Lorne pens an article in today's Globe and Mail about Rod Whitman...
Architect Whitman deserves more recognition
By LORNE RUBENSTEIN Thursday, December 15, 2005
You won't find Rod Whitman's name on a list of today's acclaimed golf course architects.
But the Albertan ought to be at the head of any ranking of least-known architects who should be well known.
Whitman doesn't market himself, though, and you have to make an effort to get to his courses. (I've not visited any myself, yet. But pictures, his words and accolades from others tell of an architect whose work is worth exploring.)
There's Wolf Creek in Ponoka, Alta., which was the host of a Canadian Tour event for years. Players appreciated its rugged golf. Then there's Blackhawk, near Edmonton, another exercise in understated, hardy golf. Whitman has remote Scottish linksland in his DNA.
"I get charged up just walking on a property," Whitman said recently before boarding a plane in Edmonton bound for Bordeaux, France. "It's a lot of fun to imagine holes. People think you're a glorified 'dozer guy, but there's a lot to it."
Whitman, 51, could call the bulldozer home. Instead, he calls himself "homeless." He stays at his mother's place when he's around Ponoka, where Wolf Creek opened more than 20 years ago. When he visits his daughter in Indiana, he stays with her at his former wife's place. But he's usually on a course, imagining it or building it.
"If the ability to create a wonderful product on the ground were the sole measure of success in this business, Rod Whitman of Alberta, Canada, would be highly acclaimed instead of unknown," architect Bill Coore, Ben Crenshaw's design partner, said in an interview at
http://www.golfclubatlas.com.
Whitman has worked with Coore on a variety of projects, including Friar's Head in Riverhead, Long Island, N.Y. The Crenshaw-Coore course is as impressive as their inspirational Sand Hills track in Mullen, Neb., where Whitman also worked. Whitman has worked with Pete Dye, too.
But why was Whitman off to France? He was headed there to meet with Coore and move the 18th green on their Chateau course at Golf du Medoc. He'd just returned to civilization from an extended hunting trip in the mountains near Ponoka, where he'd bagged a "fairly nice deer."
Whitman joked that he'd put the mounted deer in a clubhouse at a new course where construction will start in March. That's the Sagebrush Golf and Sporting Club. It's in the B.C. desert -- yes, there's desert in B.C. -- 15 kilometres from Merritt. Richard Zokol, the founder, has been, well, mounting the course for three years.
Zokol's just completed the financing for the course, which he intends to be a private retreat from all the cares of the world, overlooking a lake 15 kilometres from Merritt. Like Whitman, he's a purist when it comes to course design. He and Whitman will work well together. Crenshaw, by the way, recommended that Zokol use Whitman.
Whitman also hopes to be working soon on a proposed course called Cabot Links on an ideal site between Inverness, N.S., and the Gulf of St. Lawrence. Ben Cowan-Dewar of Toronto is the developer and is trying to raise money for the public course.
The property is linksland -- if there is such a landscape in Canada. The Cape Breton Growth Fund, an arm of Enterprise Cape Breton Corp., has pledged $2.5-million toward the project. The Inverness Development Association, a volunteer organization representing the town, donated the land.
Cabot Links will return money to the fund over a 15-year period based on a royalty agreement.
The vision for this course has been around for years, and the property speaks authentic, strategic, seaside golf. The course could attract golfers from afar, much like the vaunted Bandon Dunes resort has to remote Bend, Ore.
"I'd love to do that thing," Whitman said. "We've already done a good routing. The property is almost on the beach and the town almost surrounds it, like St. Andrews [in Scotland]."
Should the money be found, Whitman's ready to go on Cabot Links. He's also ready to go at Sagebrush. Whitman will probably have some input from Jeff Mingay, a student of classic architecture who lives in Windsor, Ont., and who has worked with him, at Blackhawk, for one.
"He likes to play in the dirt," Whitman said.
So does Whitman, who also enjoys reading widely, including books on high-energy physics. He's a high-energy guy.
When Sagebrush is done, and assuming Cabot Links gets built, Whitman will need all the energy he can find, because he'll be better known. Meanwhile, he isn't homeless at all.
His home is the wide-open spaces, whether it's for hunting down deer or courses.
You get the feeling he'd be happy to sleep on courses he designs. Maybe he has, and probably in a bunker he's hewn by hand.