Ben Crenshaw once said that time is the greatest asset that an architect can be given and time is a luxury that Mike Keiser brings to each of his projects with Old Macdonald being a prime example. With construction unfolding over a three year period, Old Mac looked and played perfectly on day one and opened to rave reviews earlier this month.
To me, Old Macdonald is like an interactive World Atlas of Golf. I remember being 13, looking at the aerial drawing of NGLA and thinking 'what the heck?'
in wonderment and that seems to be the same kind of gut response that Old Macdonald elicits.
Ironically, one winner of Old Macdonald's opening is ... Pacific Dunes! A tip of the hat to Renaissance Design for designing two courses on bordering property that are so wildly different and yet all the while do each property a great service. In the history of golf course architecture, no firm as ever pulled that off with the aplomb that they did. That's talent. Also, playing Old Mac freshly reminds one of some of the elegant poetry on hand at PacDunes, like the vicious 16th and the tiny 1st, the contours of the 2nd fairway, etc..
One funny thing about Old Mac is everyone tripping over themselves trying to determine its greatness. Because the size of its greens and fairway width are so unheard of, people are struggling to neatly classify it, especially as some of the design concepts are 'borrowed' from other holes. Like St. Andrews, its secrets won't be unveiled in just one or even ten rounds. All the various iterations of hole locations and winds need to be factored in - and that takes time, lots and lots of time.
Certainly a curse of modern architecture is that many modern courses reveal too much after just one or two rounds with their elevated tee boxes and perfect visuals. Such is emphatically not the case here, much to the relief of us traditionalists. Fortunately, it is no chore to play the course again and again so we all have something to look forward to.
Also, it is great to see different factions still lobbying for each of the other three courses at Bandon as their favorite. People dying to see water staunchly defend Bandon Dunes and so on down the list. Shocking for a resort, most people are happy regardless of the course that they get to go play.
Another cool thing about Old Mac is that it might be the hardest course at the resort for good players and the easiest course for bad players, which is a really neat trick to pull off. Like at Yale, good players can hit 15 greens and not break 80. Getting even short irons close to hole locations on large greens have vexed golfers for a century plus at St. Andrews. At the same time, there are lots of ways at Old MacDonald to break 90 or 100 as you are almost guaranteed not to lose a ball.
Posting the profile of a course of this dimension the week after Pebble Beach is great as Pebble's green are ~ 70% smaller than here. Both are great courses but such an eye-popping difference highlights golf's diversity of playing fields, which is its ultimate trump card over all sports.
Hope you enjoy some of the photos, especially of the ground contours like around the Road bunker or of the sixth green. They highlight that this is a special course for reasons that we are only beginning to appreciate.
Cheers,