I believe you pick the courses to teach specific lessons. So in that spirit, this is the 10 essential American courses I would recommend a young architect go see. There are other great places with certain aspects and holes that are also very valuable, but these are the ones that made the biggest impact on me …
1. National Golf links of America – understanding the strategies of the great holes
I really doubt that there are any new architectural strategies or ideas that haven’t already been tried in one form or another. I think it is far more important to understand how the strategy of a great hole works rather than to try to invent a new strategy. Charles Blair MacDonald studied the great holes of Europe before creating his own adaptations of them at the National Golf Links of America. The lesson that MacDonald provides is we must first understand what makes great golf holes, before we begin to design our own. MacDonald’s adaptations are some of the finest holes in the world; many of them are far superior to the original.
2. Augusta National – adaptable to all conditions and players
The beauty of Augusta National is how well it adapts to the various skills of players. The golf course offers ample room and phenomenal playability in its daily set-up. There’s not a lot of bunkers and the corridors are wide and comfortable. But firm up the greens and get them running fast and the course becomes very hard to manage. Play must be far more positional and the miss is magnified ten-fold in the Masters set-up. It’s the adaptability of the design that is key.
3. Pine Valley – difficult does not mean length
Pine Valley proves that difficulty and length are not synonymous. The course is still relatively short by modern standards, even has generous landing areas, yet it is one of the hardest courses in the world. The difficulty comes from the player being made to feel on the defensive all round. The course invites you to gamble, but punishes you for missing. The player finds themselves beginning to look at the consequence rather than the target. Pine Valley keeps you off balance by making many of these shots from side hill, downhill and uphill stances all day requiring you manufacture shots under pressure. On occasion George Crump takes the pressure up even more demanding you hit a great shot since he has provided no margin for error. Difficulty does not require length.
4. Pinehurst #2 – the difficulty of short grass
Whether Ross created the fall away greens and chipping areas is not that important, all that matters is what effect it has on play. Short grass can be a more effective hazard that a bunker. It may present easier options for a weaker player, but is far more daunting for a better player than a bunker. The advantage to a weaker player is they can play to their strengths; the disadvantage to a good player is they are faced with too many options. Bad decisions are often a bigger factor than poor execution. They may not need to be a severe as Pinehurst’s greens, but the effect is still the same. Pinehurst #2 is a course where you can’t possibly lose a ball and yet you still can’t shoot a good score.
5. Riviera – asking the player to work the ball
George Thomas probably combined strategy and beauty as well as any architect. He likes to reward positional play, but insisted the player work to get the ball into that position. There is no course quite like Riviera, where a player is continuously encouraged to hit either a draw or fade off the tee. Whether it is crucial use of key trees, careful placement of bunkers, slopes of the green, or even the keen use of side slopes that requires a tee shot to be shaped to remain on the fairway. They joy at Riviera is the constant flow is back and forth between fade and draw, even alternating on many holes. Thomas has created one of the last courses where the shot maker still holds the advantage over the bomber.
6. The Golf Club – variety
I went to The Golf Club expecting the TPC at Sawgrass, and was very surprised at how understated the golf course was. Everything on the course blended into the surrounding so much that it looked “found”. The minimalist nature of the course has had a huge impact on shaping the latest movement in golf. The additional lesson that Dye provided was the infinite variety of architecture that is possible. Pete has used traditional elements such as a pond, a creek, pot bunkers, flashed bunkers, waste bunkers, bulk headed bunkers and trees. He also used unusual ideas such as a short slope of bluegrass fronting a green, a bank of railroad ties to define the edge of a hole, native grass in play, and my favorite an old box car for a cart bridge. Imagination and humor define the early works of Pete Dye.
7. Tobacco Road - intimidation
The first hole is a good example of what lies ahead. The tee shot is through a very tight opening between two massive hills, which is then followed by a blind carry over the dune to the second landing area. There are few more intimidating opening holes in golf. Tobacco Road is probably the most intimidating and frustrating course you can play for the first time. While the course has plenty more width and playability that initially understood, Mike Strantz uses blind shots and very intimidating hazards throughout the round to hide that fact. The player is feels the pressure to execute every shot because Mike has emphasized the hazard rather than the target on most holes. The fun of the course is there are lots of aggressive options and chances to score once you learn the course, just don’t you dare miss!
8. Pacific Dunes – ignoring standards
There are many things to admire beyond the beauty of Pacific Dunes. Tom Doak resisted against the standards for length, instead opting for a golf course that was both beautiful and playable. It took guts not to ignore the conventional minimum 7,000 yards. He showed even more guts when he decided upon the unconventional placement of threes throughout the round in order to use the land the best he could. Tom recognized that the golf course would be very exposed to the wind, and so he created lots of width in the course to keep it playable in tough conditions. He didn’t worry about players having the upper hand on a windless day, but made sure it was enjoyable day to day. His use of interior bunkering to place emphasis on driving the ball in a mild wind was a clever way of keeping width and challenge at the same time. Pacific Dunes convinced me that length was far less important than all the other design elements.
9. Friar’s Head – contours are the key
Bill once said that nature presents an infinite amount of clever ideas right in the ground in front of you. Coore and Crenshaw have been clever enough to leave the ripples and rumples left in the fairway that adds a crazy stance or challenging lies for the approach. They keep the humps, bumps and hollows short around the green site to require all your imagination to solve the complicated path to the hole. Even there greens use knolls, knuckles, rolls, humps, tiers and hollows to confounding both the approach and the putt. They know that the ground contour not only adds challenge and interest to the round, but builds in an infinite variety of ways the course can play and unfold. The ground contours are the true key to the great architecture.
10. Prairie Dunes – a sense of place
No course blurs the line between golf course and surrounding landscape quite like Prairie Dunes. The incorporation of native grasses and plants right into the architecture allow the course to exist within a native prairie in perfect harmony. No course in America embraces the land around it quite as well as this gem.