Baltusrol is ready for the World’s Best at the 2005 PGA Championship.
Golf Chats is a website to encourage discussions on various subjects relating to the game of golf. I am Mel Sole, Director of Instruction of the Mel Sole Golf School and SAPGA Master Professional. I invite you to enter into a discussion on this or any article on the golfchats.com website. The input is for the entire subscriber base to learn something new each time! Please post your comments below. Keep it clean and tasteful. We are here to learn from one another!
Baltustrol is one of the iconic Championship Golf Courses in the USA.
It has hosted 7 US Opens, 4 US Amateurs, 2 US Women’s Opens, and 2 US Women’s Amateurs. Quite a resume. This year, the PGA and longtime greenkeeper Mark Kuhns set the course up for a grandstand finish. With the rough over 4″ high and the greens running at 14 on the stimpmeter, the winner here will have to have all the shots! Thanks go to Ron Whitten, writing for GolfWorld on all the details!
(Photo by Fred Vuich/Sports Illustrated via Getty Images)
It’s a different Baltusrol for this year’s PGA Championship, with different dates and a different finish. Yet the Lower Course at Baltusrol Golf Club in Springfield, N.J., is ready to deliver the most exciting and entertaining competition, year in and year out, of any of the four majors.
Let’s start with the different dates. The PGA has been bumped from its traditional hot-and-humid mid-August slot by the Olympic golf competition. So this year it will be contested July 28-31, just 11 days after the Open Championship wrapped up in thrilling fashion at Troon. That could bode well for the winner of the claret jug, Henrik Stenson, if one believes in momentum. Or it could spell trouble, if jetlag and fatigue are factored in.
The weather is always a factor in summer!
How the date change impacts the tournament from a weather standpoint is similarly uncertain. The earlier dates don’t guarantee there won’t be dog-day afternoons at Baltusrol; as the current forecast would suggest. “During our PGA Championship here in August 2005,” says Mark Kuhns, the club’s veteran course superintendent, “the temperature hit 100 degrees every day. July can’t be any worse. It’s a crapshoot. There are some Julys where the temperature never exceeds 80. But some years, we’ve seen it hit 100.”
It can also be stormy in New Jersey in July, but indeed no worse than it was at Baltusrol’s last PGA in 2005, when an early Sunday evening lightning storm put a delay on the tournament conclusion until Monday morning. 12 players had to return to finish their final rounds.
Tiger Woods leaves early.
One of the lucky ones to finish before the storm was Tiger Woods, he posts a two-under 278 late Sunday afternoon to trail leader Phil Mickelson, then on the 13th hole, by two shots. Unbeknownst to tournament officials, Woods flew home to Orlando that evening rather than stay over for a possible playoff. His reasoning was that there were five players between him and a win and it was unlikely all five would collapse with less than half a dozen holes remaining. In retrospect, that stands as perhaps Woods’ first acknowledgement that his intimidation factor was starting to wane. It conjures up the amazing possibility that Mickelson, or one of the other four, could have been declared a playoff winner by default, merely over the price of a hotel room.
Are Hybrid Golf Courses a Fad or Here to Stay for Good?
Golf Chats is a website to encourage discussions on various subjects relating to the game of golf. I am Mel Sole, Director of Instruction of the Mel Sole Golf School and SAPGA Master Professional. I invite you to enter into a discussion on this or any article on the golfchats.com website. The input is for the entire subscriber base to learn something new each time! Please post your comments below. Keep it clean and tasteful. We are here to learn from one another!
Hybrid courses are not Par 3 courses, but they are not regular length par 72 courses either.
As you may have guessed, hybrid courses combine plenty of par 3’s intertwined with a few fairly short par 4’s. This makes for a fun, fast round. This may just be what golf is looking for. Something to get people started, and as their golf improves, they would move on to regular-length courses and test their skills there. I see this helping the junior’s game in particular. Kids who are starting out and feel intimidated because of the length of regular courses would be a perfect fit.
