Despite Josh and my bitter loss there last August to a pair of cagey veterans, a good time was had by all at our match on the revamped South Course at Olympia Fields. Jeff Goldman, who is on the Green Committee, was the match referee and is the author of this piece that provides an inside glimpse of the machinations ('inside baseball' as Jeff calls it) that went on in getting the work done here.
As many appreciate, private clubs move in fits and starts and there are numerous ways in which a group of well intentioned people ( i.e. a club board) can end up inadvertently driving poor results. Mercifully, this is not one such case. Rather, the project was a resounding success and thus it merits study. Fundamental to developing and protecting great golf course architecture is understanding how clubs function, and Jeff's piece provides detailed insight in this regard.
In measuring the success of the project, there is one clear way to do so, at least to me, and that is that Olympia Fields was able to do with its second course what Winged Foot, Pinehurst, Baltusrol, etc. continually struggle with, namely spreading the play away from its 'big' course. The South Course with its high wall bunkering and clever short par fours makes it quite a distinct playing experience from the North Course but not in a hokey or contrived way. Some have commented that the high mounding of some of the bunker walls is a bit much but look at the old photos from the first vs. Jeff's from today. It appears to me that Smyers correctly captured the penal nature that Bendelow intended for the fairway bunkers. Laid across flat land, you can't go but so deep as the soil isn't sandy so Bendelow (and now Smyers) built the bunker walls up.
Jeff hammers home the point that the peaks of the walls might be aesthitectically controversial but they are another example of form following function when he writes, 'Rather than simply restoring the high faces that many of the bunkers had in prior times, the architects designed the bunker walls with peaks. Was this simply an aesthetic choice? Not really. Instead, doing this provides good drainage from the bunkers, and, when observed closely during rains, these features direct the water away from the sand, and towards surrounding surface flow. Who knew? They {Steve Smyers and design partner Patrick Andrews} did.'
Thus, the work was both practical and efficient while also giving a hole like the first its playing interest - in short, what more could a club hope for from its architects?!
Though I am a fan of the North, its two weaknesses are lack of standout par threes and lack of short, teasing par fours. Its strengths are some great long par fours and some wonderful interior movement within many of its greens. The South acts as the perfect foil as it has three short par fours (the sixth, eleventh, and sixteenth) which are multiple option holes and indeed the sixth may well be the most famous of all thirty-six holes. In addition, the twelfth is the most dramatic of the Club's eight par threes, putting a natural landform to perfect use. I hope that the USGA figures out a way to put its two first rate courses to good use but that wouldn't change the bottom line: the Club's members and their guests have two enticing prospects from which to chose each and every day.
After the South re-opened last June, everyone was quick to want to see and play it. More telling though is that Jeff says that the interest level in it hasn't waned a bit in 2009. Indeed, the South is registering nearly as many rounds as the North through May of this year. Hope you enjoy reading Jeff's piece on how it all came to pass from wrestling with which architect to go with through the budgeting process to project completion.
Cheers,