Building One Hole to "Sell" A Golf Course

[Evan_Green]

In MacKenzie's "The Spirit of St. Andrews" - he discussed in Chapter 1, Page 24 how, when building Moortown, the membership approached him to build the course, but only had a small sum of money ($500) - only enough, he told them to build one hole. So he built one hole (the famous Gibraltar Par 3 - http://www.moortown-gc.co.uk/hole10.html ) - knowing that he was going to build such a good hole that other new members would be attracted to join the club and they could raise enough money this way to finish the course (which of course they did).


I think this is a really cool story!


Is anyone else aware of such a concept having been done elsewhere (e.g. building a 1 hole prototype as essentially a sales tool to fund a full course)?

[Tom_Doak]

I seem to recall being somewhere that this was done, recently.


A lesser-known MacKenzie story is that when he was at Royal Melbourne in 1926, he took Alex Russell and Mick Morcom and shaped one of his proposed new holes on the land that wasn't already occupied with a course, to give them the gist of what he was trying to achieve in terms of shaping etc.


That hole is today's 5th on the West Course at Royal Melbourne, and since MacKenzie never went back to Australia after 1926, it is the only hole from his Australian designs that he ever saw built.

[Tom_Doak]

Actually now that I think about it, I have seen this many times in the area of renovation ... an architect comes in and builds a "sample" of what he can do.  The 7th green at Bel Air was George Fazio's "sample" in the early 1970's; they didn't take him up on doing the rest, but it sat there as part of the course for almost 40 years.


Certainly, sometimes it must work, and the architect does the rest of the course in the same image.  I'm only aware of the times it doesn't work, and there's one hole that sticks out like a sore thumb.  I have seen it numerous times over the years.

[Evan_Green]

Tom:
Thats a very interesting story about MacKenzie in Australia. For the time and the place, it seems a very sensible idea. He must have been thinking about his positive experience doing it at Moortown when he decided to do it at Melbourne. So sad that he never got to see any more of the finished product!


Also very interesting regarding renovations - would love to know examples of courses where they proceeded and redid the whole course  (although obviously harder to learn than than situations were they were rejected like you lay out below). Doesn't make a lot of sense if they didn't like the prototype, that it would remain for 40 years - i guess thats the risk.


If you do it for a new course, I guess you already have to have a final routing in mind in case they love the hole and you are stuck with it. Have to assume MacKenzie already had a full routing when he did this at Moortown and Melbourne.


Interested if there are any examples of this for courses built in the last 20 yrs in the internet age? with all the easy to access photos/info etc. I would think its less likely you'd need to build a concept hole to show what you could do than in the past.

[Forrest Richardson]

During the recession we put forth a program we called "Honors Hole" and essentially this was the idea: Rebuild one hole for a club as a way to get the members enthused. We did about 5-6 photoshop presentations...that is as close as we ever got to doing one! I don't think the idea came from MacKenzie, but it could have gotten stuck in my head as a result of reading something ??

[Jeff_Brauer]

I just recalled that I sold my first project, at the now defunct Eastern Hills near Dallas, with the idea that we would do three greens as a test.  They had done a lot of in house projects poorly, and some were interested in how an architect and contractor might do better, so that was the plan.  During the shaping of the greens, one member walked out and wrote a $1000 check towards phase 2 to signal he would support further changes if done well.


That said, if a club is struggling financially, and can only afford one hole or a few greens, a change for fortune would be required to continue the project.  Indeed, at Eastern Hills we did do a few more greens a few years later, then the project stalled.  The full master plan was never implemented.


A more stable club, one would hope, would do their homework in the architects interview stage, rather than experiment (albeit at a higher level than most in house projects) because interviewing architects is far cheaper than running bulldozers.  It is nice to be confident in your architect before undertaking anything.

[Terry Lavin]

I’ll offer a different wrinkle on this great thread. When we were trying to sell Ron Prichard’s renovation of Beverly back in the day, we had a very divided membership. The low handicappers, in particular, were distressed that the revised course would be too easy.


Prichard proposed that the membership let him re-do the course’s most vanilla hole, the short, par-4 14th. “If you like what I do there, you will be happy with the rest.” 


This was in the pre-photo-shop days and it was a brilliant bit of salesmanship. We wound up implementing most of his vision about 16 years ago. Current efforts at tree removal and bunker work will soon get us near the finish line.


Change is sometimes difficult. Persistence and education occasionally pay off.

[Ian Andrew]

Wyndandsea in BC by Nicklaus.
Built and grassed the par three on the ocean.
Never got off the ground.

[Mark McKeever]

On a similar note, our club in VA did projects on two different holes to help sell a master plan to the membership.  The master plan has been approved, but the timeline to complete it is very long unfortunately.


MM