I just finished watching the highlight reel after working all day on a new "links" layout in Texas, of all places.
Really some astonishingly good golf shots in the highlights . . . unfortunately I didn't get to see all the lowlights and how Rory made some of his bogeys.
This is the fifth year at The Renaissance Club and though the scoring was very low the first two years because of soft conditions, a day like today allows the golf course to shine, and shows that great approach shots CAN be played near the hole even in very difficult conditions. That's the whole idea . . . it doesn't do any good to make the golf course tougher if it breaks down on days like this.
I have watched enough during the first four events to be fairly happy that the guy who played the best that week won, even if he wasn't the most famous name. But it always makes an architect look better when there is a full field of big name players and a star comes out on top. So thanks to Rory for that. That first year, he was one of the guys who questioned if the course really played like a links . . . and he was right about some parts of that . . . but maybe I have won him over? And to Robert MacIntrye, who showed you can hit a downwind approach close at the 10th if you REALLY know the course, which he does.
Also, thanks to Padraig Harrington, who told me two years ago that "The players are starting to get to know the course now and appreciate it, and they hate nothing worse than coming back every year to more tinkering they have to figure out. So you really don't want to do too much to it."
Finally, kudos to my team: Don Placek ran the job, and Brian Slawnik and Kye Goalby did a lot of the shaping, but almost all of them did some little piece of something there either on the original 18 or the re-do. I mentioned Kye because that difficult 18th green is his . . . he told me he was trying to copy a green on the Langford course near St. Louis where he grew up playing. Nice to see it work so well.