Flip Da Script: The golf course that changed everything for you?

[Jim Colton]

In your walk as a golfer and golf-course architecture aficianado, is there a golf course that completely changed how you viewed all courses before and since?

I'm guessing my answer is shared with many: St Andrews. I played my one and only round there back in October 2000.  Prior to that, I had enjoyed challenging, bent-grass, tree-lined parkland courses (Blackwolf Run River was my nirvana). St Andrews opened my eyes to so much - ground game, firm-and-fast turf, quirk, width and angles. I can honestly say I haven't been the same since.  Funny what one round can do.

I have some numbers-crunching idea related to this in mind, as usual, but before I share that, I'd love to hear some other examples of courses that flipped your script.
 

[Bill Brightly]

For me it was Royal County Down. Admittedly, I played almost exclusively parkland courses for tweny five years before taking a couple of trips to Ireland. While I immediately liked the look of the courses, I think I spent more time trying to figure out how to get the damn ball in the hole rather than study the golf course. On my second trip to Ireland I got to play RCD, and I was blown away. The use of the dunes, the turf, the gorse, the incredible blending of colors (differing shades of yellow,green, brown and splashes of purple) just blew me away. I stopped worrying about my score and just enjoyed the surrounds and the conversation with my caddie.

Of course, the side story is that is I played the round as a single and really hit it very well. So every group that saw me coming waved me on through, which was very nice, but resulted in a round that lasted only 2 hours and 10 minutes. I wanted to scream:  "NOOOOO, this can't be over!"  

[Mark Saltzman]

Jim,

For me it was Merion.  When I played TOC several years ago I had zero interest in GCA.  When I played TOC I enjoyed it, loved the history, but was one of those guys that simply didn't get why it was so good.  I only wish I could go back there today and get another look at it...

When I played Merion, I was fortunate to have played with a past club champion who knew every inch of the golf course.  He really opened my eyes to how much strategy there could be on any single hole.  Since then, whenever I play a golf course, I ask the question "why" on every hole.  Why was the hole routed as it was?  Why were the hazards placed where they were?  Why is the green the size it is and why was it shaped the way it is?...  Of course, my answers to these questions may not be as educated as would be the answers of some or many on this site, but without a doubt, after Merion, how I view a golf course has changed.

Mark 

[Jim_Kennedy]

Yale did the trick for me. Prior to playing it in '85 I had never seen a course built on the same scale or scope.

[Tyler Kearns]

Jim,

Not a single course in particular, but a 14-course tour of Australia in general was an eye-opening experience. The quality of the designs were, as a whole, outstanding, but I had played a few courses matching their caliber before. To me, it was the way the golf courses were maintained. No rough on the leading edge of bunkers. Bunkers that ate into the edge of greens, again, no rough. Bunkers that did not present a uniform surface, and were not predictable. Rough that presented lies ranging from perfect, to awful and everything in between, because it was left alone, bare dirt patches and all. Firm and fast turf conditions. The guys I played with never felt entitled to perfect lies, they accepted the good and the bad as one as part of the game.

Tyler

[Ben Sims]

Jim,

You've heard me talk of the Feb-Jun of 2009 timeframe as the catalyst to all of this golfing stuff.  It was pretty simple for me really.

-Pasatiempo's greens and bunkering were just so different and appealing to me.  I had never been afraid of a putt or a chip like I was that day.  It has stuck with me.

-The 36-hour experience of Sheep Ranch, Pac Dunes and 10 holes of the brand new Old Macdonald.  I will never recapture that sensory overload and wonder again.  It was as if I had been eating at Kentucky Fried Chicken my entire life, only to eat my mom's fried chicken for the first time at 26 years old.  That was my discovery of links golf and its intricacies, boldness and subtleties.  

-In June of that year, I saw your home course, Ballyneal.  I had never swashbuckled like that on a golf course before.  It was such a new idea, to have a golf course that was wild, raw, and grand, while leaving little intimate moments--like on the 3rd green.  

There's others.  Wolf Point is the course I most want to play at the moment.  Mostly because Don is there and we have some work to do and beer to drink.  Oakmont and Pine Valley showed me how humbling golf can be, and how the members of those clubs are more normal than most private clubs.  

Jim, I really can't pick just one.  Golf has been very good to me.  Every course I see and play has an affect on what I think about golf courses and what they should be for the golfer.

[Brad Tufts]

Really cool question Jim.

1994 or so...Essex County Club in MA.  I first played there in a junior interclub and thought, "whoa, these older-looking layouts are really cool, especially with the long grass."  This was my intro to aesthetics.  I was only 13 though.

