France to host 2018 Ryder Cup

[Ron Csigo]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20110517/sp_nm/us_golf_ryder_host_3

Has anyone played Le Golf National?  Seems to be reminiscent of the K Club in Ireland.

[PCCraig]

Sounds like a good choice to me. I obviously don't like the bidding process these countries/clubs have to go through in order to essentially buy the tournament, but if a country is going to by it I'm glad a country who hasn't hosted yet got it.

[David_Tepper]

I hope Robin Hiseman gets to build the course he has designed near Madrid even though it was not selected to host the event.

[Randy Thompson]

Congrats to Von Hagge and design associates, too bad Bob didn´t hang in there a little longer to recieve the good news.

[Eric Smith]

Exciting news for France. Can't help but be bummed for Robin, however.

[Tom_Doak]

I am headed to Paris in a few days with my wife.  Le Golf National is NOT on the agenda.


Randy:

Why the congratulations to Von Hagge & Associates?  I thought Golf National was designed by a French architect.

[Cristian]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20110517/sp_nm/us_golf_ryder_host_3

Has anyone played Le Golf National?  Seems to be reminiscent of the K Club in Ireland.

I have played it a few years ago. I think it was designed by a Mr Chesnault(?), with Von Hagge serving as a consultant.

Golf National is very different to the K-club; hardly any tree's and inland links style. I remember sandy soil, but don't know whether it is natural or sand capped.

Some of the holes are really well done indeed, imposing the illusion of playing a real links course. However other holes have a completely different character with water hazards and bulk headed greens; When I was there 7 or 8 years ago the course did not play nearly as firm as a real links.

The closing holes in particular are very American style target golf with water hazards, not everybody's cup of tea, but a guarantee for exciting Matchplay finishes, including a Belfry style finishing two shot par 5 (perhaps now played as a p4). The course was very popular with european tour-pro's when the French Open was there. Also it is an ideal Stadium course with extremely large spectator mounds.

Would I make an effort to get back there? No.

[Adrian_Stiff]

The National is a big favourite with the top players. It is a mixture of holes with the combination of linksy holes and modern holes with water. Everything has been man made from the flattest dullest parcel you have ever seen. The fairways I think are rootzoned.

You can vote A and hail it as brilliant or you can vote B and say its fake, both answers IMO are correct.

I have never heard a bad word about it and the French Open has been going there for a long time, the course will be a perfect venue for mass viewing and drama.

On the Plus side for architects I heard that the French federation have pledged to build 100 new courses by 2018 as part of their bid, so Im off to live in France!

[Randy Thompson]

 
Tom,
Kelly can probably tell you better than me but I know that both archtiects claimed to have taken the lead role in the design. i think it almost went to court. last time i checked the web site gave both credit but not sure who had the lead. But Bob told me, it was 98% their design and I was working in the south of France for him at the time. If you knew Bob like I knew him, their was never any doubt to doubt his word. Hopefully Kelly will jump in and provide more details.

[Steve Okula]

I've played the course, but my game is pathetic so not very instructive to most people here. I live only about 30 minutes away, and I've been there for one reason or another several times.

Most people like the course, but I'm not crazy about it. I object to forced carries over water on the approach shots on the first two holes, and way too much water on the last four as well. But that's just me, as cited above, the pros apparently love it. It has large greens, and is an excellent spectators course, real stadium design. There is one excellent par five on the back ninie, the 14th I think.

It is a remarkable feat of engineering on a flat site. The Peugeot Golf Guide lists the Frenchman Hubert Chesneau as the architect, with Van Hagge as consultant. Considering that Chesneau doesn't have his name on any other golf course, I would surmise that any merit to the design comes from Van Hagge.

Golf National is an adequate, if not brilliant venue for the Ryder Cup. It's a solid design for the pros, with no obvious weakness, forgiving the overbearing clubhouse behind the 18th green. It has several important advantages apart from the course itself: close to Paris with all those fabulous hotels and restaurants, within an hour of both Charles de Gaulle and Orly airports, easy access on wide roads, abundant outdoor and indoor space on site, plus they've been holding the Fench Open for many years, one of the bigger money European Tour events, and so they have acquired tournament preparation skills and equipment.

