On Thursday I was fortunate enough to take the day off and drive up to see the new Cape Kidnappers course Tom Doak's team is designing in the Hawkes Bay (New Zealand). The day turned out to be quite an experience so I thought I would recount it for you all.
I set off from Paraparaumu about dawn, and arrived at the Cape by mid-morning. After checking in at the site office I drove up to the top of the property where the golf course is situated. The 'drive way' is about 9km long and still in the process of being constructed. This made for some interesting give way situations as massive trucks came rumbling down the hill. I was definitely the one giving way!
When at last I got up there Tom came out of their small base hut to greet me. Although not a real big man, he gives you the impression he's always on top of things. He's pretty relaxed and laid back. Originally from Connecticut, he has an accent like Brad Faxon.
I transferred my backpack over to a blue 4WD (that would later mysteriously disappear) and we drove out to the 'first tee', ie: some dirt. We got out and walked the front nine together except for the 7th which I had to see later on from the other side of a steep ravine as a bridge hadn't quite gone in there yet. The course ground is all fingers of land punctuated by deep ravines that run out in similar directions to the cliffs. At first glance they can share a similar appearance that can be disorientating until you know your way around. While the land out nearer the gannet colonies is dead sparse and brown, the ravines on the golf course are covered in dark green Manuka and Kanuka tea trees that contrast with the golden brown native grasses. When the green brown fairways and light sand bunkers go in, Cape Kidnappers will possess a scheme of colour similar to Royal Melbourne and then trump everything with that azure blue of the sea. The property is immense, there is a sense of grandeur to everything and the views are out of this world.
The first hole is a slight bend to the right with an enticing drive over a ridge and then an uphill second shot to a well protected green. Just over the first green, the tees for the second hole begin. A fairly long par 5 played up a deceptively steep rise with a huge fairway that must be 60 or 70 yards wide with quite a tilt from left to right. The fence line starts to come in close down the left hand side as you near the green and short right there are deep! bunkers. The green has a tilt from left to right as well and like all the putting surfaces that were nearing final shaping it has broad pleasing contours.
The one shot 3rd hole plays back down along the low side of the second. An Eden type hole, it plays across a shallow valley to a green with a steep bluff on the left and a nasty bunker on the right. Behind the green there are bunkers that would appear to save shots from meeting a similar fate long to anything hooked left. For me this was the pick of the short holes although the others weren't really completed. #3 looked about ready to grass.
The par 5 4th was my favourite hole from the day. A blind drive over a ravine from the back tees, over a ridge in similar fashion to the 4th at Royal Melbourne West with the pinnacle nest of traps pushed a little further to the right. It may be blind but it felt like a great shot. As you get over the ridge you can see ways in the fairway contours to pick up yardage in order to get home in two. The entrance to the green opens from the left but a ravine and bunkers set into the slope down the right make for a great diagonal. In dizzying fashion on a ride-on shaper, Brian Sneider was putting the finishing touches on the green itself as we came up to it. A two level affair that gathers shots into an area short of the tier, down the right. All in all it looked very three-puttable.
The par 4 5th was just the opposite kind of hole to the great natural 4th. The kind of hole that didn't come easy and had to have its charm knocked into it as Tillinghast might say. Tom was particularly proud of the way it was turning out. The placement of the fairway bunkers make the easiest tee shot down the left, but from over there the steep dip before the green really has to be carried and the green wants to get away from you to the right. Second shots from the dangerous right side of the fairway hit into the green slope more and could perhaps be run in. The knoll the green was on had been shaved down so the sea horizon formed the backdrop, not the sky.
After the second short hole 6th (a long 2 or 3 iron brute over the ravine to a green set near the top of a hill) came the par 4 7th. An exciting downhill tee shot back into the valley followed by a second shot reminiscent of the 8th at Pebble Beach with a wonderful backdrop of tea tree and a couple of hundred feet elevation of open ground above that heading up the hill to the tree line and the red barns. 8 was another par 3 which makes five on this golf course by my counting. It features some of the more severe topography and a $200,000 bridge was under construction to get people up to the green.
The walk to number 9 tee was about the longest so far. Ahead lay a diagonal tee shot across the ravine that confronted us on 8, and then a second shot over another dip up to the green with a large single tree shading the left side of the putting surface. The drops in front of some greens, behind on others, are going to make eyeballing club selection tough on this golf course. Around us up at the green was a whole open area Tom was going to keep mown at fairway height. 9 green, 10 tee and the practice putting greens will fill this space, as will the clubhouse eventually.
After the front nine was over it was time for lunch so we drove around picking everybody up and went out to the 16th green. Tom and I and the two Brians (Slawnik and Sneider) were joined by Bruce (Hepner) and Eric (Iverson). Cold cuts, salad and chardonnay in a swanky dining room don't constitute lunch-time for these gentlemen. Rather a steady diet of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, bottled water and golf talk along the edge of the hollowed out green instead. Tom checked in with everyone's morning work as he delighted in bouncing a few stones off the side of a digger, parked perilously close to the near vertical 500 ft drop Brian had been working beside just minutes earlier.
After lunch it was time for Tom and Bruce to get down to some serious business on the back nine. No plans ever came out and Bruce never took anything down. Little marker flags occasionally went into the ground or Tom would lob a clump of dirt somewhere, leaving Bruce to remember where it landed and interpret its meaning. Knowing Tom's criticism of architects who soften abrupt ground and jazz up the flat stuff, I asked on the 12th fairway if he was tempted to do something with the flat piece of ground we were standing on. He just directed me to the awesome green-site up ahead with the pacific ocean behind and said there was no need.
On the back nine other points of note would be the unusual course progression of 10 green and the 11th; the road hole tribute green at 14 - the only really short par 4 on the course; and the one that got away; the par 3 13th Tom was forced onto plan B with. Although Bruce said it was a done deal and that they were no longer taking people down there (not wanting them to see what they couldn't have) the three of us did go down to where the tee would have been. It was cover-your-eyes-scary-good.
By five o'clock I think even my eyeballs were sunburnt and it was time to go home. Plus I was being made aware that my car was in danger of becoming foundation for the maintenance shed. A few hours earlier it had been a grassed car park, but things don't stay still for very long when it come to golf Cape Kidnappers style.
My thanks to all the resort staff, Tom Doak and the rest of the Renaissance Golf team who just couldn't have been nicer. I hope all golfers can eventually make it there to play this thing. It was an experience I'll long remember.