[Darren_Kilfara]

I was on a corporate golf day yesterday at the Duke's Course in St. Andrews. It was the first time I've played the course, which has apparently been rerouted in a few places (one or two completely new holes) and given an extensive facelift, and the results are really quite impressive. The new bunkering in particular has a really unique look which seems to combine the traditional heathlands look - rough grass and heather perched atop the edges - with some very Coore/Crenshaw-ish jagged-but-natural edges, and it which really suits the course wonderfully well in places. (I wish I had taken my camera!) Even more interestingly, there's a display board in the clubhouse which juxtaposes photos of the new bunkers with some wild black-and-white pictures of rough-and-ready bunkering from 80 years ago, the sort of which are often posted and fawned over on this website, in a clear attempt to describe the look the redesign was trying to achieve.

Anyone know who was in charge of the bunker work in particular? I'd definitely have to leapfrog the Duke's to near the top of my Scottish inland course rankings - which is admittedly an uncrowded field, but still.

Cheers,
Darren

(By the way, the star attraction at the golf day was Colin Montgomerie, who answered questions and spoke candidly and really quite engagingly about a number of topics. Among other things, he hopes and expects to partner Harrington in the team matches at the Ryder Cup; he couldn't pick Brett Wetterich, JJ Henry, Vaughn Taylor or Zach Johnson out of a lineup; it's hard to convey how completely in awe he is of Tiger; he thinks the drop Tiger got at Firestone recently was a total joke; he desperately hopes to be the Ryder Cup captain someday, and wonders if 2010 might be his time; he thinks he wouldn't have screwed up his approach to the 72nd hole at Winged Foot if he hadn't have needed to take so long in the fairway waiting for Vijay Singh to get a couple of rulings up by the green; and his favorite golf course of all time is Pine Valley. Take all of that for what it's worth!)

[Dan Moore]

Tim Liddy is responsible for the recent work.  The course is now owned by Herb Kohler.  

There are some nice photos of the Duke's Course in the remodel section of Tim's website.  

http://www.timliddy.com/home.asp

Great to see a lot of interesting work from Tim on this website recently.  I'm hoping to make it to Harrison Hills before the season is over.  

[Ally Mcintosh]

played the dukes for the first time last month... apparently the rerouting of the last few holes is a big improvement...

...as for the bunkers, i couldn't get over how much sand there was - felt like there were too many in places... it's a brute of a course in the wind (situated on top of a hill on the east coast of scotland, this is likely a regular occurance, i guess)... never felt so tired after walking a round as i did after this one (fourball didn't help)...

impressed overall though

[APBernstein]

Wow.

Just looked at the pictures on Tim Liddy's site -- that is NOT the Dukes course I remember.  The pictures look intriguing at the very least.

I played the Dukes back in 1998 and was nearly completely disappointed.  Granted, it is difficult to leave the Old and New for the Dukes, but I certainly gave it a shot.  It didn't deliver.

[Darren_Kilfara]

Ally, there was way too much sand *in* the bunkers (lots of buried lies and deep splash shots required) yesterday, but I would expect that to sort itself out over time. As for there being too many bunkers, I didn't notice that - they felt very nicely placed, although in a few spots the bunkers seemed a bit too close to the green, i.e. beyond the likely driving area. (I'm not sure which aspect of the course you were criticising, but those are my answers to both...)

Cheers,
Darren

[Philippe Binette]

Hi Darren,

great to see that you appreciate our stuff.

I did some bunkers over there, Kyle Franz did a lot, he was leading on site for most of the final stretch of bunkering

thanks

[Ally Mcintosh]

darren,

now you mention it, yes, the bunkers were natural beach like sand - very heavy - a good thing because it was considerably harder to pick the ball off clean and so finding a fairway bunker was a proper half-shot dropped...

as for the amount of bunkers, i just felt like the course was a sea of sand... now you have to remember that i haven't played desert golf (or any golf) in the US where this is perhaps more common place... i'm not necessarily criticising because i was concentrating more on my match and it was a bad day on the course in that respect - i'm clouded by the fact that i had to get the spade out on quite a few occasions...

so, in summary - over-bunkered? not sure...

difficult course - oh yes

[Chris Kane]

I played the Duke's today, and was quite impressed with it - especially given the poor reputation the original had.


#3, Par 3


#6, Par 5


#12, Par 3

[Tyler Kearns]

Darren,

I believe a few others had some input on the bunker construction, namely Dan Proctor and Jeff Mingay.

TK

[Brian Phillips]

Hi Darren,

great to see that you appreciate our stuff.

I did some bunkers over there, Kyle Franz did a lot, he was leading on site for most of the final stretch of bunkering

thanks

Philippe,

These pictures from Chris Kane give a much more accurate impressionof the work than the ones posted before.

These show more of the 'blend out' than any of the other pictures we have seen so far.

Great work.

Brian

[Philippe Binette]

Great pics

nice to see the rough turning yellow on it

As for the amount of sand... a grassing plan with wider fairways was developped with as much fairway as the ground allowed, but maintenance issues brought the fairway width back to a 35 yards average.

 

[peter_p]

Dukes is now on my list to play when I head over for TOCR, along with Kingsbarn and North Berwick.

[Doug Siebert]

Wow, I had always heard that the Duke's was a waste of time, from the looks of the pics it'll have to be on my list next time I'm up there!

Is it 9 or 18?  I thought I'd heard it was a 9 holer, if so that would make it even easier to fit in as a "first thing off the plane" course, along with a couple trips around Himayalas to get one's putter into shape to tackle TOC.

[Darren_Kilfara]

It's an 18-hole course, Doug. (No idea where the notion of it being a nine-hole course came from!) And don't play the Himalayas to get used to the speed of the greens on TOC - the putting course is typically much slower than any other greens in St. Andrews. It's to be enjoyed on its own merits, which are considerable!

Cheers,
Darren

[Doug Siebert]

I wasn't talking about using the Himayalas to get used to the speed, but to get one's mindset into shape to tackle those wild greens you find over there.  Our typical greens are more like Turnberry's than TOC's, it takes a mental readjustment to hit those kind of putts.  You gotta go from reading greens to imagining shots because you don't have just one line, you often have a choice of multiple lines in totally different directions that are all capable of getting the ball around the hole.  Himayalas is perfect for awakening that portion of the golfing brain that atrophies on our less interesting greens in the US.

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