[Ran Morrissett]

...under Architecture Timeline and Courses by Country.

Starting next Monday, Oakmont will dominate the media for the next little while – and deservedly so.

Before its reign of terror begins on the world’s best, we are sneaking in this course profile, a course that in many ways is the polar (literally!) opposite of Oakmont. Unlike Oakmont, The Red Course at the stylish Jockey Club is on flat land and makes no pretense to being the world’s toughest test. The second photograph in the Oakmont profile of the pain itched on my middle brother Bill’s face trying – for the second time – to extricate himself from a ditch at Oakmont is NOT the sort of expression one associates with playing golf  at The Jockey Club.  Its rough is minimal and short grass abounds.

In fact, the only thing The Jockey Club had going for it at its start in 1930 was Alister Mackenzie. Mackenzie famously separates himself from most architects by virtue of the originality of his designs. Cypress reminds one of no other course just as Royal Melbourne doesn’t just as Augusta National at one time didn’t etc. Go through his design portfolio and one finds that his courses resist being stereotyped.

However, The Jockey Club is unique within Mackenzie’s career because he blatantly tried to replicate much of the feel and playing characteristics from The Old Course at St. Andrews. (Same too at Augusta National but the property there was so different to St. Andrews that he was borrowing design concepts only).

Bill Coore calls Doak’s earthmoving at The Legends in Myrtle Beach some of the finest he has ever seen. The same applies for me here with Mackenzie’s work – a featureless site was turned into something so special that The Red Course has been the benchmark upon which courses in South America have been judged for seventy five years.

Though the text on The Jockey Club is excellent in both The World Atlas of Golf and Doak’s The Life and Work of Dr. Alister Mackenzie, the drawings and photographs don’t quite capture the sense of magic one associates with a Mackenzie course. Thus, I didn’t know what to expect. Whatever my hopes were going in, they were far exceeded. Some of it is surely the fact that The Jockey Club is one of the coolest clubs in the world but the golf too is my favorite sort: an easy walk in under three hours without the need to search for golf balls in thick trees or rough while being challenged at the green site. Be it Pulborough or Yeamans Hall or Swinley or The Jockey Club, this is ideal golf.  Mackenzie wrote eloquently about the health benefits of golf – and The Red Course at The Jockey Club embodies those as well as any course one can play.

Cheers,

PS This is a nightmare course profile for Green Keepers in North America as it shows play being encouraged across frost. For this, I apologize. Given my weak Spanish, I cannot tell you today why frost is different down there but we were assured by several people that no harm came to the grass by our walking on it. Obviously, this is true or they wouldn’t have let Ben and me out. Nonetheless, it is disconcerting to see several such photographs.

[Jeff Doerr]

Thanks Ran! This site continues to give me a great connection and appreciation to some of the great courses around the world that I may never get to visit personally. Your final quote really captures a sense of the place:

"Apart from acknowledging The Jockey as being one of - or perhaps the - great sporting club, how can one summarize the golf offering only? The greatest golf course architect of all-time borrowed a number of design attributes from his favorite golf course and successfully translated them into the dirt at San Isidro. His features remain well preserved to this day. As one walks down the fourth and fifth fairways listening to horses thunder past on the Club's adjacent track, one realizes this is a unique place in world golf. Polo has long been referred to as the Sport of Kings, which is exactly how one feels regarding golf when fortunate enough to have a game here at The Jockey Club."  

[Kirk Gill]

For whatever reason, the link to the Jockey Club profile does not work for me. I messed about with the address, though, and got in ( http://www.golfclubatlas.com/jockey1.html ).

[Josh Smith]

Awesome Ran.  You are really getting around.  Amazing to see all the short mow mounding, that looks like great fun.  Some of the greens look pretty wild.  

Thank you.

[John Kirk]

Lovely.  The course seems to have a common theme, with the large rounded mounds dominating both the landscape and strategy.

Congratulations on channeling Peter Alliss by using the term "fiddly chip".

[Garland Bayley]

Thanks Ran,

Now that you are editing the World Atlas of Golf, are we going to be getting a bumper crop of reviews here?
 

[Adam Clayman]

Great write-up. Loved the three putt ribbing.

I'm curious to the feeling of the mounds?