1999...first round in Scotland, at Turnberry.  "Wow, I thought I was pretty good at this game.  This is like I have never played golf before."  Links golf is a totally different game than Mass. parkland courses like mine.  Also perked up my golf travel bug.  I was a 6 handicap at the time, and I shot a smooth 85.  I only broke 80 about 5 times in 22 rounds in Scotland in '99.

2001...Ekwanok with the golf team.  "Wow, there are great courses in the country that I still know nothing about."  I joined GCA around this time.

2004...Summer working at Myopia.  Nothing like getting to know a great course with many rounds and careful study.  In 2010, when the Mass. Amateur was played there, I took a couple guys around on a practice round and they were skeptical when I told them they had really lucked out with their practice round pairing.  About 4 hours later, they knew what I meant.  I bet I did 95% of the talking!

[JMEvensky]

Winged Foot-West.

I grew up playing tree lined courses with smallish greens.Some were difficult,some were long (back then).But I'd never seen the whole shooting match in one golf course.It was hard as hell but I had a blast.It felt familiar--but it was completely different.Even for someone as unsophisticated as I,it was obvious that the guy who had designed WFW was light years better than the guys I was used to.

I played QR the next day and realized that everything I'd ever read about AWT was right.

The first links course I ever played was Lahinch.This made me realize that there was a whole different kind of game of golf out there.I also learned that I really love links golf.

[Richard Choi]

Easy for me, it is Bandon Dunes.

I went there a year after it opened. Until then, I though any course without trees was a "links" course. Bandon Dunes opened my eyes to what a true links course is, what firm and fast really means, and just how much fun this type of golf is. Until then I was like everybody else where immaculate conditions and nice tree-lined fairways were the bee's knees.

I don't believe that anymore.

[Peter Pallotta]

Jim -- alas only two or three, and only one from the playing: Crystal Downs gave me the personal experience of a journey through a wonderfully designed golf course with surprises and challenges of all sorts (and left me thinking, "ah, this is why the posters on gca.com love great golf courses); and the first pictures of Ballyneal I saw snapped me into seeing the nuance/difference between minimalism and naturalism...freedom golf as Adam C calls it.  That was a breakthrough for me.  

Peter

[PCCraig]

The Dunes Club as a Freshman in high school. In the days before GCA and an easy google search, I had no idea what to expect when as part of a local high school competition (the old Winnetka "May Madness" between NT and Loyola golfers) organized a day trip via coach bus to the club. I had played some very good golf courses before that, but nothing was like the natural sandy "Pine Valley" look that I had never experienced before. That day we pretty much had the run of the club, and played 36 holes of various match play games.

[K. Krahenbuhl]

Merion Golf Club

It was the first elite private course I had played in the US and the first course that gave me that feeling which is hard to define.  I've spent quite a bit of time since searching for that feeling elsewhere, but I've only been able to find it a couple of times.  I have only played Merion a few times now, but I could sit down this afternoon and draw a yardage book from memory that I think would be reasonably accurate.  To me that is what seperates the best designs from the rest.

[Jon Spaulding]

Either Pasatiempo or Foulpointe. It's a toss up at this point.

[Jaeger Kovich]

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[Jaeger Kovich]

Wed. June 16, 2004: Shinnecock Hills, Southampton, NY. Hole #7.

The summer between Jr. and Sr. year of high school I was lucky enough be to given a pair of tickets to the final practice round before the open. I had just completed my first season on the Millbook golf team and was determined to improve my game after being embarrassed in the New England Invitation Tournament that served as the Championship final match. I had probably played somewhere around 15 different golf courses, mostly through the school team before I got to Southampton. Oddly enough, one of the courses was actually The Hotchkiss School course designed by Raynor and Banks, although I wouldn't know it for years to come.

After spending the morning walking the course backwards in hopes to see as many different Pros as possible, I decided to rest the legs and sit down at a grandstand. I happen to pick the grandstand behind #7 tee. Group after group came to the tee of the 184 yard par-3, and ball after ball hit the green and rolled off to the left. Then one of biggest foursomes of the afternoon came through: Vijah Singh, Adam Scott, Darren Clark, and a 4th who escapes me, all dropping multiple shots on the tee, and not one could get it to stay on the putting surface.


I remember walking in to my parents room that evening after taking the train home, and telling my father about the seventh hole, how it was going to be the story of the week and was near impossible to play. Interested in what I was yammering on about, he turned on the Golf Channel Open preview, and there it was, one of the biggest controversies in golf course history. It was a pretty special insight into the possibilities of golf courses.