Thanks to Ron Whitten of Golf Digest for this interesting compilation of Hybrid Courses.
Hybrid golf clubs make the game easier and more enjoyable. So do hybrid golf courses – that’s what golf architect Bill Coore calls them – because they’re designed to be fast and fun. Hybrids come in all shapes and sizes and can serve as a pre-game warm-up or a post-round wager or simply as a place to play an easy round in a little over an hour. Most hybrid courses are amenities at larger golf facilities, but many new ones are succeeding as stand-alone operations. Will hybrid golf courses ever gain the popularity of hybrid golf clubs? This could happen partly because proponents of the concept include Davis Love III, Tom Watson, Tom Lehman, and Tiger Woods. Here’s a sampling of the wide variety of hybrids on the market.
The Playgrounds at Bluejack National G.C., Montgomery, Texas
Let’s start with the hybrid most in the news. On March 2, Tiger Woods was in attendence at the opening of his 10-hole pitch & putt, dubbed The Playgrounds, at his Augusta National-inspired Bluejack National G.C. Tiger, whos design is a scale-down version of the main course, was upstaged at the event by 11-year-old Taylor Crozier, who made a hole-in-one on the first hole with his first swing. What a debut. Nothing could better emphasize a hybrid’s functions, which Woods described as “a relaxed setting for beginners and families as well as where good players can sharpen their skills.”
Oceans G.C., Daytona Beach Shores, Fla.
Here’s a granddaddy of hybrids. Oceans began in 1983 as a 12-hole par-3 layout encircling two high-rise condos. When one hole was shut down to create a new condo driveway, they had to add two new holes, so it’s now a 13-hole par 3. Oceans was the design of Bill Amick, a longtime advocate of the short-and-fun layouts he calls “Amicable Courses.” At 83, Amick has had four aces at Oceans, three of them using a modified-distance Cayman ball.
Bandon Preserve, Bandon, Ore.
Same concept – 13 one-shot holes – but in a far more rural presentation, this four-year-old dazzler was the vision of owner Mike Keiser as an afternoon breather for players too tired to play a full-blown second 18 at the magnificent Bandon Dunes Resort. The design was by Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw, who also did the resort’s Bandon Trails course. (Coore is currently converting a third nine at Farmington Country Club in Virginia into a 10-hole hybrid course.)
The Golf Digest Top 100 Courses you can play every day!
Golf Chats is a website to encourage discussions on various subjects relating to the game of golf. I am Mel Sole, Director of Instruction of the Mel Sole Golf School and SAPGA Master Professional. I invite you to enter into a discussion on this or any article on the golfchats.com website. The input is for the entire subscriber base to learn something new each time! Please post your comments below. Keep it clean and tasteful. We are here to learn from one another!
Here is a list of Golf Digest Top 100 Courses you can play every day! I am sorry to report that I have only played 3 of the Top 10 in this category. Sorry, because I live in the US and have access to all of these wonderful courses. 2016 is the year I will plan a buddy’s trip and cross off at least 3, hopefully, more.
Augusta National, Pine Valley and Cypress Point are courses the average Joe has no chance of ever playing. However, the following courses you can play will take your money (sometimes a lot of money), and off you go.
Thanks to Ron Whitten of Golf Digest for this 3rd superb list! Just to clarify, the 1st list was the Top 100 Golf Courses in America. The 2nd list was the Top 100 Golf Courses in the World. Both of these can be seen in my previous 2 posts!
1. (1) PEBBLE BEACH GOLF LINKS.
(Parentheses indicate previous ranking)Pebble Beach / 800-654-9300 / pebblebeach.com /Jack Neville & Douglas Grant (1919) 6,828 yards, Par 72 / Points: 67.6226
Pebble Beach has been the No. 1 course ever since we introduced the 100 Greatest Public in 2003. It’s not just the greatest meeting of land and sea in American golf, but the most extensive one, too, with nine holes perched immediately above the crashing Pacific surf — the fourth through the 10th plus the 17th and 18th. Pebble’s sixth through eighth are golf’s real Amen Corner, with a few Hail Marys thrown in over a ocean cove on eight from atop a 75-foot-high bluff. Pebble will host another U.S. Amateur in 2018, and its sixth U.S. Open in 2019.
