The Seminar – Part One – Heritage Landscapes

 

 

 

Highlands Links 3rd hole

 

Overview for Coming Days

 

I’ll write for a few days about the latest seminar that I was part of. I’m going to take on many people’s comments and contextualize them into an article on something that I’m interested in or working on.

 

Heritage Landscapes

 

I was intrigued by the notion of declaring a golf course a heritage landscape. A Heritage Landscape can be defined by three different categories. The first being historical value. An example would be Toronto Golf where we clearly can point to as a core influence to future designers another would be Fletchers Field on Mt. Royal where golf was first played.

 

The second is on the merit of its design, which would mean the work is considered an outstanding example or a master work by the artist. This is where I look at the Banff, Jasper and the rest of the big five as the best of Thompson’s art.

 

Finally there is the context or cultural aspect of the course. This is where the social importance is considered like The Old Course at St. Andrew’s where its an integral part of the town or even Highlands Links which is so deeply linked to the entire community for many good and bad reasons.

 

What intrigued me was Highlands Links fits all of these. Historically, artistically and even socially and should be considered a Heritage Landscape. In fact that is the plan, but was to be after a restoration, because it was thought that this would limit future work and they wanted the entire restoration done.

 

In listening to Cecelia Paine talk about Mackenzie’s King’s Estate, I now realize we probably should declare this course now and use the designation to seek funding to preserve, restore and make small improvements (like drainage) to ensure its future viability too. Modern use is considered in preservation and therefore improvements like drainage or new tees to deal with length are all reasonable in the context of a Heritage Designation.

 

If there ever was a better example of Heritage Landscape that Highlands Links, I’m not sure what it could be particularly since this one resides in the public trust.

 

May 17th, 2010

 

 

 

Winged Foot West

 

 

The 10th at Winged Foot

 

I had a free day Friday and spent most of it at Winged Foot which appealed a lot more than seeing the Yankees.

 

I concentrated most of my time on the West, but did manage to get around the East Course as well. The West Course rightfully deserves all the praise that it receives, and I’ll concentrate on that in a minute, but the East Course is not that much of a drop of in quality from the West. The recent green recapturing program by the new architect has done wonders to bring some additional character.

 

The West Course is awesome and it’s because of three reasons. The course is built over some of the nastiest bedrock filled terrain that shows up all over the surface throughout the property. Considering this fact, the routing is even more impressive incredibly since Tillinghast’s holes sit wonderfully on the land from start to finish. The number of holes where a fabulous landform plays a key role in a landing or approach is impressive. I don’t think this routing has been given the credit that it so richly deserves.

 

 

The 9th green

 

The next reason is scale. I have always thought Tillinghast’s understood scale better than just about any other architect. The scale of his work at Winged Foot fits and fills the property beautifully. The roll of the land is quite significant throughout and the scale of everything around the property is large. It’s only through his bold features that he offers up a statement strong enough to match this site. Everything feels right and much of that has to do with scale.

 

The last reason is the greens. The greens at Winged Foot are an example of how really great contours and bold green sites can elevate a design. The contours are so big that you often stare open-mouthed at the undulation. The course can be set up friendly, but given a little extra speed and some tougher pins and all bets are off. The fact that he raised them so high above the native grade has placed an incredible premium on accuracy. I can’t think of a tougher test where you can’t lose a ball.

 

 

 

The 7th green, look at the flagstick compared to the bunker, it's that deep!

 

Winged Foot West is an outstanding golf course. The routing is worthy of study, the swings in the fairway around landforms and bunkering are brilliant, the scale of everything is a lesson in making big statements when presented with large areas or undulation, and those green sites teach you how far you can potentially push a design.

It teaches me that if you want to hit a home run, you must swing hard enough to carry the fence.

 

 

Ian Andrew

 

Tuesday 11th, 2010

 

 

 

 

The Economy and Golf Design

 

Last week I interviewed with a Raynor course in the US, a Thompson course in Canada and sent a proposal to a club in the UK. It was a very interesting week and further proof that to survive, architects are heading further and further from home to find work.

