Geoff Ogilvy and Mike Clayton talk architecture, Prez Cup & Ryl. Melbourne

[Jay Flemma]

http://jayflemma.thegolfspace.com/?p=3967


From the Interview:

Should golf’s governing bodies focus a little more on golf course architecture when selecting venues for major championships?

MC: The Open Championship rotation is great and they usually get the set-up right. Turnberry in 1986 and Carnoustie were the aberrations. Augusta is Augusta. Pinehurst is the next U.S. Open that has a chance to show golf can be great without the fixation for defending courses with long grass and narrow fairways. Those who pick the championship courses in America need to show there is another way – and if a course of 7,400 yards cannot defend itself without having to resort to long grass and narrow fairways, it shows what a poor job the administration has done with equipment regulation.

JF: Well then what did you both think of Atlanta Athletic Club for the recent PGA Championship?

GO: Well Atlanta Athletic Club wasn’t my favorite. It’s difficult just to be difficult in a lot of places and frequently it didn’t make a lot of strategic sense.

JF: Explain what you mean by “strategic sense.”

GO: Well for example, the green opens up if you take the tiger line off the tee, but if you take the safer option, the second shot is harder. It’s in the way the fairway bunkering and the way greens were set up and working together, like 13 at Augusta. Things like when you take the risk, you have a flatter lie or a better angle and/or a shorter shot in. Atlanta Athletic Club didn’t have anything like that. It wasn’t interesting to play, there was very little where you had to make decisions and use thought to approach the course. It just asks you execute great shots, but didn’t ask you to make strategic decisions. I think people were complaining that although it’s difficult because it’s super-narrow and super-long, it doesn’t hold your interest. There were some interesting short holes, but as a general rule, when they had a choice, they just made it long and narrow.

That’s where some people get architecture wrong. It’s one thing to be hard, but hard doesn’t mean good. Look at Oakmont, it’s one of the hardest courses in the world, but it’s also one of the greatest courses in the World.

JF: Is that because of the terrific green contours and fairway undulations?

GO: There’s that, but it’s also about the angles, and coming in from the correct angle is crucial to playing Oakmont. Also, it’s all about the short grass around the greens, all those great greenside slopes and contours that allow you to play any number of different recovery shots – putt, bump and run, pitch and check, lob. Golf is more interesting with the short grass hazard, it may be the most strategic element in golf. Everyone fears that ball trickling back to your feet, or down to the bottom of a hill, or slowly rolling into a bunker…

JF: …behind you…

GO: Exactly. Horrifying. A golfer’s worst nightmare.

JF: What about the Ryder Cup/President’s Cup venues? Does the President’s Cup play better courses than the Ryder Cup?

GO: In recent times, the President’s Cup has been played on better courses. Royal Montreal is a great golf course, as was Harding Park. Royal Melbourne will be wonderful. The Ryder Cup lately hasn’t showed the best courses each country has to offer. The Belfry isn’t the best course in the U.K. – a long way from it actually. Celtic Manor? Not wonderful. Valderrama is fine, but Europe still hasn’t shown its best. It has the odd good course here or there.

In America, Oakland Hills was a great course. The others? Not so much. But the Ryder Cup is such a big event, the course really isn’t the star. At the U.S. Open or PGA, it’s about the course and how the players will handle it. At the Ryder Cup, it’s about how are they going to deal with the other players and the pressure, but of course it’s always a more interesting event when played on a more interesting golf course.

MC: The last Ryder Cup played on a proper course in Europe was 1981 at Walton Heath. Was the last great course to host a President’s Cup Royal Melbourne in 1998?

[Tim Gavrich]

Really interesting interview, Jay.  The thing that pops out most to me is that Ogilvy didn't mention Merion as a future US Open site that will showcase great architecture; instead, he named 2014 at Pinehurst as that next opportunity.  I imagine he's probably inclined to think it's on the shorter side?  Or did he discount it because it will have narrow fairways and long rough?

[Anthony Butler]

Really interesting interview, Jay.  The thing that pops out most to me is that Ogilvy didn't mention Merion as a future US Open site that will showcase great architecture; instead, he named 2014 at Pinehurst as that next opportunity.  I imagine he's probably inclined to think it's on the shorter side?  Or did he discount it because it will have narrow fairways and long rough?

