[HarryBrinkerhoffDoyleIV_aka_Barry]

Tom - If I may ask, I'm wondering how far along you guys got at Forest Dunes this past year.........and when do you anticipate the course being ready for it's first few rounds? 

[Tom_Doak]

The snow came a little early, but we've got seven holes [12-3-4-16-17-18] roughed in, green wells done and approved, and the irrigation main line has been installed so that we can start installing sprinkler heads as soon as the snow melts.  More details in January for my Golf Channel interview ... or for anyone on my Christmas card list.

[Howard Riefs]

Matt Ginella provides an update on the course(s)...

http://www.golfadvisor.com/articles/forest-dunes-reversible-golf-course-roscommon-michigan-15230.htm

[Steve Lang]

   Tom Doak,


Just fishing...


1. Can you advise status on new course?


2. Can a guy with a healing shoulder that can't swing a golf club and with an interest in gca walk any of the course and not get kicked off or discovered?  Would such person need to have their own Jeep or cart?


Just wondering


  

[Tom_Doak]

1. Can you advise status on new course?

2. Can a guy with a healing shoulder that can't swing a golf club and with an interest in gca walk any of the course and not get kicked off or discovered?  Would such person need to have their own Jeep or cart?

Steve:


We have almost the entire golf course shaped now, and seven holes seeded so far [1-2-3-4-16-17-18].  I gave a good tour last weekend to a few friends.


Please don't go out for a walk on your own on newly seeded holes, and for damn sure don't drive out there.  I'll be back out again sometime the first week in August, if you are around Michigan then.

[Steve Lang]

   TD,


CHECK!

[Jason Way]

It is definitely worth the trek to see it.  It was hard for me to really understand how it was going to work from the course map.  Now having seen it (thank you Tom), I finally get how awesome it is in its subtle complexity.  I am convinced that it is going to be endless fun and challenge to play, and I can't wait for the opening.

[Howard Riefs]

Ron Whitten tweeting about Doak’s new reversible course at Forest Dunes…
https://twitter.com/RonWhittenGD


"Yesterday I walked Tom Doak's reversible 18 under construction at Forest Dunes GC in Mich. with Doak. It's a brilliant design..."
 
"We walked it in both directions, never once had the feeling we were walking backwards down a golf hole. Tom Doak really thought this one out"
 
"Doak's reversible 18 has no double-wide fairways or double greens. Greens are normal size, but shaped to be played from different angles"
 
"Key to make reversible 18 at Forest Dunes work, says Doak, is routing it so most holes aren't playing 180 degrees into same green."
 
"Doak's reversible 18 is about 1/3rd grassed now. Some holes will be playable next summer, full 18 probably not until spring 2017"
 
"I'm already wondering how Golf Digest panelists should evaluate a reversible 18. Has to be as two separate courses, right?"
 
"Doak joked to me, "Come on, Ron, this one has to be a 10 in your Design Variety, doesn't it?" It is definitely unique; I say brilliant."
 
"There is a small movement toward reversible courses. Dan Hixson doing one in Ore., Bob Cupp proposing a 9-hole one for Bobby Jones GC in GA"
 
Question: "what if one direction is significantly weaker? One direction becomes top 100, other direction is a flop."
Whitten: "That was certainly a Doak concern. He says his solution was to make sure that each routing had some of the best holes."
 
Question: "Is there any consensus on which way is better?"
Whitten: "Far too early to be passing judgment on either routing. To be honest, the draw is that it's 36 holes in space of 18"

[JStewart]

Can't wait to get up and play this once it's done. I love it when more gems are added to the already great Northern Michigan golf scene. The turnaround at Forest Dunes is pretty incredible. They were in a bad, bad place financially not all that long ago. The Weiskopf layout is fantastic and I'm sure the double Doak will be as well.

[Tom_Doak]

The turnaround at Forest Dunes is pretty incredible. They were in a bad, bad place financially not all that long ago.

The problem they had -- and that most other Michigan courses have -- is that people were just stopping through on their way to another course.  Without a place to stay adjacent, nobody hung around to eat or drink there, they moved on to their next stop.


Building some lodging was the key to turning around the business, and they are starting to build more now.  And the whole point of this two-in-one course is to get people to stay at Forest Dunes for multiple days instead of sampling neighboring courses.


