*Hey Jaka how bout those green fee prices?
Course Critic
Quail Crossing Golf Course, Boonville, Ind.
At age 43, Tom Doak is no longer the Boy Genius, but he's still a genius in my book. If you use one of Webster's definitions of the term ("a great and original creative ability in some art"), then you can't much argue about that.
Tom set about at an early age to carve out his own special niche in golf course architecture, and he's accomplished that. His niche is strategic minimalism, the use of natural features of the land whenever possible to create the challenge and interest in his golf holes. He credits the concept to his post-collegiate study of the great (and obscure) courses of the British Isles, and while others had long talked about returning golf design to its roots, until Tom Doak came along, no one had the courage to try it in America.
Doak's 2004 holiday greeting card was a reminder of his accomplishments. Patterned after a scorecard, it announced that he and his company, Renaissance Golf Design, had just completed the latest of 18 original designs since the company was founded in 1987. Now 18 designs in 17 years may not seem very productive, but that's part of his genius. He and his crews hand-craft his designs. Doak has never had an interest in mass production. (He's been involved in several renovation jobs during those 17 years, but he didn't mention those in his card. And although he routed and constructed much of the Parkland Course at The Legends in Myrtle Beach, he didn't list that one either, as he left the job in a dispute with its owner Larry Young before its completion.)
The card also noted that he's now well at work on a "third nine," nine more projects, from Scotland to the States to Mexico to Australia, and I'll look forward to playing them all. But for those still unfamiliar with Tom Doak's architecture, or base it solely upon his extraordinary Pacific Dunes in Oregon, let me suggest an earlier, far more modest undertaking.
It's Quail Crossing Golf Course in Boonville, a few miles east of Evansville, in southern Indiana. It was completed in 1997, after three lean years of business (for Doak as well as most other architects). It's significant for several reasons. As a residential development course, it was Doak's first attempt at becoming more commercial, which meant he had to be a little more left-brained in his routing. Okay, a lot more. Quail Crossing starts and returns each nine at a common point, the clubhouse, a drastic contrast to his marvelously iconoclastic 1991 Black Forest course in Michigan, where he simply took the best that the land had to offer and started the first hole about 400 yards from the clubhouse and finished the last hole a good quarter mile from the thing.
A good example of the rolling terrain at the fourth hole.
His routing at Quail Crossing had to provide space for 175 homesites, something he'd never had to consider before, to my knowledge, and he had to do it without compromising the integrity of his golf holes or putting future homeowners in jeopardy of being bombarded by golf balls. He achieved it with only a minimal of street crossings, none noticeable except for the double street crossing between the 17th and 18th holes. I know he took personal pride in the fact that his very first land plan provided 85 percent of the housing lots with golf course frontage, yet there's no golf hole with homes down both sides.
What's more, he had to deal with a major power line easement running east and west through the heart of the plot. Some architects would have tried to shove the homesites under those wires (and I can't think of a single developer who'd stand for that) and then would have given the easement a wide, wide berth (maybe even insisting the developer buy additional land to fit in a decent 18.) Doak, however, chose not to hide the power towers, but to feature them, so on the third, 15th and 16th holes, the big metal towers are hard against the golf holes, giant aerial hazards for those who might slice a shot. The saving grace of this approach is that the high tension wires don't come into play, as they stretch parallel to the direction of the holes.
What's most impressive about Quail Crossing is that it was a low budget project, so inexpensive that even today it costs just $30 to play the course in summer prime time, easily the least expensive ticket to any Tom Doak design.
You'll get your money's worth and more at Quail Crossing, especially on the front nine, much of which is routed through an old coal strip-mining operation, with long spoil piles aside narrow lagoons. It's the same sort of terrain, on a smaller scale, as is found at nearby Victoria National Golf Club, but at Quail Crossing, Doak retained denser foliage to create a more isolated and intimate feel to each hole, particularly on the seventh and eighth, where each green is tucked into a narrow "punchbowl" setting surrounded by tree-covered "dunes" of cast-off mining material. Those settings create a lot of agronomic issues, what with so much shade covering the greens for many hours of the day. At Victoria National, the more pragmatic Tom Fazio cleared away most of the vegetation to get more air and sunlight to his greens in similar situations. It's a graphic demonstration of the difference between left-brain and right-brain architecture dealing with the same sort of terrain.
The back nine at Quail Crossing lacks another stretch of dark, sinister quarry holes, but there is an old abandoned railroad bed that used as a nifty hazard on the par-4 12th. The rest of the course is rather open and rolling, lined by tall bluestem and dotted with wildflowers. More than one hole bring to mind Shinnecock Hills, and in fact the uphill 395-yard fourth is nicknamed "Shinnecock," as much for its Bill Flynn-like bunkering, I suspect, as anything.
In a theatrical sense, the course might benefit from a reversal of the two nines, so that golfers would encounter the exciting strip-mine holes at the end of a round. But that would mean the round would start on the 406-yard 10th, the weakest hole on the course, a 90-degree dogleg right around an out-of-bounds. I'm guessing the owners don't want customers slicing one out-of-bounds on the opening shot of the day, and that's why they play the nines as they do.
If you're a Tom Doak fan, you should play Quail Crossing sometime. Just don't expect to see the rumbling, tumbling architecture of Pacific Dunes on this site. Except for that corner of abandoned strip mine, this was gentle farm fields, and Doak's lay-of-the-land philosophy preserves its austerity and unique beauty.
Enjoy it for what it is, a decent, low-budget, low-profile Tom Doak design. And ask to start your round on the back nine.
The Details
Quail Crossing Golf Course
5 Quail Crossing Dr.
Boonville, Indiana 47601
For tee times: 812-897-1247
www.quailcrossing.comGreen fees: $17 (weekdays), $22 (weekends) until April 4, 2005, then $20 (weekdays) $30 (weekends). Carts are $15.
Walking allowed anytime.