Not surprising Ogilvy likes Pinehurst. Any course that makes it harder to hit and hold the greens favors his game. He should contend at Pinehurst if he's in any sort of form. I would also be surprised if Norman doesn't play him every session at RM.

[Jay Flemma]

Tim and Anthony - I honestly have no answer to that question about Merion, and I wish I had - on the fly - thought to ask it.  It's a little tougher doing a three way interview because when the third person chimes in you have two people's answers to think about.  When I ask a question, I really try to listen to the answer and ask follow-ups that expand even further on what they are thnking.  This one was tougher still because of time constraints.

I'll ask Geoff and Mike both about that, it's an excellent question.

[Jay Flemma]

By the way - here's another teaser:

JF: Are you heartened by the way architecture is moving?

GO: It’s amazing to see some of the best golf courses in the World being built right now. The last 15-20 years or so we’ve had Coore and Crenshaw, Tom Doak and Gil Hanse building some golf courses that feel and look like they were built in the golden age – rugged, and with less earthmoving – places like Sand Hills and Barnbougle Dunes and Old Sandwich and Boston Golf Club. They’re not being built to be difficult or to attract pro tournaments, they’re just concentrating on designing great golf courses. Bandon Dunes is three hours from civilization, and you can’t get a tee time, yet back when he told people he was going to build out there [Kaiser] people laughed at him and said it was crazy. Now there’s four courses. This new crop of designers is building modern courses that look like they were built in the ‘30s.

JF: They also play like the ‘30s.

GO: Yes, they play strategically. They also got great pieces of land. Like Sebonack, it’s much better to give that great land to a golf course and not to houses.

Also with websites like Golf Club Atlas, Geoff Shackelford’s sites, and your websites and writing, there’s writers and people getting more and more golfers interested in the subject and they are not only learning about golf course architecture, but getting involved. The Internet really helped. Now, it’s not just a friend telling a friend about a great course he played, we can learn all learn so much about so many more great courses at the click of a mouse. Word spreads right away about courses, and we all get brought up to speed almost immediately.

And it was you bloggers and Internet writers that led the mainstream on the issue. You guys led the scene from people lamenting in a room that “there is better golf out there” by writing and greatly increasing public interest and awareness, and the word is spreading into the mainstream and getting out there to the general public.

MC: Also, right now, the golf design business is moving to Asia and they need to establish a culture of great courses, not simply copies of what they see on television from America. Bill Coore and Tom Doak are doing courses in China right now and those will hopefully show there is another way and open the doors for others to follow.

JF: You raise a great point there. Isn’t television right now a problem for great golf architecture because A) everyone wants to copy what they see on TV, B) TV only seems to show length, water, flat greens, and ridiculous green speeds and C) because TV preconditions us by simply saying what an outstanding course everything is, even if it’s horrible architecture?

GO: TV can be the enemy – overproduction and over commenting can be misleading. Look at St. Andrews for example. It looks strange on TV, it looks kind of funny. St. Georges is another where, at least on TV, you don’t see the undulations, and also the brown fairways look motley, but it’s the best grass to play on. Grass is naturally supposed to have every shade between green and brown. All perfectly green grass is unnatural. Additionally, great archtecture is about what’s on the ground, and you lose that feel on TV. So people gravitate to courses that show well on TV like Augusta, so everyone wants to emulate it. Plus we all love Augusta.

Take Riviera, one of the best courses we play all year, but on TV Riviera may not look any better than some courses that are nowhere near as good because you only hear the coverage which invariably says they love it, and viewers repeat what they heard.

[Mike_Clayton]

Jay,

I played Merion in 2002 and thought it was amazing. I also went straight Pinehurst to answer your question, deliberately by passing Merion, because I assume they will smother it in long grass to defend it.
I don't know the course well enough but I would think that if there was much less rough it would be even better.

I played the West at Royal Melbourne yesterday.It was the first time I had played since the new fairways were put down and the ball seems to run less. The greens were no so fast but they were getting hard and in three weeks they could be really treacherous.
Norman has apparently said he wants them like 'concrete'

[Tim Gavrich]

Mike--

Thanks very much for the answer about Merion.  That was my inkling, based on the philosophy you and Geoff seemed to express in your responses to Jay; I just wanted to make sure.  I can't wait to watch the matches on TV.

[Jay Flemma]

Yeah, Geoff was a house afire with excellent observations.  He'd make a great GCAer.