From the Island Packet Online
If you ever walked into a clubhouse after a round golf and sketched your idea for a hole on a cocktail napkin, don't worry. You're probably pretty normal.
As for ever playing that hole, you're probably not that lucky.
Professional golfers are.
Touring pros are prime attractions for club owners who want an identity that sets them apart, says local architect Clyde Johnston who has designed courses with PGA Tour stars Fuzzy Zoeller and John Daly.
"Like any other business, it's about money," Johnston said. "I think the popularity of the players helps real estate values more than anything."
Player-architects are nothing new. Old Tom Morris, winner of four British Opens in the 1860s, also was the famed keeper of the greens at the Old Course at St. Andrew's when people in his position were in charge of both maintenance and creation. But in the early 20th century, golf course architecture became a career unto itself, and the top designers were seldom the top players of their day.
In the second half of the century, that began to change, and the MCI Heritage and the course it is played on have much to do with that change.
Pete Dye, then a relative unknown, was hired to create Harbour Town Golf Links in consultation with Jack Nicklaus. Although Dye did most of the designing, he never minimized Nicklaus's contribution to Harbour Town, and the first stories about Harbour Town's creation often mentioned Nicklaus first -- proving Johnston's point about the value of a recognizable name.
Nicklaus went on to form his own design firm, as did Arnold Palmer, the Heritage's first champion, and now several active touring pros also hang design shingles.
There are 21 courses designed by former PGA Tour members in Beaufort County alone, including Nicklaus' Colleton River course, Davis Love III's Eagle's Pointe and Zoeller's Island West, which he created with Johnston. Nicklaus is designing another course that will open this year at Palmetto Bluff in Bluffton. (Dye also added to his Lowcountry portfolio this year when his new course in Bluffton's Hampton Hall opened in March.)
"We're talking about design everywhere we go," said Love, the defending Heritage champion who owns Love Golf Design on St. Simons Island, Ga. "We get exposed to so many different courses out here. It's great exposure for us. I don't know enough to say I'm an architect, but I know what I like and what works."
The amount of participation in the design process varies with each player and often corresponds with how active one is on tour. And even though the players usually do not have extensive backgrounds in landscape design or engineering, their names alone are hot commodities.
The players are their own cash cows.
While the American Society of Golf Course Architects says non-playing architects collect fees in a range of $100,000 to $150,000 per course, Johnston estimated that high-profile PGA Tour players can make between $300,000 and $600,000 even without owning their own design firm. Often, compensation depends on the number of site visits made during construction, usually between four and six.
Johnston earned a degree in landscape architecture and spent 13 years learning the trade as an apprentice before starting his own company. The ASGCA says it takes anywhere from 10-15 years for an architect to establish a solid reputation. But players like Daly, who needed explanations from Johnston about simple design principles when the two collaborated on Wicked Stick in Myrtle Beach, sometimes jump right in and walk away with the glory.
"You hear about some architects out there who have had bad experiences with tour players," said Johnston. "Some players want to take all the credit when they did very little."
Ben Wright, a former CBS commentator and golf journalist who also has consulted on design projects, recalls a recent course opening in which a tour player, who he would not name, had spent so little time on site at one upstate track that he had to be directed to the first tee before he could hit the ceremonial first shot.
"How can you possibly expect a guy who has done nothing but play golf to do the engineering and shaping and build greens to USGA specification?" Wright said. "But he likes the idea of having his name on the course."
Players also like the idea that their visions can become reality. But criticism isn't far behind those who forget golf demographics. Some of Nicklaus' early work, for example, has been criticized as being too hard for medium- to high-handicappers.
"Some club owners or designers may want the best this, the best that. If a course has Zoeller's name, he wants the course (to be) for the average golfer and not just the latest and greatest or one of the top 100 courses," Johnston said. "He wants it to be a fun, family experience."
Norman, whose design at Oldfield is just more than 2 years old, knows what is best for him is not best for anyone else.
"I think the weakness with some architects is that they play the aerial game. There's 25 millions golfers in America and 24,999,000 of them probably can't hit the ball 300 yards through the air, then hit a 7-iron 185 yards, stick it on a green and have about 15 feet of green to work with," Norman said. "Your eye tells you whether you're right or wrong. A golf ball I hit is not going to tell me whether it's right or wrong for everyone else."
Technology can offer the average golfer some help on the growing number of 7,000-yard plus courses, but Love says it's simply not enough. A course has to be fair.
"We're trying to get enough forward tees, enough freedom to let the beginners play and also challenge the expert," said Love, whose first design project was the Ocean Creek course on nearby Fripp Island.
More than just a game
Johnston says you have to study the game and the history of golf course design before you can create courses that reflect today's game. Scotsman Donald Ross, who studied under Morris, was a pioneer in the profession at the turn of the century, and people like Robert Trent Jones Sr. spent years studying agrostology, agronomy and hydraulic engineering to turn design into a true profession.
Some, like Wright, prefer courses that feature an architect's knowledge and not a professional's touch. Some of his favorites include Dye, Tom Fazio and Rees Jones.
But some players are gaining respect, even from the architects who never played professionally. Johnston says be is impressed with Ben Crenshaw's work with Bill Coore. Love says Fazio and Jones often recommend him for jobs they are unwilling or unable to take on.
Love, a dominant player on the PGA Tour, ideally has five projects going at one time with his architects, Bob Spence and Paul Cowley. Anything less means shapers and employees don't have enough to do; anything more and his design work cuts into his playing time.
Touring pros also are beginning to be respected as designers in their own right. Nicklaus, for example, was GolfWorld's architect of the year in 1993, about the time Golf Digest named his design at Colleton River America's best new course.
Johnston says he thinks players should wait to get into design until their playing careers tail off so that they can turn more of their attention to the details of architecture.
He suspects more will follow, including one who probably could get a cool million -- or two -- for his name.
"Tiger Woods probably already has had a ton of offers but he's trying to concentrate of setting records right now," Johnston said. "But down the road, he'll probably be in it too