The course is actually over 50% seeded [a third of them look like grass] and the rest will be finished by the first days of September.  I don't know if it will ever make the GOLF DIGEST rankings if they insist on considering it two courses, instead of one; and I don't know that I care.  But it certainly fits our test of being the kind of course you want to go right back out and play again, whichever direction you can.

[Tom_Doak]

Also, say what you will about GOLF DIGEST -- and I've said lots over the years -- but they are the only golf magazine sending anyone out to see what we [or almost anybody else*] are building, instead of just sending panelists on their own dime.


* anybody except Tiger Woods, of course.  Most of the magazines were given paid vacations to pal around with Tiger in Mexico.

[Jaeger Kovich]

Also, say what you will about GOLF DIGEST -- and I've said lots over the years -- but they are the only golf magazine sending anyone out to see what we [or almost anybody else*] are building, instead of just sending panelists on their own dime.


* anybody except Tiger Woods, of course.  Most of the magazines were given paid vacations to pal around with Tiger in Mexico.

Wow, I never would have expected that. Kudos to Ron and them!

[Michael Whitaker]

Tom,

I am really looking forward to seeing your course(s) at Forest Dunes to observe how you dealt with the uphill vs downhill decisions. I've always felt you have a penchant for uphill holes or shots, so it will be fascinating for me to see if one course plays predominately uphill while the other plays predominantly downhill. 

This is a very exciting project, IMHO.

[Bill_McBride]

Tom,

I am really looking forward to seeing your course(s) at Forest Dunes to observe how you dealt with the uphill vs downhill decisions. I've always felt you have a penchant for uphill holes or shots, so it will be fascinating for me to see if one course plays predominately uphill while the other plays predominantly downhill. 

This is a very exciting project, IMHO.

I don't know if the part of the property occupied by the Loop has more elevation change than the original course, but there was very little uphill-downhill there. 

[Tom_Doak]

I am really looking forward to seeing your course(s) at Forest Dunes to observe how you dealt with the uphill vs downhill decisions. I've always felt you have a penchant for uphill holes or shots, so it will be fascinating for me to see if one course plays predominately uphill while the other plays predominantly downhill. 

There is only about 25 feet of elevation change from the highest point on the course to the lowest, so it's not very hilly at all ... I always figured the ideal site for a reversible course would have to be pretty flat.


That said, one of Ron Whitten's observations was just how many greens sit up slightly in profile, so that you can't see anything immediately behind them.  That is sort of a natural by-product of the reversibility, as you don't want many mounds behind a green that would be in front of it playing in the opposite direction.

[Michael Whitaker]

I know, Bill. I was going to make the comment that my memory of the original course is that it doesn't have a great deal of elevation change. I've played the original several times, but always with a cart... so, I don't have a good feel for the true ups and downs.
I would think a reversible course would work best on property with not too severe of an elevation change.

[Peter Pallotta]

Tom -

Ron writes that "Tom Doak really thought this one out".

Now, I've read enough of your posts over the years (and enough about your golf courses) to believe that you always think things out; and indeed, I'm guessing that the more natural and rugged and free and been-there-forever the course looks and plays and feels, the more you worked through/thought out the process and finished product.

If I'm right about that, I'm curious: do you feel you thought this one out more and/or differently than your other courses? I mean, I know that in one sense the answer is "yes", as you've never had to make any course reversible. But more generally, did you experience this process as markedly different/more unique than the processes at Barnbougle or Pacific or Ballyneal or Rock Creek or Sebonac etc?

Thanks
Peter

[JJShanley]

May I ask: where does The Loop sit spatially in relation to the existing course?  I tried to overlay the layout that Golf Channel used onto the Google Map aerial, but I couldn't tell for certain.  Does it sit due east so that the clubhouse and range sit in between the two (three?) courses?

[Tom_Doak]

May I ask: where does The Loop sit spatially in relation to the existing course?  I tried to overlay the layout that Golf Channel used onto the Google Map aerial, but I couldn't tell for certain.  Does it sit due east so that the clubhouse and range sit in between the two (three?) courses?

The new course starts across the parking lot from the clubhouse, and generally makes a big curve out around the boundary of the property down toward the front gate, and then back again.  It does not border the range.

[Tom_Doak]

Tom -

Ron writes that "Tom Doak really thought this one out".

