The Prairie Dunes Influence

[KMcKeown]

Great feedback Tom, thank you. Not many new courses have greens as dramatic as BallyNeal, not to mention a classic like PD. Everyone is obsessed with speed, me included, so it's such a joy to see greens like those and a premium on placement of your ball on the green or a 3 putt is nearly assured.

Look forward to learning how your routing was different at Karsten Creek than what Fazio ultimately did. I understand you were involved at one point.

[Tom_Doak]

Great feedback Tom, thank you. Not many new courses have greens as dramatic as BallyNeal, not to mention a classic like PD. Everyone is obsessed with speed, me included, so it's such a joy to see greens like those and a premium on placement of your ball on the green or a 3 putt is nearly assured.

Look forward to learning how your routing was different at Karsten Creek than what Fazio ultimately did. I understand you were involved at one point.

We did do a routing for Karsten Creek, although I have not found a copy of it searching through my office files.  They had 4-5 companies present proposals for the job ... it was a lot like the Olympics, actually, including me not winning     I'll have to ask Mike Holder if he still has a copy of it.

[Bill_McBride]

Another way you could look at this is that Maxwell was MacKenzie's talented lead associate who supervised the shaping of Crystal Downs, and then built Prairie Dunes soon after.  And much of the minimalist approach is modeled on that relationship:  we all value talented associates and construction people, and some of the best of them go on to build their own projects which mirror the ones they helped out on.

I would say that Prairie Dunes, Crystal Downs and Royal Melbourne are the three courses where bunkers serve as the transition point to native areas, which has become the dominant style today.

That seamless transition from bunkers to native was one of the things I admired most at Talking Stick North.