmont and no real forced carries. It’s just a bastard of a course,” said quintessential Pittsburgh sports writer Marino Parascenzo. “[There's] no trees or ravines or waterfalls, but you stagger off the end and ask ‘What the hell just happened?’”

We all love Oakmonster, yet we all fear it. (Just like Led Zeppelin, but that’s an article for another day.) Everything you hear about Oakmont is absolutely true.

Bandon Dunes Resort

After decades at the top of the rankings lists of public courses, Pebble Beach was finally toppled from its lofty perch by the Bandon Dunes Resort. Now most magazines rate Tom Doak’s Pacific Dunes as the country’s best public course and they are probably right. Factor in the joyously fun Bandon Dunes course, the super-intelligent Old Macdonald, (basically National Golf Links West), and the cult favorite Bandon Trails, while Pebble Beach is left to wonder how Bandon raced past them like they were standing still. In a few short years, Bandon Dunes has taken the World by storm as the new, number one, must-play golf resort in America.

Caledonia Golf and Fish Club

11 AT CALEDONIA - (PHOTO BY CHUCK CORDOVA)

Ever since its opening in 1994 Caledonia has been ranked the number one public course in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, an area that now boasts over 100 public golf courses. Right out of the gate, it was heralded as the Gold Standard of the entire region, and it has held that position ever since without breaking a sweat. In fact, only two other courses are spoken of on the same holy whispers as Caledonia and one of those is the other Mike Strantz course in the area, True Blue, which is just across the road. (For those of you scoring at home, the other is RTJ, Sr.’s The Dunes Golf and Country Club.) Stately and refined in an area regarded as the reddest of golf’s red-light districts Caledonia is the snifter of fine cognac in a margarita town.

As an aside, there is a general rule for Myrtle Beach golf: never play a course that has an animal in its name, and that includes John Daly’s Wicked Stick.

Tobacco Road

Since we’re discussing Mike Strantz, we would be remiss to leave out what is arguably his most famous course. A few short years ago, Tobacco Road was voted “The Most Adventurous Course in America” and the pundits may be right. Even the savviest, most well travelled golfers are impressed with his creativity and courage in crafting a design that was so bold. Massive sandy dunes, bathtub greens, and a wild Pine Valley-meets-Ireland look and feel make most golfers say exactly the same thing:

“I’ve never seen anything like it.”

Sand Hills Golf Club

Remember those holy whispers I was just talking about? Well they become the Neptunian roil of a Gregorian chant when Sand Hills is brought up. Golf Magazine hailed Sand Hills as the greatest course built in the last 50 years and at the time that article was written, they were likely right. The Coore and Crenshaw design has become the finest trend-setter in golf, and now Ballyneal, Dismal River, The Prairie Club, and Awarii Dunes have opened as well, bringing even more pilgrims to the loneliest yet, most mind-expanding location in American golf – the sand belt which was formed tens of thousands of years ago when the middle of America was the bottom of the ocean floor.

It’s perfect terrain for golf: wild and unspoiled, remote and idyllic, stretching for hundreds of miles. The golf course itself is sublime, an inland St. Andrews. The course is regarded as the most important achievement in golf course architecture in decades, and golfers come from all over the world to recline on Ben’s Porch, and then go home feeling as though they have been to the Promised Land. The cultural importance of Sand Hills to golf cannot be understated. Since everyone loves and reveres Sand Hills, it is properly rated.

Cog Hill (Dubsdread)

Some courses are accurately rated because they are “truly great.” Others are accurately rated because they are “merely pretty good.” That’s Cog Hill: hitherto shalt thou come, but no further.

New York City’s great public course got a U.S. Open, (Bethpage Black), California’s great public course got a U.S. Open, (Torrey Pines), and Seattle’s great public course got a U.S. Open, (Chambers Bay). Now Chicago wants one, needs one, has to have one! Cog Hill can’t get a PGA Championship because Medinah and the PGA of America are now going steady like ’50s lovers. So they threw gobs of liquid cash into No. 4, hired Rees Jones, (“The Open Doctor”), to toughen it up, and approached the U.S.G.A. with a lot of Kumbayas about the Jemsek family – kind hearted philanthropists and Chicago city fathers to be sure – in the hopes that they could draw the U.S. Open…

…and then Erin Hills got the bid for 2017.

Dubsdread is just not that great a golf course. It’s not pretty at all. It’s not strategic at all. It’s not on sandy soil. It’s a long mundane slog that has only one thing going for it: It’s a lot harder than it was before. But if the 1990s and 2000s are showing golf anything, it’s that harder is not better. And Dubsdread’s design underlines all the design mistakes of the 1970s and ’80s, the Doldrums of Golf Design in American golf history: cookie-cutter greenside bunkering, bracketing bunkers in the fairway, boring penal architecture, lather, rinse repeat. For the last two years, the Tour players have hated Cog Hill. I choose that word with precision: hated. Phil Mickelson, normally the friendliest quote in the field, lam basted the course two years in a row and phlegmatic Tour nice guy Steve Stricker gave a once-in-a-lifetime negative assessment.