2. (3) PACIFIC DUNES
Bandon, Ore. / 888-345-6008 / bandondunesgolf.com Tom Doak (2001) 6,633 yards, Par 71 | Points: 65.1748The second course built at Bandon Dunes Resort. To best utilize ocean frontage, Tom Doak came up with a unorthodox routing that includes four par 3s on the back nine. Holes seem to emerge from the landscape rather than being superimposed onto it. The rolling greens and rumpled fairways are framed by rugged sand dunes and marvelously grotesque bunkers. The secret is Doak moved a lot of earth to make it look like he moved very little.
100 Greatest Public History: Ranked since 2003. Highest ranking: No. 2, 2007-12 & present
3. (4) THE OCEAN COURSE
Kiawah Island, S.C. / 888-854-2924 / kiawahgolf.com Pete Dye & Alice Dye (1991) 7,356 yards, Par 72 | Points: 64.9282The first course designed for a specific event — the 1991 Ryder Cup — this manufactured linksland-meets-lagoons layout might well be Pete Dye’s most diabolical creation. Every hole is edged by sawgrass, every green has tricky slopes, every bunker merges into bordering sand dunes. Strung along nearly three miles of ocean coast, Dye took his wife’s advice and perched fairways and greens so golfers can actually view the Atlantic surf. That also exposes shots and putts to ever-present and sometimes fierce coastal winds.
100 Greatest Public History: Ranked since 2003. Highest ranking: Present
4. (2) WHISTLING STRAITS (STRAITS)
Haven, Wis. / 800-344-2838 / whistlingstraits.com Pete Dye (1998) 7,790, Par 72 | Points: 64.7378Pete Dye transformed a dead flat abandoned army air base along a two-mile stretch of Lake Michigan into an imitation Ballybunion at Whistling Straits, peppering his rugged fairways and windswept greens with (at last count) 967 bunkers. There are no rakes at Whistling Straits, in keeping with the notion that this is a transplanted Irish links. It has too much rub-of-the-green for the comfort levels of many tour pros, who will tackle the Straits again in the 2015 PGA Championship and the 2020 Ryder Cup.
100 Greatest Public History: Ranked since 2003. Highest ranking: No. 2, 2013-14
5. (7) PINEHURST RESORT (No. 2)
Pinehurst, N.C. / 800-487-4653 / pinehurst.com John Dunn Tucker (9 1909) / Donald Ross & Walter Travis (A.9 1907) 7,495 yards, Par 72 | Points: 64.2727In 2010, Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw led a team that descended on Pinehurst No. 2 and killed out all the Bermudagrass rough that had been foolishly planted in the 1970s. Between fairways and tree lines, they established vast bands of native hardpan sand dotted with clumps of wiregrass and scattered pine needles. They reduced the irrigation to mere single rows in fairways to prevent grass from ever returning to the new sandy wastelands. Playing firm and fast, it was a wildly successful fortnight when the 2014 Men’s and Women’s U.S. Opens were played on consecutive weeks at No. 2. Because of its water reduction, the course was recently awarded a Green Star environmental award by Golf Digest.
100 Greatest Public History: Ranked since 2003. Highest ranking: No. 2, 2003-06
It is here – The 2016 list of The World’s Top 100 Golf Courses.
Golf Chats is a website to encourage discussions on various subjects relating to the game of golf. I am Mel Sole, Director of Instruction of the Mel Sole Golf School and SAPGA Master Professional. I invite you to enter into a discussion on this or any article on the golfchats.com website. The input is for the entire subscriber base to learn something new each time! Please post your comments below. Keep it clean and tasteful. We are here to learn from one another!
