La Costa unviels new Champions Course

[Pete Lavallee]

After a $10MM redesign of the former North Course by Steve Pate, Damian Pascuzzo and our own Jeff Brauer, La Costa has a new championship layout which replaces the former Dick Wilson Tournament Course. Here's a link to the article in the San Diego Union Tribune:

http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/2011/nov/21/changing-course-la-costa-celebrates-renovation/

[Lester George]

"There is a natural flow of water into creeks that are fed by the ocean..."



Lester

[Matt_Cohn]

http://www.bestapproachflyovers.com/LACC_lacostachampions/

[Bill Seitz]

"There is a natural flow of water into creeks that are fed by the ocean..."



Lester

Doesn't make sense to me either, unless it has something to do with tides. 

[Lester George]

Bill,

Played it a few years ago, nothing to do with tides. 

The work by the CGA's looks really nice (as expected) in the Best Approach Flyover.  Good job men.

Lester

[Jud_T]

Looking forward to seeing the changes.  The area is in desperate need of good golf IMO.  Between LA and Barona Creek it's essentially been a wasteland of mediocre cramped courses often jimmied onto less than ideal sites.

[Tim Nugent]

Damian and Jeff?  Boy,with those personalities,  I bet that was a laugh a minute.

[Jeff_Brauer]

Tim,

Got that right.  While it was a great project professionally to be associated with a place like that, it was really great personally.  Damian and I had been friends for a while, and Steve Pate is a real hoot as well.  Never a cross word in over a year between us, and all made nice contributions that improved the project.

Talk about exciting guys, at press day last week, it started raining - hard - and Damian and I were out taking pictures in the rain, hooting and hollering as we watched the drainage go exactly where we wanted it to!  The area in front of the clubhouse used to go under for days in a quarter inch rain and it has survived two separate 1" rains with no lingering puddles, debris, etc.  Needless to say, the superintendent and owners seem happy.

And yes, it drains to the ocean, not the other way around.

Lester, that flyover is the nines, or 18's.  I hadn't seen it until this link.

BTW, don't have time to detail all of it today, but lots of thinking went into what it takes to "restore" Dick Wilson bunkers.  Besides the gca team, the bunker shaper was the kid who shaped Sebonak bunkers for JN and TD.  He could talk about bunker theory more than we could!  While I was focusing on the different shapes, angles, heights of the prototype Wilson noses, capes and bays, Patrick would come up and ask if the high point of the nose ought to be on the right, middle, or left third of the noses, and which way the slope should angle.

Frankly, there were three different bunker styles out there - Wilson, Lee and some in house bunkers that were pretty poor.  We actually started with some cut and past Wilson shapes from the best parts of the course (his, not the later additions) and then started tweaking from there, but at least we had the scale right.  As the project went on, some of the details in the shape got added.  Looking at old photos, the original bunkers were a lot more raggedy than they had evolved to, and we took them back about half way, balancing what was there originally and what people thought La Costa has always been. 

If we got too crazy with it, we joked that we were doing Wilson drunk bunkers on that hole vs. Wilson sober bunkers on this hole.....

Fun project all around.  And, not bad "having" to stay at a top ranked resort so many days.

[Lester George]

Jeff,

You and Damian should be very proud.  Dick Wilson would be proud as well.  Great respect for what he was trying to get while fixing a MAJOR DRAINAGE NIGHTMARE!!!

Form definitely follows function.  Fixing the drainage probably was the highest priority for the owner while you guys made that work AND got it to be easy on the eyes as well.  Congrats.

Lester

[Don_Mahaffey]

For $10 Million it better drain

[Pete Lavallee]

For those of you who have never been to La Costa, the original 18 hole course was designed by Dick Wilson and was the venue for the Tournament of Champions for many years; it also hosted the Match Play Tournament. Additional nines were added by Dick's associate Joe Lee to form the North and South Courses, with the North using the fornt nine and the South using the back nine. There really wasn't suuficient land available for the additional nine comproising the South, the holes are really shoehorned into a tight space. The additional holes for the North course are over a road on a seperate paddock. Although there was ample room and excellent topography, they just never came up to the standard of the original Wilson holes. Flooding was always an issue, especially since both Tournaments were contesteed during our rainy season here in San Diego. Although the Wilson bunkers look like so many jigsaw puzzle pieces from the air they are wonderfully three dimensional from ground level; true works of art. Jeff mentioned that they used the bunkers at the par 3 3rd hole as a sort of template to get the new ones right.

