This is the second time our Feature Interviewee is Mike Clayton. At the time of our October, 2001 Feature Interview, Barnbougle where Mike is the co-architect with Tom Doak and St. Andrews Beach where he was again involved had yet to be built and Mike had not got going in the eastern suburbs of Sydney where his company has transformed The Lakes and Bonnie Doon.
The works of architects who don't take chances are almost by definition going to be tepid. That's not Mike, either in the field or in person. Look at what he pulled off at The Lakes with its bold, gutsy green complexes. Sometimes, like at Royal Adelaide, the work may be may not be embraced but taking chances certainly beats doing the same, safe stuff ad-nauseam, at least in my book. All of us in the States should be THRILLED that the firm of Ogilvy Clayton Cocking Mead is working in Texas. Hopefully, they will fan out to further projects coast to coast from there. They bring with them the attributes that make Australian golf so compelling, namely a heightened appreciation of short grass and width. Surely, those two things are at the heart of the re-emergence of first-rate architecture over the past twenty years? Along with St. Andrews, the only course to have NEVER veered away from those design tenets is Royal Melbourne, so it’s not surprising to find Australians doing top-flight work.
When Down Under in February with Joe Andriole, we toured Mike's first course with him. While Ranfurlie doesn't have the vegetation/texture to give it the same visual appeal of the Sandbelt courses, the design was top draw. Angled and canted greens brought subtle strategy to bear. Standing on many of the tees, the golfer needed to work back from the day's hole location and wind conditions to figure out which side of the fairway he needed to seek from the tee. George Blunt was right to have recommended this as an under the radar stop for architecture fans.
Later, we accompanied Mike around the two courses at Peninsula Kingswood GC where years and years of intelligent work were about to be fully realized. I rate it ahead of Baltusrol now as a 36 hole facility.
Another great par 3 hole is born in the greater Melbourne area! The above photograph was taken in February 2016 during grow-in of Peninsula Kingswood South.After touring Peninsula Kingswood, we went to a GCA gathering where Matthew Mollica hit us with
‘When are you going to see Mike’s best greens’ question. Then he trots out a course I had never heard of (RACV Healesville) as a must play! What the heck?!
Joe subsequently played The Lakes and Bonnie Doon and was greatly impressed. He reported back that Bonnie Doon has become so much more than the cramped, uninspired course that I played - once - in the mid-1990s. To Joe's point, look at the photograph in this month's Feature Interview and if you are like me, you will drool!
The point of all that is you get the idea of the penetration that Ogilvy Clayton Cocking Mead is having on the Australian landscape. Suffice to say, there is a lot more compelling golf there now than when I lived there in the 1990s. It’s not just about the sandbelt anymore, that’s for sure.
A constant theme throughout Mike's Feature Interview is that an architect who only asks you to hit it down the middle is creating boring golf. Mike is firmly in the Tom Simpson camp of embracing playing angles. In reading his Interview, I am reminded of our GCA gathering at the wonderful Liphook, where Simpson HATED the long, uphill 12th because it was straightaway sailing down the middle (i.e. thoughtless). Mike's breakdown of the value of the Gil Hanse's Rio design is the best I have read with his description of how Su played the 10th hole being especially telling.
Always sunburnt and generally with sun block on his lips, Mike looks like how an architect should: a man who relishes all time spent outdoors. It most assuredly won't be another 14 years before we do another Feature Interview with Mike Clayton as he and his team are doing some of the best, freshest work out there.
Best,