My last post gave you Golf Digests Top 100 Golf Courses in America.
Now we present Golf Digest’s list of “The World’s Top 100 Golf Courses.” Again I have to report that I have played 6 of the Top 10, but Merion is on my list for the summer of 2016. I cannot wait! My favorite course in the world, Ballybunion, does not make it into the Top 100? That is a travesty of justice! Royal County Down is my second favorite, so I’m pleased with that.
If any of my readers would like to add some of these prestigious courses to their “played” list, see my “International Golf Vacations” page on my website and sign up for a trip with me!
Ron Whitten and the Golf Digest staff must have put hundreds of hours into compiling this list. Thanks to you all!
The dominant theme of our new ranking of the World’s 100 Greatest Golf Courses is proximity to the sea. We count 46 of the Top 100 as being oceanside venues, including our new No. 1, Royal County Down in Northern Ireland and the two hottest new layouts on the globe, No. 19 Cabot Cliffs in Nova Scotia and No. 24 Cape Wickham in Australia. That count doesn’t include No. 51 Whistling Straits or No. 68 Gozzer Ranch, both in the United States, or No. 75 Lake Course at Spring City in China. They’re great courses, too, but adjacent to inland bodies of water, not oceans. The trend is clear: seaside venues bring out the best in golf architecture.
It is here – The 2016 list of The World’s Top 100 Golf Courses.
1 (4) Royal County Down G.C. Newcastle, County Down, Northern Ireland / 7,186 yards, Par 71
On a clear spring day, with Dundrum Bay to the east, the Mountains of Mourne to the south and gorse-covered dunes in golden bloom, there is no lovelier place in golf than our new No. 1. Its design is attributed to Old Tom Morris but was refined by half a dozen architects in the past 120 years, most recently by Donald Steel. Though the greens are surprisingly flat, as if to compensate for the rugged terrain and numerous blind shots, bunkers are a definite highlight, most with arched eyebrows of dense marram grasses and impenetrable clumps of heather.
2 (3) Augusta National (Ga.) G.C. Augusta, Ga., U.S.A. / 7,435 yards, Par 72
No club has tinkered with its golf course as often or as effectively over the decades as has Augusta National, mainly to keep it competitive for the annual Masters Tournament, an event it has conducted since 1934, with time off during WWII. All that tinkering has resulted in an amalgamation of design ideas, with a routing by Alister MacKenzie and Bob Jones, some Perry Maxwell greens, some Trent Jones water hazards, some Jack Nicklaus mounds and, in the last decade, extensive lengthening and rebunkering by Tom Fazio.
Getty Images
3 (1) Pine Valley (N.J.) G.C. Pine Valley, N.J., U.S.A. / 7,057 yards, Par 70
A genuine original, its unique character was forged from the sandy pine barrens of southwest Jersey. Founder George Crump had help from architects H.S. Colt, A.W. Tillinghast, George C. Thomas Jr. and Walter Travis. Hugh Wilson of Merion fame finished the job. Pine Valley blends all three schools of golf design – penal, heroic and strategic – throughout the course, often times on a single hole.
Photo by Dom Furore
4 (2) Cypress Point Club Pebble Beach, Calif., U.S.A. / 6,524 yards, Par 72
Alister MacKenzie’s masterpiece, woven through cypress, sand dunes and jagged coastline. In the 2000s, member Sandy Tatum, a former USGA president who christened Cypress Point as the Sistine Chapel of golf, convinced the club not to combat technology by adding new back tees, but instead make a statement by celebrating its original architecture. So Cypress remains timeless, if short, its charm helped in part by re-establishment of MacKenzie’s fancy bunkering.