It is interesting to note that the LPGA will be playing the Kia Classic there this year and decided to use the South course for their event, citing difficulty in shuttling players under the road for a 10th tee start. I'm anxious to give it a try, but for $200 this course better deliver!

[Jeff_Brauer]

Don,

Snide comments aside, I agree that it should drain - because it was a major problem we wanted to fix.  I think it was money intelligently spent, even if the costs seem high compared to the Midwest or Mid South.  CA costs, including trucking sand many miles to plate the fw, sod most of it, new irrigation, is just expensive.

Better to spend correctly than to propose a budget that comes up short of fixing what you went into fix.  After the interview phase, they told us that of gca's who submitted, cost proposals ranged from $4M to $16M per course.  I know that the gca who proposed $4M based on his limited experience surely would have been unsatisfactory.  For that matter, had we listened to the member who suggested that we use a "Tom Doak minimalist approach" I know that wouldn't have worked on a golf course draining something like 22,000 hilly, urbanised acres through it.  This project required some real engineering to drain well.

 

[Lester George]

Don,

I am surprised they had any left over for golf.  I would have probably been one of those who proposed 14 million had I had the chance.

If you haven't seen the "before" conditions, (you obviuosly didn't) we are talking about serious offsite surcharge of water through an area not designed to handle it.  Notwithstanding the terribly incised creek channels as well as the discharge points being choked to dangerous conditions, the entire site is surrounded by extreme elevations covered with impervious cover. I personally witnessed a 4-5 inch rain event literally blow that golf course up beyond almost anything I had ever seen! 

If you think 10 million is wasteful for this project, you really have no idea what you are talking about on this one.

Lester

[Doug Wright]

Congratulations Jeff. From the flyover it looks like an excellent golf course. I haven't played it. The 4th hole in particular struck me as quite strategically bunkered.

[Don_Mahaffey]

Jeff,
I'm happy for you if you met the goals of your client. But snide comments? seriously, your the king of the snide comment. You like to slip 'em in all the time, just like you just did on this thread. Fact is, unless you have the plan from each architect, you really don't know what they could have done for 4 - 16 million. Maybe someone thought they could drain the course without plating everything with sand. I happy it has turned out good.

Lester,
i grew up in So Cal. Spent the first 7 years of my career working in coastal so cal. I'll bet I've been on the grounds of La Costa a lot more then you including when it was raining. I certainly do not claim to know all the ins and out of the watershed and drainage issues, I do know it was horrible, and not just because water drained onto the course from surrounding areas. I would have expected that the majority of the $$$ would need to go toward drainage solutions and that seems to be the case. But, I'm not ready to chalk off 10 million as some sort of "value" job. I never said it was wasteful, but I will say it again, for 10 million, it had better drain. 

[Jeff_Brauer]

Don,

Well I have noticed that somewhere along the line I pissed you off, because in the last several months you take passive agressive shots at me in your posts.  Hey, better than aggressive aggressive, but whatever I did to cause that, I'm sorry.

And, once again, I agree it had to drain, and the playing surfaces had to be a lot better.

As to the sand plating, I have only done it on rocky courses before (in MN) that simply had no topsoil and I think we would both fall in the camp that it's often overkill, especially in So Cal.  That said, they had plated two fw previously, and they were their best performers. 

Now that we nave played the unplated south course and the plated Champions Course on the same day, there is no doubt it was the right choice.  We also added drainage pipe derived from my much rainer Texas experience, which a few folks thought was also over kill, but part of me always says, make sure you fix it, especially at higher greens fees.

Not sure anyone said it was a "value" job, although these are very sophisticated clients, and they know that you don't overspend but you don't underspend at a resort like La Costa.  I noted the initial numbers by some of the gca's for a reason - by being smack dab in the middle of all the prelim cost proposals, and the way we presented it, sure made it look like a value number to the client. 
 
We and they were convinced right off the bat that the $4M proposal just wasn't going to cut it for the golf course problems they had.  I mean, their superintendent (who is also an experienced construction manager) had studied it a long time before ever going out for RFP.  And they knew $16M would never be paid back in greens fees from the accounting dept.

BTW, the contractor was Aspen Golf and they are fantastic.