 

We all know this has been a tough time to be a golf course architect. Some of us are still finding enough work to keep busy, while other firms are short of work which has lead to a few architects leaving the industry. I always love to point to certain moments where I know things are “now� different. In a recent article in Golf World on the Future of Golf Design I was quoted as saying “I knew it was different when one year Doak’s office recommended me for work and the next year we were chasing the same projects.�

 

Last week was another indication that the times had changed and the Ontario market was going to get tougher for me going forward. A prominent Toronto based architect sent one of my clients an email talking about his interest and ability to do renovation work. It was part of a mass emailing campaign. This was the same architect who said a few years back that he had no interest in renovation work, but we all know the new reality in golf design brings a change in how we conduct business.

 

On May 16^th at the GTI Institute in Guelph there will be a series of lectures related to golf development and design. On one of the panels we have three of the four architects who dominated the industry over the last 20 years. I’m interested to here what their take on “their� future is. This period of stagnation take some time to pass and each of them may have to face their best years could be behind them. I’m very curious to here their thoughts.

 

The reason I bring this up is we are facing a tough run that we can’t do much about. It has become difficult to finance a project, the approval process is very difficult in key locations where projects make more sense, access to water will become our biggest issue in the future, most cities are overbuilt and the price point is under pressure, other cities real estate is far too expensive to build a course that will make money. This is a very tough environment to build.

 

This is why I continue to look for new work in areas where it makes sense. It’s the reason why I go to other cities and other countries to find work that will carry me through particularly if our economy goes flat.

 

Ian Andrew

 

May 10^th, 2010

 

 

The Week in Review

 

 

Nefyn - awesome potential (photo from British tourism)

 

Highlight of the Week

 

We order two Guinness after our round at Southerdown. The bartender said “I’ll put it on the tab.� We indicated that we were not with the group of German players, who everyone there knew were slow, and would not let us play through when we caught up to them in no time. He grinned and said “No, I really think this one should go on the tab!� We said thanks, smiled, left five pounds, and sat down to a delightful Guinness…. courtesy of the Germans.

 

The Best Course on the Trip – Royal Porthcawl

 

We both agreed Royal Porthcawl was better than Royal Birkdale. In fact it’s better than Troon, Turnberry and a whole host of other courses on the top 100 list. It’s not perfect. It loses a little interest when you leave the links land on #6 and #8 and #12, but a stellar collection of threes and fours can stand tall against just about any other great course.

 

One for the Sheep – The Montgomerie Course at Celtic Manor

 

The routing on the front nine is one of the worst I have seen. It tackles a very severe piece of property by plunging straight down and then climbing straight up the hills. The 100 foot walk down to the next tee on the 4^th is ridiculous knowing you have to go straight back up in the next few holes. Common sense would have avoided the extremes of the site and stayed more to the upper plateau where some better golf could have been played. I did like the bunkers, but the layout was better suited to sheep.

 

Ryder Cup 2010 Course

 

Celtic Manor 2010 was pretty disappointing because I’ve seen that course 100 times before. It’s a typical modern golf course. It will be played largely by percentages since most risk does not make sense. Like everything to do with the tour, the course catered to tour speeds with simple greens where pins can be moved to the edges but will reward well struck shots. The Ryder Cup will be exciting, the course was not.

 

The Good the Bad and The Ugly

 

Pennard has it all. The good is the collection of awesome holes like the 7^th, 8^th, 11^th, 14^th and 16^th. The bad is the number of blind and dangerous shots throughout the round. The ugly is the stupid 17^th that begins with a blind drive to a landing area where all shots run into the gorse on the right, followed by a second shot that’s not blind so this time you can watch the shot hit the fairway and run into the gorse again. Thank goodness the last shot is straight up the hill so the ball won’t bound into the gorse, unless you miss right, left or long since the green is surrounded by gorse.

 

RT’s Golf

 

One of the highlights for me was Aberdovey, where RT played the best round I have seen him play in 5 years – largely because he put away the driver. I was impressed with the quality of his 3 iron all day and it shows that accuracy is far more important than length. If I were him I would bury the driver.

 

Driving

 

It took a while to become comfortable on the "other" side of the road, but it came. The narrow roads are an issue and Wales was more like Ireland between Swansea and Conway. But the views were constantly stunning and I would recommend this drive to anyone!

 

The Greatest Opportunity I Know

 

Nefyn had the least interesting architecture on the trip and it also happens to have one of the most awe inspiring sites I have ever seen. Think the 8^th and 9^th at Pebble Beach and you have some of the openers. Think the 8^th and 9^th at Turnberry and you have a couple of the holes on the point. All this course needs is some really clever architecture and people would pay far more attention. I would love to have a go at this course!