5 (6) Royal Dornoch G.C. (Championship) Dornoch, Sutherland, Scotland / 6,704 yards, Par 70
Herbert Warren Wind called it the most natural course in the world. Tom Watson called it the most fun he’d had playing golf. Donald Ross called it his home, having been born in the village and learned the game on the links. Tucked in an arc of dunes along the North Sea shoreline, Dornoch’s greens, some by Old Tom Morris, others by John Sutherland or tour pro George Duncan, sit mostly on plateaus and don’t really favor bounce-and-run golf. That’s the challenge. Hitting those greens in a Dornoch wind.
J.D. Cuban
6 (9) Royal Melbourne G.C. (West) Melbourne, Victoria, Australia / 6,643 yards, Par 72
Alister MacKenzie’s 1926 routing fits snuggly into the contours of the rolling sandbelt land. His greens are miniature versions of the surrounding topography. His crisp bunkering, with vertical edges a foot or more tall, chew into fairways and putting surfaces. Most holes dogleg, so distance means nothing and angle into the pin is everything. For championships, holes 8 & 9 and 13 – 16 are skipped in favor of six from the East Course, which is ranked No. 55. That “composite course” was once ranked by several publications.
Generally considered to be the earliest links in America, heavily remodeled twice by C.B. Macdonald, then replaced (except for three holes) by William S. Flynn in the early 1930s. It’s so sublime that its architecture hasn’t really been fiddled with in nearly 50 years, although the team of Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw have restored interesting features to prepare Shinnecock for the 2018 U.S. Open.
8 (7) The Old Course at St. Andrews Links St. Andrews, Fife, Scotland / 7,279 yards, Par 72
The Old Course at St. Andrews is ground zero for all golf architecture. Every course designed since has either been in response to one or more of its features, or in reaction against it. Architects either favor the Old Course’s blind shots or detest them, either embrace St. Andrews’s enormous greens or consider them a waste of turf. Latest polarizing topic: Martin Hawtree’s design changes in advance of the 2015 British Open. Many considered it blasphemy beforehand. After Zach Johnson’s dramatic overtime victory, few mentioned the alterations.
9 (8) Muirfield Gullane, East Lothian, Scotland / 7,209 yards, Par 71
Muirfield is universally admired as a low-key, straightforward links with fairways seemingly containing a million traffic bumps. Except for a blind tee shot on the 11th, every shot is visible and well-defined. Greens are the correct size to fit the expected iron of approach. The routing changes direction on every hole to pose different wind conditions. The front runs clockwise, the back counterclockwise, but history mistakenly credits Old Tom Morris with Muirfield’s returning nines. That was the result of H.S. Colt’s 1925 redesign.
What a treat it was to see Merion East, long considered the best course on the tightest acreage in America, hosting the 2013 U.S. Open. Today’s generation of big hitters couldn’t conquer the little old course. They couldn’t stay on its canted fairways edged by creeks, hodge-podge rough and OB stakes and they couldn’t consistently hit its canted greens edged by bunkers that stare back. Let’s hope it doesn’t take another 32 years for the U.S. Open to return to Merion.
It is here – The latest list of America’s Top 100 Golf Courses!
Golf Chats is a website to encourage discussions on various subjects relating to the game of golf. I am Mel Sole, Director of Instruction of the Mel Sole Golf School and SAPGA Master Professional. I invite you to enter into a discussion on this or any article on the golfchats.com website. The input is for the entire subscriber base to learn something new each time! Please post your comments below. Keep it clean and tasteful. We are here to learn from one another!
Following up on my recent post with Charlie Rose and Ron Whitten, Architectural Editor of Golf Digest magazine, here is the latest 2016 list of Golf Digest’s “America’s Top 100 golf courses!” I have had the good fortune to play 6 of the top 10, and my goal for 2016 is to add at least one more to that list. So anyone who is a member who would like to play with me, I will wait with anticipation for your call!
It is here – The latest list of America’s Top 100 Golf Courses!
