Could you provide a list of courses in North America that would expose the interested amateur to the best architecture the continent has to offer, or put another way, choose your favourite architects and give your favourite work of each?
Dale,
I’ve decided to give you 10 Places with 10 interesting lessons ... all in North America
1. Augusta National (Mackenzie and Jones) – the contours make the course
If you could only study one course it would be St. Andrew’s. If you want the North American equivalent it just might just be Augusta National. The key to Augusta’s greatness lies in contour. The big contours in the fairway dictate strategy and complicate the stance for approach shots. Because the contours around the greens are kept short they have a major impact on recovery shots and often pull a missed shot away from the green. But the greatest contours at Augusta are found on the greens. The greens demand positional play in order to attack the pin and create very complicated putts if the player finds themselves on the wrong side. The bunkers and water at Augusta all play a minor role compared to the greens.
All the bodies help make the undulations clear – I still can’t believe the green goes back and to the left after the rise
2. Pinehurst #2 (Ross) – the difficulty of short grass
Whether Ross created the fall away greens and chipping areas is a moot point, all that matters is what effect it has on play. Short grass can be a more effective hazard that a bunker, it’s easier for a weaker player, but far more daunting for a better player. The advantage to a weaker player is they can play to their strengths; the disadvantage to a good player is they are faced with too many options. Bad decisions are often a bigger factor than poor execution. They may not need to be a severe as Pinehurst’s greens, but the effect is still the same.
3. Shinnecock Hills (Flynn) – carry angles
No architect is better at producing exceptional and inviting carry angles quite like William Flynn. Flynn provides plenty of room off the tee on most holes at Shinney as long as you’re willing to go wide and accept playing for bogie, but a good player knows they must take on a carry line in order to shorten the hole and gain the ideal position for the approach. At the greens he reinforces the need for position with greens that droop at the edges which greatly reduce the available area once you play away from the carry line. The player knows right from that start that they must flirt with the carry lines all day in order to put together a good score.
4. San Francisco (Tillinghast) – scale and grandeur
I admire Tillinghast’s ability to think on a grand scale. This is likely the hardest of all the skills to explain or to aquire. San Francisco is as big and wide a golf course that I know, it features some of the most elaborate and bold bunkering that I have ever seen. The delight is how the architecture fits the property through Tillinghast’s use of additional width and large open spaces. It takes a very clever architect to understand how to expand the scale of a golf course without overwhelming everything around it. This is one of the few cases where it works to perfection.
5. Pine Valley (Crump) – difficulty has nothing to do with length
Like St. Andrew’s there are too many great lessons to learn, so I will stick with one, yardage. Pine Valley proves that difficulty and length are not synonymous. The course was a relative short 6,600 yards from the tips, and a surprisingly comfortable driving course too, and yet it is one of the hardest courses in the world. How? Through intimidation, penal hazards and a series of very difficult approach shots where a miss is punished severely. Pine Valley has a better variety of hole lengths than any other course in the world. Crump gives you the opportunity to go for a par four and asks you to hit a long running approach into the next. Variety is the spice of life and variety in yardages makes for the most interesting golf courses.
Few holes are better than the 13th at Pine Valley
6. Merion (Hugh Wilson) – greatness on a small property
Merion may be the best routing in golf. On such a small property Hugh Wilson was able to find a flawless layout. The fun of the golf course routing is that it has a number of unconventional aspects to it: all par fives are in the first four holes, there is a long run of shorter holes from 7 through to 13, all climaxed by a grinding finishing 5. It works so well for two reasons; the first is that Wilson has simply used the best available holes and not been influenced by convention. The second is the rhythm of the course, it works almost like a three act play. The player is given a firm introduction to the course and it’s challenges in the opening 6, he is given an opportunity to try and be much more aggressive or to even score if he dares for the next 7, and the final act is survival. Merion gives the player all they can handle in the final 5 to see how good they really are.
7. Prairie Dunes (Maxwell) – sense of place
Prairie Dunes embraces the surrounding landscape unlike any other course in North America. The line between maintained turf and native prairie is blurred by the incorporation of native vegetation in the architecture. This is most prevalent in the bunkering where they appear like natural sand blow outs with some remnants of the native vegetation still surviving at the edges. You’re left awestruck as you look out beyond the holes and imagine that the prairie must go on forever over those next set of low hills in the distance. I consider the golf course as an oasis, not for the golf played within the prairie environment, but the prairie environment being protected and nurtured because a golf club thinks it’s important.
8. National Golf links of America (MacDonald) – understanding strategies of the great holes
I agree with Macdonald’s idea that there are no new ideas to bring to the game, that everything has been done, and the newness is more the ability of the architect to adapt old ideas to new situations. Charles Blair MacDonald (a Canadian!) adapted the great holes and strategies to create the National Golf Links of America. The lesson is simple, to be a great architect you must study and understand the ideas of the great holes before you can design them yourself. MacDonald’s adaptations are some of the finest, and some of his more innovative uses of them are well worth studying too.
The most fun course in the world – National Golf Links of America
9. Cypress Point (MacKenzie and Hunter) – blending in and standing out
If you polled the architects, Alister MacKenzie is in the discussion for who is the greatest architect in history. He had a wonderful knack of incorporating natural features and in particular natural hazards into the golf course. At Cypress Point he incorporated the native dunes into the design, created bunkering that seemed to mimic the canopy tops in the forested section, found a series of holes that embrace the ocean and finally choose to incorporate the impressive Cypress of the property and even make them part of the design. His work manages to stand out when it needs to and blend back in where more appropriate. That is the hand of an artist.
10. Riviera (Thomas) – asking the player to work the ball
George Thomas probably combined strategy and beauty as well as any architect. He was a master strategist, who rewarded a player for positional play, but liked to make the player work to get the ball into position. There is no course quite like Riviera, where a player is continuously encouraged to hit either a draw or fade off the tee. Where the course excels further is the continuous balance back and forth so that no player has an advantage; many of the holes call for fade from the tee and then the draw on the approach, the next hole will often ask for the exact opposite strategy so no player can gain an advantage. He expertly used a combination of Eucalyptus trees, bunkers, slopes of the greens, and the baranca to make the player shape their shots. Riviera is a remarkably well balanced test of shot-making.