[Tom_Doak]

Randy and Steve:

Hubert Chesneau's name is the one I've always seen attached to it, but for the most part you only see stuff about it in European magazines, and they might be inclined to overstate his role.

The pictures I've seen make it look like somebody in France watched the early TPC at Sawgrass events on television and said, "We can do that!"  So, it may well make for exciting tournament golf, but it's one I have never had much interest in seeing.

Hopefully this will give our project in Bordeaux a little boost forward.  We need it!

[Adrian_Stiff]

Todays French win should be good for you Tom and all Euro-archies..... 100 new courses if its true could be a lifeline for many and perhaps some silver lining for Robin who lost out with Madrid.

The Paris National is a very tough course and definetly not one for splatters. I agree there is some mirror in bits of Sawgrass, definitely a top 10 course for mainland Europe though if the raters are good players.

[Mark Chaplin]

Adrian - do we really believe 100 new courses will be built as part of the Ryder Cup package?

[Adrian_Stiff]

Could be. Lets say the French put E1M into each golf project over the next 7 years, that into 100 projects is about what Celtic Manor pumped into the golf economy. The French may see a 100,000,000 Euro boost into the sport and economy as wise. The wording I heard was 100 new courses arranged around the major French cities... but

Strikes me any bid for the Ryder Cup these days involves some sort of huge financial pump into golf. If these sums of monies are going back into the game and someone sees the value that high good luck. I cant quite figure out it myself but I am obviously not clever enough and missing something.

[Steve Okula]

A hundred new courses in France in the next seven years is the stuff of wild fantasy. There are not the investors, the sites, the permissions, or the demand. There haven't been five new courses in the ten years I've lived here.

[Cristian]

Adrian - do we really believe 100 new courses will be built as part of the Ryder Cup package?

It would not be a good idea, as there are already too many courses in France with too little play. However I think they are thinking about limited length, low financial threshold 6 or 9-hole courses in the urban areas. It would be interesting to see how that works out in terms of appealing to a wider audience.

[Randy Thompson]

My thoughts have already been voiced by Steve...so ditto on what he said!

[Alfonso Erhardt]

Unfortunately it is not yet clear if the Spanish course will be built in the absence of the Ryder Cup....

[Tom_Doak]

Tom, can you share any plans for your project in Bordeaux?

I'm visiting Bordeaux with the family this July and am very much looking forward to playing Bill Coore's Medoc course...Dave Zink told me that he and Bill made some upgrades to the design a year or two ago....have you played there and/or Rod Whitman's course too?

Bill:

The project in Bordeaux is in the hilly land east of St. Emilion.  But it's really not a project yet, so there is no point in saying much more until they are committed to doing it.

I have not played the courses at Medoc, but walked both of them in February when I was there.  That side of the river is very flat and sandy, very different from the land I've been looking at.  They are both nice courses but they aren't stunners.  And the wild boars like the grubs in the fairways a bit too much!!

[Bill_McBride]

I hope Robin's course does go ahead.  It appears the organizers must have sunk a fair amount of money in the project already.

[Robin_Hiseman]

Very disappointed with the outcome as you can appreciate, though it was not the slightest surprise.

Apparently, the assessment panel used a points scoring system to rank the bids.  France scored a little over a 1000 points and Madrid was second, somewhere in the mid 900's.  I've also been told that our proposed Madrid golf course scored maximum points in the assessment, so there really was nothing more I could have done to influence the outcome.

The battle now is to keep the project alive. 

[Ulrich Mayring]

Ok, let me be a bit provocative, but all meant in good spirit: Golf doesn't need any more ultra-expensive, high-end courses built for just one tournament and left to a bunch of Donald Trump types afterwards. That is not the way to move this sport and this industry forward into the future.