On such a flat site, I sense they offer wonderful opportunities to utilize with creative (or lucky) shot making. Was there a sense of the 8th green complex at Augusta? How about Pinon Hills?

[Pete Lavallee]

Ran or Ben,

Were you able to play or walk the Blue Course? Is it in the same class as the Red? One hears very little about it, I often wonder if it's as interesting as the Red only shorter, or if it is clearly a step below.

[Tom_Doak]

Pete:

I've walked both courses and would have to say the Blue is a step or two below, something like the Gray at Ohio State.  Having to cross a road for three holes where they have added a pond really detracted from my opinion of it.

[Mark Bourgeois]

Does anyone else think those greens would have had zero chance surviving an American membership (probably an English membership as well) for 10 years, much less 75?

cf. North Palm Beach discussion, post-Nicklaus.
cf. Sitwell Park

[paul cowley]

Thanks Ran!

[Tony Ristola]

Hate to be a stinker.

Some of the greens certainly look interesting. But the repetitive nature of the humps on a relatively flat site... just doesn't seem to fit. Certainly would make for some interesting recovery shots outside the green, but do these holes reflect nature?  

Perhaps you've got to be there.

Was it Herbert Warren Wind that said the project was one where the constructor didn't know golf? Another question, had Rees done this, I wonder what the response would be?

[CharlestonBuckeye]

I had hoped to squeeze in a round during our trip in April of '06.  However, upon checking into the Plaza Hotel downtown, we came upon several gentlemen that played there earlier in the morning as part of a large contingent of some International Golf Association.

One had a bandage across his forehead and his shirt collar was covered in dry blood.  Their group was held up at gunpoint on a secluded part of the course and when one of the players didn't empty his pockets fast enough, the banditos thumped him over the head with their pistol.  Fortunately, money and jewelry was all they parted with that day, beyond a little skin on the scalp.

Needless to say, selling the wife on scooting out there became a useless proposition.

Also, how does this course compare to the Buenos Aires Golf Club and Olivos, both ranked higher in GD world 100.

[James Edwards]

Thanks Ran - interesting read..
The greens look minute for such contour?  Do they work fit the type of shot required on a hole to hole basis?  i.e. longer greens for longer shots type of stuff??

[Pete Lavallee]

Another question, had Rees done this, I wonder what the response would be?

If Rees ever, through some divine intervention, built mounds this good, he would be revered also!

[Ran Morrissett]

I have played one Rees Jones course (Atlantic) in the past ten years so I’m not in a good position to comment on how Mackenzie’s mounds may or may play relative to Ree’s mounds.  However, the fact that the mounds at The Red Course are internal to both the fairways and the greens (see the photos of the 2nd and 7th greens) seems different to Jones. Also, go check Tom Doak’s book on Mackenzie and you’ll see an old black and white photo that shows the huge mounds on 16 maintained as part of the putting surface   Today, the grass is short and tight on those massive mounds and I would hazard a guess that today’s surface is every bit as fast as it was in the 1930s even when it was maintained as the green. Anyway, the point is that the mounds have always been intended to present the opportunity for some very neat shots – they were never shrouded in rough. Our caddies thought that Ben was crazy on 13 when he turned his back to the hole and tried to putt up the back mound and have it end near the hole. Ben is crazy - just not for that reason  

Tom MacWood has long said that Mackenzie’s work at The Jockey Club was a precursor for things to come at Augusta National Golf Club – and he was right. Seeing short grass around neat green complexes is a wonderful, wonderful thing and the Argentines have done a great job of not screwing it up. As Mark says, who knows the fate this revolutionary course would have suffered in the U.S.

Re: the Blue Course, I wish I had seen it but as Tom says, no one seems to have as high opinion of it as the Red.

Nearby Olivos is supposed to be set on better property (i.e. more natural rolls) and was built by the same man who helped Mackenzie at The Jockey Club. Without Mackenzie’s personal touch, though, it is hard to believe it enjoys such distinctive, stand-out holes. However, many Argentines consider it the ‘stronger’ of the two tests, whatever that means.

No architect jumps with glee at the prospect of a flat site. However, to me, Mackenzie made the most of the situation - and that's all one can ever ask of the architect.

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