Whatever happened to Tom Weiskopf?

[Tom_Doak]

Not so long ago T.W. was among the hottest architects in golf, but I honestly can't remember hearing about a single new course he's done in the last three years.  I know he's been busy ... they just haven't gotten much attention.

(Thought of this today while visiting a friend at Broken Top; unfortunately, I didn't see much of the course in the snow.)

Is it simply that his name had most appeal to housing developers, and the big-bang courses of late have been those with no housing around them, such as Bandon Dunes?

[stovepipe]

T.W old Tommy boy. Well i have heard from a very reliable sorce he is designing courses, and aparantly he had a lucky escape when on serveying a proposed site in the U.K. when he fell into a bog and nearly lost his life.

[stovepipe]

What ever happened to John Mahaffey?

[stovepipe]

What happened to John Mahaffey? anyone know.

[Joel_Stewart]

he had a lucky escape when on serveying a proposed site in the U.K. when he fell into a bog and nearly lost his life.

This happened 10 years ago so its not new news.

Its a good question, possibly since his split with Jay he has kept a very low key.  His last course as far as I know was Lake Las Vegas which received fairly good reviews considering its a resort course.  

I'm willing to bet he has more jobs then he can count as well as money.

[Tommy_Naccarato]

Hopefully he has been institutionalized.

[Matt_Ward]

Among the new courses Weiskopf has designed and opened in the last 12 months include:

*The Club at Seven Canyons (Sedona, AZ)

*Silverleaf GC (Scottsdale, AZ)

*The Falls (Henderson, NV) *part of Lake Las Vegas facility

Weiskopf is also doing a design for the exclusive community in Montana called Yellowstone GC near the park. I believe it will open sometime next year.

Of the three I mentioned above I enjoyed Silverleaf the
best -- the routing is done well and Weiskopf has avoided the pro-forma type holes I have found in some of his other works.

P.S. Among his other more recent designs include Lahontan in the Lake Tahoe area. The course is quite good and fits the property well without being out of place as some architects are wont to do.

[A_Clay_Man]

Hey Stove Pipe,  Was he channeling Fowler when he fell and riding a horse? if so, How's the horse?

Mahaffey is still playing. Check out the senior tour.

[stovepipe]

O.Kay, great stuff, Well im not to sure what he was up to when he fell, but it must have been a good laugh for the locals to see him in such a state when retuning to the clubhouse..

Yeh, Mahaffey, hows he doing, has he still got the baby face looks, and the rediculous 70s style haircut?

[A_Clay_Man]

He's still a cool customer and looks great. It's been a few years since I saw him play Pebble. He still has a great putting stroke and the hair still looks good.

[stovepipe]

Wow! So he must be aproaching his mid 50s now, and you say he has still got all his hair, incredible. Do you recon its a wig?

[stovepipe]

And the winner is Wiggy Mahaffy, umm I mean John Mahaffy!

[Steve_ Shaffer]

Weiskopf is also going to do The Kinsale Club in Naples, FL. This will be his first FL course. The project is on hold until late 2004. It's a golf only club with a real estate component(5 high rise condos) across the road.

Silverleaf (www.silverleaf.com) is a terrific layout nestled in the McDowell Mountains of Scottsdale. It's developed by the same company that did the adjacent DC Ranch.Unfortunately, my round there was halted by a severe rain storm this past February.

Seven Canyons ( www.sevencanyons) in Sedona is getting good reviews. I'll be there next spring.

The Yellowstone Club (www.theyellowstoneclub.com ) is a very high end ski/golf community.

[Ben Cowan-Dewar]

Forest Dunes "opened" this year, though I think it has been done and held up for a little while.

I played there in July and liked is. The sand dunes portion that makes all the pictures, is sadly not spread across the entire property. Still decent routing and some quality holes.

Did you ever get down to see it Tom?

[Joel_Stewart]

Among his other more recent designs include Lahontan in the Lake Tahoe area. The course is quite good and fits the property well without being out of place as some architects are wont to do.

Lahontan is probably only a 4 or 5.  The facilities are an 8 or 9, really nice.   There is a public course across the street called Coyote Moon that I rated higher than Lahontan.

Next year a new Nicklaus course opens nearby and construction of a Fazio course is scheduled to begin shortly.  North Lake Tahoe will be glutted with golf.

[Mike Benham]

Next year a new Nicklaus course opens nearby and construction of a Fazio course is scheduled to begin shortly.  North Lake Tahoe will be glutted with golf.

Expensive and private too!

The previous argument calling for a Bandon style course on LI, where it is affordable to the masses, take note of the North Lake Tahoe / Truckee area as an example.   These courses have a 6-month long season, and only 3 months probably 2 1/2 will be booked solid.  Most of the new courses are private with a substantial initation fee, again, for a 3-5 month season.

Of the public courses, Northstar, Old Brockway, Squaw Creek ... there just isn't much to chose from ... when vacationing Tahoe, I bring my tennis racket ...

[Jonathan Cummings]

TD - I know your Mr Hepner was disappointed when the potential RGD job on the Big Island fell through.  Didn't I hear him say that Weiskopf was building a private course near Kona?

JC

[Bruce_Dixon]

Ron Whitten reviewed Weiskopf's Forest Dunes GC north of Detroit in the August 03 issue of GD.  The course opened in 2002 after experiencing some financing turmoil.

[Lou_Duran]

Living in Columbus from 1970 - 1978, and spending quite a bit of time around OSU's golf courses, I was around Weiskopf qute a bit.  He was good friends with Jim Brown, the golf coach at OSU, so he was a frequent visitor to the course.  Though this was during his most productive years as a player, for the  most part, he was left alone.

