from 16 days in South America. What a trip! I saw 8 courses in Chile, 15 [!] in Argentina, and one in Bolivia, the La Paz Golf Club.
For starters, I've got to thank fellow site member Randy Thompson, who was my travel agent, guide, and translator for most of the trip, in trade for two weeks of free critiques and business advice. I never would have thought to see a couple of the courses we saw without his advice. By the same token, courtesy of site member Marcos Clutterbuck, we got to see a couple of courses in Argentina which weren't on our radar at all going into the deal, and those were pretty fantastic, too.
I will try to post a few thoughts and photos here over the next couple of weeks, though I've got some books to ship and some design work to catch up on, too. I still don't do any of the photo-sharing services, so if someone wants to help on that end, I'd be grateful.
In the meantime, a few teasers:
1. Does anybody know anything about the Argentine professional, Juan Denton? A couple of sources show him as having something to do with MacKenzie's visit to Argentina, but The Jockey Club's history doesn't mention him, and the timeline seems wrong ... he laid out both Mar del Plata and La Cumbre before MacKenzie left Europe, and they are still two of the best courses in Argentina, though handicapped by very small acreages. [Mar del Plata is 70 acres, and if not for a recent lawsuit over fencing the boundaries, it would be the best course in South America.]
2. What's the shortest hole you've ever seen? My new record-holder is the 12th at La Cumbre. It's 66 yards! If you look at it on Google Earth you'll wonder why there would be a practice green in that corner of the property, until you count how many holes they have.
3. Does anybody know the name Matt Dusenberry? He's responsible for some of the best work in Argentina, too, but I'd never heard his name before I went there. [I do know more about him now.]
4. Neither Randy nor my friend David Lee [who did the rest of the trip with us] went with me to Bolivia, but I was warmly greeted by the manager at La Paz Golf Club. They should shoot a Bond film in La Paz, if only a film studio could deal with the government. They've recently installed new public transportation there -- a series of cable cars, to deal with the elevation changes! And the golf course was one of the most memorable I've seen, not just because drives travel 50-75 yards further at 10,500 feet.
5. How high can a course get on the Doak scale get with dull greens and C-minus shaping, if it's a great routing on great property? I've never faced this question before, but now I've got three months to decide.