“A great golf course is a golf course that’s challenging for the good player but playable for the average player, and I feel like this is the exact opposite,” Mickelson said. “It’s playable. It’s fine for us…but the average guy just can’t play it.”

“It’s too bad. They need to get their money back,” added Stricker.

It’s one thing when Pat Perez or Robert Allenby cries like Nancy Kerrigan. It’s another entirely when Mickelson and Stricker complain. They know golf design.

Dubsdread is beloved in Chicago and rightfully so. (So are the Jemseks for that matter!) So the course is accurately rated for Chicago. But also, Dubsdread just can’t help but tread water well below truly great courses in the rankings lists…and there’s good reason for that. It’s accurately rated by the rest of the country as well.

Medinah No. 3

Speaking of Chicago, we have a similar scenario that developed at Medinah. At some point in the last few years, Golf Magazine, Golf Digest, and Golfweek have all come out and called Medinah the most overrated course in America (or really close to it). So forgive me for going all Chuck Klosterman here, but because everyone now recognizes Medinah as overrated, it is now, actually, accurately rated! (Even if it is only accurately rated by accident: this happens occasionally, the same thing is true of Tony Romo.)

Medinah gets to host Chicago’s major championships by default: it’s the only place in town large enough to hold 55,000 people, all the corporate tents, all the TV wires and equipment, and all the media, hooplah, and sundries. It’s not so tough any more, (Tiger ripped it apart twice, before he nuked his own legacy and made the label “Tiger won here” mean a lot less than it should). Other winners include Hale Irwin and Lou Graham, who are as exciting as dry-wall and spackling. The course has had more facelifts than Liz Taylor. It treads water in the same hinterlands of the rankings like Cog Hill, and if you think about it, this is perfectly logical: Medinah’s lukewarm historical significance is sensible.

Atunyote at Turning Stone Casino

BLARNEY STONE AND BOWZER - TWO LOUD MOUTHS LONG PAST THEIR SELL-BY DATE

What a crap-o-rama! More like Blarney Stone Casino. After debuting on top 100 lists and over-paying to buy their way onto the PGA Tour Fall Series, (i.e. the kid’s table), this overpriced, over-hyped, under-designed chump trap fell down the rankings like its parachute didn’t open and hit the ground with a thud that resounded all the way from Utica, New York to Ponte Vedra, Florida. When overweening ambition meets maniacal arrogance and greed fueled by gambling proceeds you get a simoniacal heresiarch of a golf course telling everyone stupid enough to listen that, “We are the Augusta of the North,” that they are better than “Kiawah Island, Pinehurst, Valhalla, Whistling Straits, Doral, and La Quinta. Nice Company,” and, “We’re angling to host a major and on that day Tiger Woods will sink a putt at Atunyote and I hope you are there to see it!”

I’m checking back with you now. How did that turn out?

Now they are remembered for telling everyone how great they are, for the Oneida Indian leader and facility over-seer Ray Halbritter trying to give himself a sponsor’s exemption to their second-rate tournament, and for getting themselves thrown off the schedule with two years to go in their contract when they tried to order the Tour to give them a better date in the schedule. After that, it was tough for anyone to take them seriously anymore. The stench of dysfunction by excess was overwhelming.

And there the course sits, a multimillion dollar boondoggle that charges $300 per round in a blue collar area of good hearted people who deserve better – a footnote in golf, and a noxious, noisy one at that. But really, they’re great! Just ask them! They may invite you to go see Sha Na Na play there on February 3rd. You might even get to meet Bowzer! That is if someone turns off the dork alarm long enough for people to hear the performance.

[The Author tips his hat to Chuck Klosterman and his "The Ten Most Accurately Rated Bands in History" article as the impetus for this piece.]

Posted on January 14th, 2012 under Golf Course Architecture, Private Courses, Public Golf - Midwest, Public Golf - Southeast | Comments: 1

It’s the New York Post vs. Trump in Ferry Point Imbroglio

While I finish writing up all the notes from my trip to the Pacific Northwest, the New York Post takes Mayor Bloomberg and Donald Trump to task over the boondoggle that is Ferry Point golf course. what was supposed to be a high quality, yet affordable public golf course has turned into a jack Nicklaus signature design (read: mess), that will essentially be a taxpayer-funded Trump playground priced four beyond the means of most NYC public golfers.

From the article:

““We are paying [$184 million for] the project. Trump is getting a gift from a fellow billionaire, the mayor,” said Geoffrey Croft, of watchdog group NYC Park Advocates. “It’s unheard of that you don’t pay any money for four years.”

