How do you manage the opening of a new course?
Certainly, you want as much fanfare as possible so that golfers and media rush in.
The rub is that the course will be raw, both in terms of how it plays and is operated. To get all the grass schemes right and to be comfortable in stressing the fairway grasses so that the course plays nice and fast will take a few years. Plus, once play opens, there are bound to be some design tweaks/enhancements that improve the offering.
Still, the bottom line is, well, the bottom line. You have just spent several years shelling out money to build a course and it is time to reverse the cash flow. This tension created between the desire for revenue and presenting the best product is an interesting one. For modern architects and owners, they must also deal with golf course raters from various magazines who swoop in and sometimes never return. This phenomenon didn’t exist in the Golden Age.
Of course, some courses open with a big bang and get even better; a prime example is Bandon Dunes. How do we know about its improvements? Because we go back every few years, first to play Pacific Dunes, then Bandon Trails, then Old Macdonald, etc.
Other courses aren’t as fortunate to have siblings to drive a regular flow of repeat business. Such is the case for Old Head in Kinsale, County Cork. It is a true stand alone entity as there is no course of comparable quality within a two hour drive. Golfers go to that part of the world for only one reason (artists and foodies go there for wholly other reasons). Old Head is certainly one of those ‘build it and they shall come’ courses that was constructed in a decade long era that includes Sand Hills, Barnbougle Dunes, and Cape Kidnappers.
Like many, The Morrissett Gang of Four charged there in late early May, 2000 to see what the fuss was about. Certainly, the location was as spectacular
as advertised and the routing was quite good as the cliff impacted play on both sides of holes. Yet, some of the mounding and detail work wasn’t the best. After two days, off we went, never to return. In the ensuing decade, pictures of Old Head continually popped up in various publications as it is occupies an almost comically mind-blowing site yet I never read too much in regards to the specific tinkering/refining that has occurred, much of it since 2007.
In the past year or so I noticed that Old Head made a big jump in the rankings of a British golf magazine. It made me curious and and I opted to reach out to Old Head in the hopes of an explanatory Feature Interview. As luck would have it, their Director of Golf, Danny Brassil, has been there since the beginning and kindly agreed. In forming his answers, he also worked with General Manager Jim O’Brien who has been there since the early days as well. Throughout the Feature Interview, they touch on some of the 25 plus things of significance accomplished by their on-going in-house work. They continue to look for ways to get the maximum out of the two thousand plus yards of cliffs that the course enjoys as well as working on the interior holes via better grassing schemes and superior putting surfaces throughout. Essentially, it seems to me that they aren’t content to ride on the coattails of their one-off setting but continue to tweak things for the sake of better golf. Personally in looking at various photos, some of the starkness from the early days seems to have softened in an appealing manner though the course will obviously always remain true to its rocky promontory location.
As an example of one of the improvements, the twelfth green has been pushed 60 yards back since opening day. It now sits in the neck of the headland and (I suppose!) the approach to the green may now match the thrill of the tee shot over the cliff wall as seen in the lower left.
Part of the mission of GolfClubAtlas.com is to both update and acknowledge good architectural work being done worldwide. This Feature Interview falls in those categories and it makes me very much want to get back to Old Head see both the improvements and how the maturation process has unfolded.
This month’s Feature Interview follows the October Cabot Links one as being focused on a specific club/course. Next up will be one of a private club in California, followed by ones at an Australian and Midwest club/course. I need to find an Asian enterprise as well. Cumulatively, we hope that this series of Feature Interviews will be uniquely informative and provide the reader with a sense of what is working (and what is not) at golf courses around the globe.
In the meanwhile, hope you enjoy catching up on some of the ‘quiet’ work that has been taking place at a course like no other.
Cheers,