To start below is a quote from Steve Lapper on another thread:
“Phillip,
We (Kelly Blake Moran, Peter Zurkow, and I...along with the help of Karen Moraghan and Paul Ramina) are doing just that. As some here may already know, we've won the "beauty contest" to build a municipal property, daily-fee course in Old Bridge, NJ. The site, a wonderful pair of rolling ex-farmland fields, is only 12 minutes from Staten Island and 35-40 minutes from Manhattan.
Rather than get into all the details, and there are many....I'll properly defer to Kelly and let him describe it to GCA. It won't be too tough, nor too easy with fewer-than-normal bunkers and larger-than-normal greens that will be naturally positioned amid extensive runoff and chipping areas. The ladies angle will be considerably more than the usual afterthought and hopefully it'll quickly evolve into a USGA Womens event location.”
Old Bridge is a private/public venture. Fortunately, because of GCA I met Mike Sweeney, who ultimately introduced me to Steve Lapper when I inquired of Mike who might be interested in such a venture in the New Jersey/New York City/Staten Island market. First I will paste in a section from our submission to the Township:
“The Old Bridge Golf Course has been routed after extensive periods of time spent on the site familiarizing us with the magnificent natural features of the land. Other considerations that influenced the routing plan are the wetland fingers that protrude into the land at several points. In order to avoid a lengthy and uncertain permitting process we deliberately avoided playing over the wetlands where proposed clearing of trees within the wetland would be required, and would prolong the permitting process.
The Old Bridge Golf Course is a par 35 on the out bound holes, and a par 36 on the in bound holes. Each loop of nine holes begins at, and returns to the clubhouse. There are 6 sets of tees to accommodate the wide range of golfing abilities expected to play at the course. The championship tees measure 7,005 yards and are intended for expert players. The back tees measure 6,745 yards, and are intended for the low handicap players. The middle tees measure 6,340 yards and are intended for the average players, and the better senior players. The midward tees measure 5,500 yards and will accommodate average senior players, and longer hitting lady players. The forward tees measure 4,935 yards and it is expected that beginning players, or players who hit the ball a short distance will be well suited for these tees. The junior tees measure 3,000 yards. Young, beginning players will find great enjoyment in being able to play a course that allows them to learn the game while making each hole play at a comfortable distance.
The course features will be constructed with the least amount of earthmoving possible. In some ways it will be like a renovation project on an existing course where we minimize the disruptions to the site by only disturbing the areas where the greens, bunkers, and tees are located. This approach will allow us to strip only the topsoil that is required to build the features, thus keeping intact the delicate soil structure, and natural grasses and vegetation on most of the site.
Almost every hole on the routing has some significant landform incorporated into the design of the hole. Many holes are placed on top of ridges, with the descending slopes on either side of the ridge. This strategy accentuates the importance of the terrain in the ground game, where the ball is directed by the pitch in the land, and accentuates the importance of the uneven stance, where the player is either helped or challenged by sidehill, uphill, and downhill lies in the fairway. Examples of these types of holes are holes #3, #4, #6, #9, #12, #13, and #17. Even on a much smaller scale, the green sites are greatly enhanced by their placement on magnificent, natural landforms like the ridges at the green sites of holes #1, #4, #12, #13, and #15, like the low, intimate spots on holes #2, #5, #14, and like the high, dramatic hilltops at holes #3, #6, #9, #17, and #18. Other holes offer a variety of sidehill lies, such as hole #10 where the ball on the fairway will be above the right-handed player’s feet, and the next hole, #11, where the ball in the fairway will be below the right-handed player’s feet. These attributes are critical to capture in the routing plan phase, and will greatly enhance the opportunities for us to design a golf course that will be unmatched by any course with regards for strategic excitement for all levels of players.
The golf course will have fairways of a generous width to take advantage of the varied, and broken natural terrain. This will give the better player the opportunity to play the edges of the fairways in order to gain better approach angles into the greens, better stances in the fairway, or better bounces in the fairway to gain distance or advantageous positions. For the average player, wider fairways are more forgiving, and allow the player who cannot strike the mighty blow off the tee more options to position their tee shot in the fairway to make the next shot easier, and maybe gain some advantage by playing a thinking game.
The golf course will be designed in a way that makes the undulating natural features foremost in the final design of the fairways and greens. In this way the course will play differently each time depending upon where the pins are placed on the greens, and which part of the fairway or the green the player’s ball finally comes to rest. More emphasis will be on the strategic placement of bunkers rather than on the number of bunkers. These design qualities are essential to our desire to provide a golf course that is pleasurable to the greatest number of players, that is rich in strategic design and requires thoughtful consideration each time it is played, that gives the average player a challenge without being unfair while making the better player excel at all skills if they want to shoot under par, and finally, that creates a golf course which appears to be sewn into the natural landscape in a manner that makes it hard to distinguish the manmade work from nature’s work.
The course routing respects one of the most important traditions of playing golf, and that is being able to walk the course rather than relying upon carts. The pleasures and insights gained from walking a course are important to understanding the design of the course, and appreciating the natural surroundings. Despite the need to cross a road twice, and despite the separations between holes caused by the wetland fingers, the distance a player must walk in getting from the green to the next tee when totaled for all 18 holes comes to 1,500 yards. According to Pacesetters, a company that specializes in improving pace of play, the average course in the United States is more than double that figure, or 3,100 yards.”
I am sure you will want to scan the above so I will sum up the main points. First, we have been very aggressive in promoting our beliefs in the type of course that will be well suited to the golfer. Our enthusiasm has ignited a bit of a passion fire within a broad circle of local residents, thus elevating the expectations and subsequently the pressure on us to deliver on our words. I find that exciting. For me design is a life process rather than a business, therefore much of what I wrote above reflects my mindset today. Key to it is my desire to be better at preserving more of the contours of the land. Also, I have tried to organize myself in a way that allows me to spend more time on site. Old Bridge represents a tremendous opportunity for me to be onsite more than I have been on any other project. I feel that the most stimulating design happens when you are fully engaged in the process, and certainly you are no better engaged than when you are standing there on the land. More than anything the engagement does not allow you to design in a “cliché” fashion. As someone else said, “Drift, wait, and obey”, and I believe on site is a great place to invoke that little saying. Ultimately, you want to be different, you want the mystery of creativity to lead you somewhere other than where it might lead someone else. Again, to avoid cliché. Finally, what has come out of this process is a notion that occurred to me and has become somewhat of a mantra in my presentations to the Township, and that is this project to me feels more like a renovation project. Quoted from above: “The course features will be constructed with the least amount of earthmoving possible. In some ways it will be like a renovation project on an existing course where we minimize the disruptions to the site by only carefully disturbing the areas where the greens, bunkers, and tees are located.” For me this has been a powerful idea that makes me think harder about how to fulfill the letter and spirit of the statement, to find a process by which this can be fully realized. This is in a nutshell is where we are with Old Bridge.