By year five, Trump will have to pay only 7 percent of the gross receipts, or a minimum of $300,000. And by year 16, he pays just 10 percent, or $420,000, to the city.

The city’s Franchise and Concession Review Committee is set to approve the deal today.

It will cost $125 to play a round of golf on a weekend day at the Ferry Point course, compared with $36 at other city courses.”

As usual, when it comes to the terrible mess that is public golf in NYC, the Parks Department is the problem.

Posted on January 11th, 2012 under Chumps, Lunkheads, Dingbats, Public Courses - Mid-Atlantic | Comments: none

Jay’s Plays! NFL Divisional Playoffs

Boy I love being right all the time. The Steelers hit the chamber with the bullet in it in Denver and the Giants clipped the Falcons’ feathers. Our season totals are now 24-19-2 in teasers and 69-21-2 over all.

We’ll get back to golf soon, but for now, here are this week’s picks:

HOTTER THAN AN IRON SKILLET

No we don’t mean the terrible restaurant chain, we mean games you can’t lose!

PACKERS -2 vs. Giants
RAVENS -1.5 vs, Texans

The run ends for both of these mediocre division champs. The Ravens may even find themselves in Indianapolis with a chance to do what the Steelers could not do last year…beat the Packers.

***Tat is the only pick I recommend playing this week. what follows is an UNRECOMMENDED pick for degenerates***

UNDER ARMOUR!

PATRIOTS-Broncos UNDER 56.5
RAVENS-Texans UNDER 44

Posted on January 9th, 2012 under NFL Picks, Other Sports | Comments: 1

Chambers Bay Rocks, Gold Mountain (Olympic) Terrific Value

CHAMBERS'S BASEMENT

So I’m 2/3 done with my NW trip to open the year. Great fun so far. I’ll more post pics when I get time, but for now I’ll get the ball rolling.

Chambers Bay was really wonderful. I really like Whistling Straits, I love Arcadia Bluffs, I really love Pac Dunes, but Chambers may be my fave of that crop. Fave holes included 1, 4, 7, 10, 11, 12, 17, and 18. Yes, I like the new bunker on 18. It’s murder. I went in and played a shot with a 9-iron. I got it out, but it hit the sidewall and only advanced 40-50 yards. I got that down in two though. There is no question in my mind it’s a stroke penalty if you get in it, but most shouldn’t get in it, because there is plenty of room around it.

They have dubbed it “Chambers Basement.” I like the name. Bob Jones cracked me up, because when I got out he asked, “how did you like your trip to China?” ;D

I like it, and I like it more that they are putting one more like it (only less severe) at 14 so it becomes a recurring theme to silence the criticism that “it doesn’t fit with the rest of the course.”

Gold Mountain was a great time. I played with John Harbottle and he really loves Macdonald/Raynor/Banks architecture. What a great value – $24 today. That’s amazing. You can play all day on a weekend now for $30. The highest rate in high season is $60.

It’s only his 3rd course chronologically, so he was sort of cutting his teeth back then, yet there are some cool things like a Redanish look on 12 and lions mouth with Eden features (his words) on 16. I also like 17. I think the best stretched are the The tee shots seemed a little repetitive, but one can’t complain about the value! It’s a great price for courses that have hosted USGA Championships.

NUMBER 9...NUMBER 9...NUMBER 9...

Posted on January 6th, 2012 under Public Courses - West, Robert Trent Jones, Jr. | Comments: none

Memo From the Sports Desk: Enterprise 35 Avis 0!

So I’m working on my Chambers Bay write-up, but I have to heap loads of praise on those that help me get the job done…and that means Daniela (pronounced Dan-ee-YELL-uh), Lanae (pronounced Luh-NAY) and the good folks at the Seattle-Tacoma airport Enterprise rental agency.

We love professionalism and problem solving here at AWITP, and they were cheerful, thorough, smart, and fast. That’s how to run a rental agency…not like the predatory leeches at Avis Rental in New Hartford, New York, which is run by a violent, dick-headed grungepunk who couldn’t write his name in the snow, James McFetridge.

Enterprise gave me a great car at a solid rate. They helped me get unlimited miles when there was a screw up on the on-line application, and they cheerfully acknowledged when the car was only 3/4 full instead of dicking me over like Avis and McFetridge, who not only utterly failed in their obligations to me, but overcharged be $40, then yelled like a spoiled child.

So you can go to a place devoted to fair customer service like that run by Daniela – a blithe, bubbly blond, who’ll graciously help you with any issue that comes up, or you can go to a surly chump who’ll get in your face and throw customer service to the curb for a fast buck in an unethical and unsavory manner. You choose, but hey, it’s only your money.

Enterprise 35 Avis ZERO. “We Try Harder” all right…Try Harder at being blockheaded, disingenuous thieves.

Rant over, as you were.

Posted on January 5th, 2012 under Chumps, Lunkheads, Dingbats, The Honor Roll | Comments: none

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