1.(2) AUGUSTA NATIONAL G.C.(Parentheses indicate the previous ranking)
Augusta, Ga. / Alister Mackenzie & Bobby Jones (1933) 7,435 yards, Par 72 / Points: 72.1589
No club has tinkered with its golf course as often or as effectively over the decades as has Augusta National Golf Club, mainly to keep it competitive for the annual Master’s Tournament, an event it has conducted since 1934, with time off during WWII. All that tinkering has resulted in an amalgamation of design ideas, with a routing by Alister Mackenzie and Bobby Jones, some Perry Maxwell greens, some Trent Jones water hazards, some Jack Nicklaus mounds and swales and, most recently, extensive bunkering and tree planting by Tom Fazio.
Pine Valley, N.J. / George Crump & H.S. Colt (1918) 7,057 yards, Par 70 / Points: 71.9818
A genuine original, its unique character forged from the sandy pine barrens of southwest Jersey. Founder George Crump had help from architects H.S. Colt, A.W. Tillinghast, George C. Thomas Jr., and Walter Travis. Hugh Wilson (of Merion fame) and his brother Alan finished the job. Pine Valley blends all three schools of golf design — penal, heroic, and strategic — throughout the course, oftentimes on a single hole.
Glamorous Cypress Point, Alister Mackenzie’s masterpiece woven through cypress, sand dunes, and jagged coastline, wasn’t always the darling of America’s 100 Greatest. Golf Digest demoted it to the Fifth Ten back in the early 1970s, saying, “It’s not surprising that good players might find Cypress Point wanting: it has several easy holes and a weak finisher.” Our panel has since changed its collective opinion. In the 2000s, member Sandy Tatum, the former USGA president who christened Cypress Point as the Sistine Chapel of golf, convinced the club not to combat technology by adding new back tees, but instead make a statement by celebrating its original architecture. So Cypress remains timeless, if short, its charm helped in part by superintendent Jeff Markow, who re-established Mackenzie’s unique bunkering with the help of old photographs.
Southampton, N.Y. / William Flynn (1931) 7,041 yards, Par 70 / Points: 69.2522
Generally considered to be the earliest links in America, heavily remodeled twice by C.B. Macdonald, then replaced (except for three holes) by William S. Flynn in the early 1930s. It’s so sublime that its architecture hasn’t really been fiddled within nearly 50 years, although the team of Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw have made several changes, including restoration of a massive waste area on the sixth hole, to prepare Shinnecock for the 2018 U.S. Open.
Ardmore, Pa. / Hugh Wilson (1912) 6,886 yards, Par 70 / Points: 68.2949
What a treat it was to see Merion East, long considered the best course on the tightest acreage in America, host the U.S. Open in 2013. Today’s generation of big hitters couldn’t conquer the little old course, couldn’t consistently hit its twisting fairways, which are edged by creeks, hodge-podge rough, and OB stakes, and couldn’t consistently hit its canted greens edged by bunkers that stare back. It’s a certainty that it won’t take another 32 years for the U.S. Open to return to Merion.
It is here – The latest list of America’s Top 100 Golf Courses!
6(5) OAKMONT C.C.
Oakmont, Pa. / Henry Fownes (1903) 7,255 yards, Par 71 / Points: 68.1868
Once thousands of trees (planted in the 1960s) were removed, Oakmont’s original penal design was re-established, with the game’s most nasty, notorious bunkers (founder-architect H.C. Fownes staked out bunkers whenever and wherever he saw a player hit an offline shot), deep drainage ditches and ankle-deep rough. Oakmont also has the game’s swiftest putting surfaces, which will likely be slowed down for the upcoming U.S. Open in 2016.
Pebble Beach / Jack Neville & Douglas Grant (1919) 6,828 yards, Par 72 / Points: 67.6226
Not just the greatest meeting of land and sea in American golf, but the most extensive one, too, with nine holes perched immediately above the crashing Pacific surf — the fourth through 10th, plus the 17th and 18th. Pebble’s sixth through eighth are golf’s real Amen Corner, with a few Hail Marys are thrown in over an ocean cove on eight from atop a 75-foot-high bluff. Pebble will host another U.S. Amateur in 2018, and its sixth U.S. Open in 2019.