Like Coach Brown, Tom had a reputation of being an a------, and highly erratic (a real Jekyl and Hyde; bipolar in today's terminology).  I have practiced besides him numberous times, played in front and behind of him, but never exchanged a word.  A golf partner of mine at that time, an assistant attorney general in Ohio, once ran into Tom enroute to the first tee and with his hand extended out to Weiskopf said "hello, my name is Bill Naperstick and your attorney Mr. DeLeon is a good friend of mine, ........".  Poor Bill, about the same height as Weiskopf, told me later that he never felt smaller than when Tom walked passed by him without even extending the courtesy of acknowledgement.  Yet on another occasion, he walked-up to another friend of mine and his son on the 17th tee and inquired if it would be okay to play in with them.  Reportedly, he was friendly and couldn't have been nicer.

I bring all this up because while I don't hold a high opinion of Tom Weiskopf the man, I have generally enjoyed his work with Jay Morrish.  I have not played any of Tom's solo work, and wonder whether his erratic personality perhaps comes through.  I suspect that Morrish was more the technical and calming force behind the team.  I have played some of Morrish's work without Tom and enjoyed it.  Can anyone comment on Weiskopf's work sans Morrish, and how it compares to what the two did together?

[Tommy_Naccarato]

Lou, that is about as well-balanced as a post I have ever seen you make.

My one meeting with Tom Dumkopf was after receiving his phone number from one or our industry particpants here on GCA, I was approaching him to do a monthly interview for GCA--a non-profit website dedicated to Golf Architecture. Good fit right?

When I called, he literally yelled at me not to disturb him at home, and how did I get his number and from whom. He then told me to call his agent, and then slammed the phone while hanging-up There are others here that know Tom Dumkopf real well, and are quick to defend him, and I understand that he is their friend. But that's about it.

Count me as one of those that thinks he should be banned from ever playing a USGA event again, at least until he gets some personal help and medication, and is placed in a strait-jacket.

[Tom_Doak]

Tommy and Lou:

I certainly didn't start this thread to promote Weiskopf bashing.  I've spent time with him on three different occasions and he was always nice about sharing his opinions with me ... he's had a lot of run-ins with authority over the years (certainly some due to erratic behavior) and he is very wary about talking to people unless he trusts them not to try and make him look bad.  Probably because we have some mutual friends, he always trusted me.

His ideas on architecture were a bit too formula-driven for me, and I think he places too much emphasis on what his peers think of his work and not enough about how it impacts the 10-handicapper, but it is a subject that he takes very seriously and has devoted a lot of time and effort to for the last 15 years.

I knew that he was still fairly busy.  My point was that five years ago he and Jay were clearly one of the top five in the business; but since they split I don't think very many people would nominate them now.  (There has been very little discussion of his recent work on GCA, for example.)

Has his work gone downhill, or has it just gotten more familiar, or has he not gotten the best projects lately, or was his work a bit overrated back then?

[Dan Kelly]

I think he places too much emphasis on what his peers think of his work and not enough about how it impacts the 10-handicapper ....

Tom --

By "his peers," I presume you mean professional golfers (not architects).

But I'm curious: Why "the 10-handicapper"? Do you mean that his courses are too demanding of anyone but the best players?

As you're designing a course, how wide is the range of golfers that you try to keep in mind? Do you think of a scratch, a 5, a 10, a 20, at 30? How high a handicap do you attempt to accommodate? Do you think of specific players with those handicaps? ("How would Joe Blow play this hole? How about Jo Blow?")

[Steve_ Shaffer]

Dan: I remember Jack Nicklaus saying that it's impossible to design a quality course for someone who scores 110. That's why there are multiple tees in modern courses- if only golfers would play from the proper tees.I would think the differentiation would be to design for a single digit handicapper and for the "average" bogey golfer. There are exceptions when the developer wants a "difficult" course or for a private club where lower handicaps abound. That happened when my old club was built.I remember reading that Whisper Rock, where there are many pros and low hanicappers, was altered within  2 years after opening for more "playability."
Steve

[Brad Klein]

While Weiskopf maintains a design/business office at the Scottsdale Airport in Arizona, I'm told that he has now pulled up residence and moved to Western Montana where he lives fulltime.

Like many in the business, I've had a lot of interaction with him - some stormy, most of it quite informative. Weiskopf is a very thoughtful, very knowledgeable person when it comes to architecture. But the stories about his volcanic temperament are not made up, and it has cost him relationships and opportunities.

More importantly from a design standpoint, for all of his regard and respect for traditional shot-making and older courses, he betrays in his design and redesign work a strong penchant for visibility and comfortable landing areas.

[Matt_Ward]

Tom Doak:

Part of the issue with the post-Weiskopf designs (since the split with Moorish) is that most of his work is centered in the western half of the country and the real focus is with exclusive private clubs. I don't know if many people have really played a lot of his solo designs given what I just said.

I do agree that a few of the Weiskopf courses are a bit heavy on the pre-packaged formula and that he does tend to overdose on the playability meter in my mind. I lot of what you see with Weiskopf is a bit of what you may have seen from earlier works he did with Moorish (i.e. the staple driveable par-4, etc, etc). I don't know if Tom does any of the heavy lifting or if he has on staff a junior associate who does the actual drawings and the like.

His latest wave of courses (see listing in an earlier post) is quite good. I enjoyed Silverleaf in Scottsdale and believe it's certainly high on the fun meter. The Club at Seven Canyons could use a bit more widening in the drive zones. It's also beyod what else exists in the immediate Sedona area not including the Flagstaff area.