Instead, what golf needs to do is utilise its high-end courses in a way that most people think it's actually worth having them around. If there is one good tournament course in Paris and it can run the Open de France and provide exciting drama year-in, year-out, then why the hell do we need to build another ivory tower? Instead, we need many more low-end, neighborhood tracks, which are accessible to the whole family - this will grow the game in a way that one or the other high-end facility is tolerated as well.

So the French bid was spot-on and I can hardly believe that the European Tour seemed so clear-minded as to notice it. The French were the only ones who came in with an existing and proven tournament course, one where very little has to be done to get it ready for the Ryder Cup, so most of the budget can actually go into building a number of affordable public options, such as driving ranges and pitch & putt courses. As far as growing the game through the staging of the Ryder Cup is concerned, the right choice was made. The sustainable and reasonable plan won - who woulda thunk?

Ulrich

[Marty Bonnar]

L'alliance ancienne notwithstanding, the French should do the noble thing and gift the tournee to Spain.
The Ryder Cup is in serious danger of disappearing up it's own sphincter. France and the French in the majority don't give a shit about golf and this will do nothing to change that situation. Let them host as many gastronomic, vinicultural and gauloisian contests as they wish,. They'll win em all hands down - thankfully. Leave golf to 'proper' golfing nations.
bonjour et cul-de-sac,
F.

[Steve Okula]

Tom Doak, I will definitely check out the potential site when visiting Bordeaux.

Question to Tom and the group-Is making the necessary connection to play Les Bordes worth the effort?

Golf World lists it as the #1 course in continental Europe and better than Morfontaine which seems hard to believe (but I don't know that for a fact having never played Les Borde).  I must say the picture of LB;s  1st hole encircled by a natural looking bunker complex (Von Hagge's American work has always struck me as rather contrived and forced) looks very cool.  Pictures of other holes, however, look like the 1970s woods and water hazard look of Innisbrook Copperhead.

With 95 played of the last 3 Golf Magazine World Top 100 lists (my trip with my wife to Japan and South Korea for the final 5 being delayed to next spring), my new goal is to play Darius Oliver's Planet Golf World Top 100 which he posts online at his excellent website which includes a great interview with Tom regarding China.  Darius rates Les Bordes as the 4th best course in France behind Morfontaine, Le Prince de Provence and Chantilly.

Very interested in opinions from those who have played Les Bordes...merci beaucoup.

Bill,

I played Les Bordes six years ago. I know that good golfers are invariably impressed with the layout, but I play like a stiff and didn’t think it was the best in France. I would put Morfontaine, Fontainebleau, and St. Germain, for openers, easily ahead of LB.
 
There are long, long, walks from greens to tees. A couple of green complexes (10 comes to mind, I think the other was the 16th, a par 3) are as you say, contrived, sitting high up on artificial looking hills. There is one par 5, (the 7th?), a 180° horseshoe dogleg bending around a lake that I thought was bizarre, but maybe a better player would appreciate it. There are many tee platforms on each hole providing an incredibly wide variety of distances. I played from the middle tees, and that was harsh enough, I expect from the backs it’s a monster.

The course was in impeccable condition, as I understand is the norm. I was there on a gorgeous spring day in mid-week, and besides my group we saw one, single solitary golfer on the practice tee and the course was otherwise empty. I think that this is normal as well. LB has recently been acquired new owners, and I understand that they have adopted a strategy of uber-exclusivity, very high initiation fees, and six-star service. You may have a problem with access.

I have reliable information that another eighteen holes at LB (Van Hagge design again) is on the drawing board, permissions and finance are in place, and they will be breaking ground in 2012. There is already a second 18 there, but it’s a public course, I don’t know who designed it and I didn’t see it so can’t comment.

[Scott Warren]

Bill,

I contacted Les Bordes about playing when I was passing through that area in Summer 2009 and the chap I got in touch with (I can try to find his name in my old emails if you like?) in the office was really welcoming and said he had a member who enjoyed showing visitors around and that if he were there on the dates I was around he'd line it up.

Unfortunately our dates didn't work out, but I certainly found them really welcoming and open to being contacted.