This is where Seth Raynor got his start. A civil engineer by training, he surveyed holes for architect C.B. Macdonald, who scientifically designed National Golf Links as a fusion of his favorite features from grand old British golf holes. National Golf Links is a true links containing a marvelous collection of holes. As the 2013 Walker Cup reminded us, Macdonald’s versions are actually superior in strategy to the originals, which is why National’s design is still studied by golf architects today, its holes now replicated elsewhere.
100 Greatest History: Ranked 1967-68 and from 1985. Highest ranking: Present.
Gone are all the Norway Spruce that once squeezed every fairway of Winged Foot West. It’s now gloriously open and playable, at least until one reaches the putting surfaces, perhaps the finest set of green contours the versatile architect A.W. Tillinghast ever did, soon to be restored to original parameters by architect Gil Hanse. The greens look like giant mushrooms, curled and slumped around the edges, proving that as a course architect, Tillinghast was not a fun guy. Winged Foot West will host the 2020 U.S. Open.
Fishers Island, N.Y. / Seth Raynor & Charles Banks (1926) 6,566 yards, Par 72 / Points: 66.4241
Probably the consummate design of architect Seth Raynor, who died in early 1926, before the course had opened. His steeply-banked bunkers and geometric greens harmonize perfectly with the linear panoramas of the Atlantic Ocean and Long Island Sound. The quality of the holes is also superb, with all Raynor’s usual suspects, including not one but two Redan greens, one on a par 4.
100 Greatest History: Ranked 1969-74 and since ’01. Highest ranking: No. 9, 2009-10
Golf Course Architecture: Is longer necessarily better?
Golf Chats is a website to encourage discussions on various subjects relating to the game of golf. I am Mel Sole, Director of Instruction of the Mel Sole Golf School and SAPGA Master Professional. I invite you to enter into a discussion on this or any article on the golfchats.com website. The input is for the entire subscriber base to learn something new each time! Please post your comments below. Keep it clean and tasteful. We are here to learn from one another!
Change the equipment or make golf courses tougher?
Here is a great interview by Charlie Rose with Ron Whitten, Architectural Editor of Golf Digest, discussing how modern golf course architecture has affected the game. I must disagree with Ron on one statement he made during the interview. When asked if the equipment has gotten out of hand, he disagreed, stating that was part of the game’s evolution. The increased distance produced by today’s clubs and balls has made many great golf courses obsolete. They are now too short to hold a Major Championship and a regular PGA Tour event. So, golf courses are made longer, more land is needed, which puts up the construction price, and the owner has to charge higher green fees to recoup his investment. I think it’s time to scale down the courses and make golf enjoyable again.
To stem the tide, a time will come in the future when the golf professionals and amateurs will have to play different equipment. What are your views on this controversial subject? Do you agree that pros and amateurs should use different equipment to keep the old courses in play? Comments below, if you don’t mind.
Golf Chats is a website to encourage discussions on various subjects relating to the game of golf. I am Mel Sole, Director of Instruction of the Mel Sole Golf School and SAPGA Master Professional. I invite you to enter into a discussion on this or any article on the golfchats.com website. The input is for the entire subscriber base to learn something new each time! Please post your comments below. Keep it clean and tasteful. We are here to learn from one another!
We are all looking forward to the much-hyped, much anticipated, US Open Championship at Chambers Bay in the Pacific North West.
Some say the most difficult test of golf ever. Others say this is not a US Open course but a tricked-up piece of land that the PGA professionals will hate. Whatever your opinion, all will be put to rest come Sunday evening June 21st, 2015, as the winner stands holding the US Open Championship Trophy.
Ron Whitten, the writer for Golf Digest, gives us an interesting insight into the upcoming event.