Now, I've read enough of your posts over the years (and enough about your golf courses) to believe that you always think things out

Well, pretty much all I do when I'm on site is think about the course, since there are better guys than me to run the equipment.  And Ron knows that as well as anyone.


He might have meant that I've thought more about this design in advance than I usually do, because I've been thinking about the concept for twenty years, and what sorts of holes would work well in reverse ... though, strangely enough, there were a couple of ideas I wanted to use that I didn't find a place for, while a lot of the cooler features of the course [such as the greens that are approached from 90 degrees different angle, instead of 180 degrees] are things that I hadn't thought through until we got started.  Or, he might have meant that every feature had to be thought of in two different directions, which is of course more complicated than just the one.


That aside, I don't really feel that the process has been markedly more difficult than other designs.  In general, our goal was to keep other aspects of the design [grassing, bunkering, earthmoving, etc.] as simple as possible, so that we wouldn't trip ourselves up for the reverse routing.  The hardest part was actually dealing with cart paths, which we haven't had to build for quite a long time, and which are very hard to hide from multiple vantage points ... the locations of cart paths had a lot of ramifications for where the tees are located.

[Jason Lietaer]

Tom -- thanks for the insight on this stuff.  It's surprising that you guys didn't find this all that difficult compared to a "regular" course.  Seems like it would have been like playing 3-D chess.


I laughed when I read your comment about cartpaths.  I've played in northern michigan tons of times and everytime the people behind the counter practically laugh themselves hoarse when i tell them i'm walking.  You will not be surprised to know that the best reaction I ever got was at Black Forest.  The guy behind the counter looked like he'd never once had anyone ask to walk, and called over everyone else in earshot to tell them what a fool i was. 

[/size][size=78%]anyway, Forest Dunes is great already.  I'm glad you're adding to it.  [/size]

[Jim Nugent]

Tom, how do you think GD should rank the reversible course, if it doesn't rank each course separately?

[Tom_Doak]

Tom, how do you think GD should rank the reversible course, if it doesn't rank each course separately?

Ultimately, isn't a ranking just another way of telling you how much you should want to go and visit a course?  I think the main appeal of this course is going to be playing it in both directions to see if it works.  Dividing it into two courses throws out the single feature that really makes it noteworthy.


I expected GOLF DIGEST to take this approach, because they have to use their formula for what makes a course great ... but they could really use it for the overall course if they wanted to.  [When you play a course with six sets of tee markers, they don't rank it six ways.]  As I joked to Ron, it's got to be a 10 for Design Variety, but I think you could also rate it for Shot Values, Memorability, etc. as a composite of the two directions, if you wanted to.


What I actually said to Ron about the rankings was that the GOLF DIGEST rankings have always been the main stumbling block to this concept.  Most clients care a lot about the rankings, and with this concept I'd have to tell them that I think it will confound the rankings, because the system won't know how to treat it, and so the course probably won't fare as well as it should.  When I asked Lew Thompson what he wanted, he didn't mention rankings at all -- probably because his other course is already in most of the lists.  What he said was that he wanted something that would "wow" people, and that the whole point was to get people to stay at Forest Dunes and play multiple rounds of golf there.  So I knew right away he was the right guy for this concept.


I would expect GOLFWEEK and GOLF Magazine to take the other approach, that they are evaluating one course that can just be played two ways.  But who knows?  And, for once, who cares?

[Mark Fedeli]

Interesting. It never occurred to me that there would be cartpaths on this course. But since ownership is looking to boost play as much as possible (and not necessarily make any Keiser-esque statements), it 's no surprise.


Tom, I know you're obviously no fan of cartpaths, but do you feel their inclusion hampered in any way what you would ideally be trying to accomplish with a reversible course? And will walking be strongly encouraged?

[JJShanley]

May I ask: where does The Loop sit spatially in relation to the existing course?  I tried to overlay the layout that Golf Channel used onto the Google Map aerial, but I couldn't tell for certain.  Does it sit due east so that the clubhouse and range sit in between the two (three?) courses?

The new course starts across the parking lot from the clubhouse, and generally makes a big curve out around the boundary of the property down toward the front gate, and then back again.  It does not border the range.

Thank you!  I should just have asked you in the first place rather than playing around with two different maps and graphics app!  JJS sr. and I look forward to seeing all the courses for the first time next May!

[Tags:]

Tags:

[Tags:]

Tags:

Call to undefined function theme_linktree()