[Chris Shaida]

(well, I'm not a 'golf course aficianado' just a wannabe-but-probably-won't-be-until-the-next-life but...) Lahinch. Started golf late (10 years ago) had been playing for five years, never been to a links course.  First tee right by the road, no trees, wind, rain--something snapped (into place I hope, but certainly snapped)!--ah, so THIS is golf!

[Bill_McBride]

The Valley Club of Montecito really made me see how much better a course could be than the run-of-the-mill courses I had been playing until I joined the UC Santa Barbara golf team and got to play there in 1962.

Until then the best courses I had played were Sonoma Golf Club, Pasatiempo, and the Meadow Club (all still favorites).  There was just something about the way the architect (at that time I didn't even know Dr Mackenzie was the GCA!) used the natural feature to maximum advantage, and how the routing made as much use as possible of the hills and the creeks.  I also saw, really for the first time, that you had to very careful with your approach shots so as to avoid really diabolical slopes!

Later I learned that both the Meadow Club, where I caddied but only got to play once, and Pasatiempo were also Mackenzie courses.  While they were a notch behind the Valley Club, I learned that who designed the course made a big difference in what I enjoyed about golf.

[Will MacEwen]

Bandon/Pacific, I think I made my first trek in 2002.

Much like Rich, I had just never experienced that style of golf, which was just so much fun.  I haven't played many of the classics, and most of the vaunted publics in BC are quite penal.  The openness of the land and the play was invigorating, and the experience really stuck with me and changed much of my thinking.

[Ronald Montesano]

I must be a whack job extraordinaire, as I have these awakenings every single golf season. As a kid, Grover Cleveland (CCB/1912 US Open) did it, then Park Club (Allison/Colt) as an 8th grader on the JV team, #2 as a junior in h/s, then CCBuffalo (Ross) as a senior, then Stafford (Travis) after college, then St. Andrews Old on honeymoon, then Bandon for 40th birthday, then Triggs at age 43, then Ballyhack, then, God Willing, Bethpage and Tallgrass and Paramount and Knoll West in 2011!!!

[Bruce Wellmon]

Harbour Town, 1975 or '76. My club's ex-pro took a job there and my dad and I were able to play. Not only was it a golf learning experience the 2 gentlemen we were paired with were sent there to settle a labour/union dispute/strike happening in California. As a high school senior it was eye opening watching them negotiate and do business.

[Tim Martin]

Yale did the trick for me. Prior to playing it in '85 I had never seen a course built on the same scale or scope.

Jim-Yale did it for me as well. I had never seen anything so bold or different. I understood immediately that it would act as a sort of benchmark for me as to all those that came after. My feelings have not changed some 27 years later.

[David Kelly]

I was into golf architecture and links golf before I had ever played a course so there is no course that flipped the switch or changed everything.  HOWEVER, it was watching the 1978 British Open from St. Andrews on television and staring at original World Atlas of Golf for hours that got me thinking about golf architecture and got me interested in playing golf.  I was fascinated by the classic courses of the UK and USA from day one.

Bill,
Do you still think Pasatiempo is a notch below the Valley Club?

[Peter_Collins]

Prairie Dunes the first weekend of October 2005 . . . but I didn't realize it until the third weekend of October when I realized I could still vividly remember every shot I played, every roll in the fairway, putting over the "elephant" buried in the second green, the smell of the red fescue gone to seed in the gunch, the view of the sunset from the 18th tee.

There were a few small steps on the way, the feeling that I was playing golf on Gilligan's Island at the Ocean Course, a three day respite from a cold gray Kansas winter at emerald green Pasatiempo in February, Pebble, Spanish Bay, my first trip around Southern Hills, a little known Ross on the wrong side of the tracks in Kansas City called Hillcrest Country Club to name a few.

[John Mayhugh]

Yale did the trick for me. Prior to playing it in '85 I had never seen a course built on the same scale or scope.

Jim-Yale did it for me as well. I had never seen anything so bold or different. I understood immediately that it would act as a sort of benchmark for me as to all those that came after. My feelings have not changed some 27 years later.

Yale may be the clubhouse leader.  Jim's comment about scale & slope is exactly what hit me.  I never knew a golf course could be like that.

[Tom MacWood]

Columbia in DC in the 1980s. I was familiar with modern architecture, and had played modern quirky architecture like Harbour Town, but had never played a truly quirky course. After Columbia I realized how much fun and interesting gca could be.