Eight months after opening, Chambers Bay got a U.S. Open, one of many firsts for an old mining site that has put a bounce in the Pacific Northwest
Chambers Bay shows off its new look after the mining days (below). Here, the par-3 15th with the lone tree on the course.
Chambers Bay is unknown by most, unproven to many, and undeniably a strange concoction. Why is it positioned to set so many U.S. Open records? The players have yet to tee off, but the 2015 U.S. Open, the first in the Pacific Northwest, is already making history. A decade ago the course, as improbable and unconventional as they come, didn’t exist. Now it’s hosting the U.S. Open? Inconceivable.
If it hasn’t happened before in an Open, it’s probably happening June 18-21 at Chambers Bay.
Chambers Bay Golf Club – From a Jack to a King?
1. IT’S THE FIRST U.S. OPEN TO BE A COMPETITION IN A SANDBOX.
Chambers Bay lies in an old sand and gravel pit on the western edge of the Tacoma, Wash., suburb of University Place. It’s a tilted bowl, open on the west, with railroad tracks and gorgeous Puget Sound beyond. To the east is a high, long cliff. Atop its rim is Grandview Drive, where rubberneckers can stand with binoculars and scout for Rory, Phil & Co. some 80 feet below.
The pit was first mined in the 1890s, and over the next century it’s said to have provided 90 percent of the material used to create the skyline of Seattle, 40 miles north. Lucky for golfers, it was mostly gravel—not sand—that was removed. After the Pierce County wastewater district bought the 900-acre site in 1992, mining continued until 2001, after a pit-bull prosecutor named John Ladenburg was elected as the chief county executive and decided the waterfront property should be redeveloped for public recreation, including ball fields, hiking trails and a golf course.
In 2003, the county issued a bid to design and build the course, and the response of 55 firms was encouraging.
Those who made the dicision to walk the site were blown away, not by winds off the sound (which are common) but by the texture of the soil: pure sand, the ideal surface to grow tight turf, remove intense rainfall, and provide bounce to every golf ball and spring to each step.
This will not be the first U.S. Open played on sandy soil. Shinnecock Hills on Long Island has been an Open site as far back as 1896, as recently as 2004 and will host again in 2018. But Shinnecock consists of holes that were staked along tree-dotted sand hills, following lines of least resistance. Chambers Bay was full of mining spoils. A sandbox, in which 1.5 million cubic yards of soil had to be pushed around.
2. IT’S THE FIRST COURSE MEANT SPECIFICALLY TO HOST A U.S. OPEN.
In January 2004, Ladenburg and an advisory committee interviewed five finalists. They were Robert Trent Jones II (a firm consisting of partners Robert Trent Jones Jr. and Bruce Charlton); Hurdzan/Fry Design, at the time creating Erin Hills, which will be the Open site in 2017; Bob Cupp, who designed the 36 holes at Pumpkin Ridge near Portland, long considered a front-runner for an Open; Phil Mickelson, at that point yet to win a major; and local favorite John Harbottle III.
Ladenburg notified each firm that a U.S. Open was his goal, and that he wanted a links-like course. So each of the five proposals envisioned a British Open-like layout. The recommendations of the advisory committee were not unanimous. Ladenburg, who had the final say, selected the Trent Jones firm.
What was the determining factor? It was not that the Jones team handing each committee member a metal bag tag, embossed with the Pierce County logo and the words “Chambers Creek” (the working title of the project at the time) and “U.S. Open 2030.”
“That was a cute gesture, but it wasn’t a factor,” Ladenburg says. “Besides, they got it wrong by 15 years.”
What made the difference for Ladenburg was the vast global experience of Trent Jones Jr. He’d done links designs before, in California and abroad. None of the others had.
From day one, the pressure was on to create a course good enough to attract the Open. Leaving nothing to chance, Charlton soon spoke to Ron Read, then a regional director of the USGA, who in turn contacted Mike Davis, now the executive director. When construction started in January 2006, Davis and Read walked the property with the designers. “This has potential,” Davis said. “Don’t screw it up.”