[Dan Kelly]

Lester, that flyover is the nines, or 18's.  I hadn't seen it until this link.

You can say that again! What does it cost to have one of those flyover simulations made?

Course looks good, Keff. Congrats.

[JC Urbina]

Jeff,

I am also a long time admirer of La Costa.  While working on the Farms just down the street in Ranch Santa Fe we would frequent this golf course due to our relationship with Tommy Jacobs the long time director of golf way back when.  I remember a few guys not with Joe Lee or Dick Wilson that had a major hand in the construction of the North Forty.  I always that the original 18 was pretty entertaining but the 36 hole complex was a mix of all types of styles. Did you ever see Tommy hanging around the resort?

 Why did you choose one style over the other?  I am also curious who the shaper was from Southampton since I knew everyone who touched a bunker at Sebonack.

Yes the drainage as I remember was in need of some work, a lot of homes up above and the drainage coming from the North was probably a lot to contend with.  I thought the greens were pretty good, did you change a lot of the greens surfaces?

[Pete Lavallee]

I thought the greens were pretty good, did you change a lot of the greens surfaces?

Jim,

I played the original Tournament course two years ago for the the princely sum of $215. My recollection was that tee to green we got our monies worth, but the putting surfaces were some of the flattest, least interesting I had ever played: no doubt a good reason the Tour Pros like it.

[Tim Leahy]

Pete, watch for off season deals at La Costa!
When I lived in SD I got to play La Costa on an off season special for $100 and it included the room, double occupancy.

[Joe Leenheer]

Looking forward to seeing the changes.  The area is in desperate need of good golf IMO.  Between LA and Barona Creek it's essentially been a wasteland of mediocre cramped courses often jimmied onto less than ideal sites.

San Diego has some spectacular golf...La Jolla CC, Del Mar CC, Fairbanks Ranch CC, The Farms, Rancho Santa Fe CC, The Bridges, The Crosby, Aviara, Santa Luz CC, San Diego CC, Torrey Pines, Maderas, Rancho Bernardo, Balboa Park....   

La Costa is a great match play course because pro's (and ams) can make a ton of birdies (thanks in part to the flatter greens)...ala Tiger's 7 birdies on the front 9 against Stephen Ames.  I played it several times in 2003-2005 and have not replayed on any of my trips back to SD.  After reading about the renovation here ...it's on the list of replays.       

[Pete Lavallee]

San Diego has some spectacular golf...La Jolla CC, Del Mar CC, Fairbanks Ranch CC, The Farms, Rancho Santa Fe CC, The Bridges, The Crosby, Aviara, Santa Luz CC, San Diego CC, Torrey Pines, Maderas, Rancho Bernardo, Balboa Park....   

Joe,

No disrespect, but you need to get out more if you think any of those courses possess great architecture!

[Joe Leenheer]

San Diego has some spectacular golf...La Jolla CC, Del Mar CC, Fairbanks Ranch CC, The Farms, Rancho Santa Fe CC, The Bridges, The Crosby, Aviara, Santa Luz CC, San Diego CC, Torrey Pines, Maderas, Rancho Bernardo, Balboa Park....   

Joe,

No disrespect, but you need to get out more if you think any of those courses possess great architecture!

I would love to get out more!  I did say "spectacular golf" not great architecture.  I played Del Mar again on my last trip and I still found it to be a great routing with some really fun holes and few if any weak one.  Of the ones I listed...which ones do you think are the best/worst?  I didn't get to play every course in SD so if I missed one let me know!

[Pete Lavallee]

Joe,

In San Diego we have two really good golf courses, Barona Creek and Rancho Santa Fe CC, niether cracks any Top 100 lists though. San Diego CC is great tee to green, but the unsympathetic greens renovation is saddening. I love Neal's greens at Maderas GC but it is a housing track. La Jolla CC has some really good holes, but a lot of pedestrian ones too. You were reaching with Balboa GC (don't worry, I'm a memeber there). I haven't played any of the others on your list to will have to with hold commentary, but Rancho Bernardo and spectacular don't belong in the same sentence! My hidden gem recommendations would be Coronado GC and Marine Memorial at Camp Pendleton.

[David Kelly]

Pete,

Have you played Pauma Valley Country Club and if so what did you think of it?

Public and private golf from Orange County on down to the border is a vast wasteland with the few exceptions you mentioned.