Apologies if everyone got their copy earlier but I just mine. I immediately flipped to Tom Fazio's interview with Lorne Rubenstein, which I found a really fascinating read on a truly prolific architect. We debate the merits of what he built in here all the time—and rightfully so—but the interview gave a lot of great insight into him, his style, and how he sees his work.
Some highlights, with Lorne in bold & Fazio in regular:
Using the word “minimalism” to describe modern design has become popular, and it’s seen as representative of the more desirable style. You, on the other hand, are known as an earthmover. What’s your view on this?
I’m used to hearing that same thing all the time. It’s redundant. This minimalism thing started back in the ’90s. It didn’t start now. That’s nothing new. First, there’s nothing new in golf design anyway, in my opinion. It’s all been done before. You go in cycles and trends.
You also get tagged with a certain label. I’ve been tagged with a label that I move too much earth. But it doesn’t matter whether you move a little bit of earth or a lot of earth. Nobody ever asks about how much earth was moved or what was the cost of building a golf course in earlier times, especially the famous ones. It doesn’t matter.
If you go to some of the old golf courses and you look at them, critique them—a person like me, who’s not trying to get a job, can give you my opinion that maybe they should have moved more earth. If they had the money, the resources and the equipment, maybe that would have been done. In the early stages of golf, for example, blind shots were very acceptable. A lot of great golf courses have blind golf holes. If you build new golf courses today with blind holes, nobody will like that. It’s a failure.
So, do the math. You’re the owner. You’re the developer. Forget the architect. You’re the owner. What do you want?
Do you want a golf course that’s accepted in the marketplace, that people are going to come ooh and aah about? You’re investing money. You have a major commitment. You want recognition. You want to compare your course on opening day to the best courses we’ve ever played.
To what extent do budgets drive the styles that become popular?
When I started in the industry with my uncle, we had a budget somewhere in the area of $10,000 a hole to build. Did Donald Ross have a budget? Probably some kind, but maybe they didn’t, or they’d go find a good piece of land for golf.
Let’s call the 1920s the golden age of architecture, as it’s often said it was. The owner would instruct the architect to find a good piece of land for golf. Many courses didn’t have trees. They were planted. And now, 50 to 100 years later, we’re knocking trees. The industry is removing trees because they weren’t there to begin with.
One of the reasons they weren’t there to begin with is because most places didn’t want to build a golf course where there were trees because it was expensive to take trees down. It was much easier to build on land without trees. It’s logical. Also, not many golf courses were built with real estate around them.
You have to look at the era when a course was built and the way things were built. You can’t divorce style from the era in which a course was built.
But you hear about clubs, especially older ones, that would prefer not to change, restore, renovate.
There are clubs that resist changes. I was the longtime advisor at Cypress Point. The only changes they’ve really made are to drainage and restoration of bunkers. But getting them to actually change something, like adding length, is like pulling teeth. They’re going to have the Walker Cup in 2025, and you can’t get them to do that. Of course, the good thing about a Walker Cup is that it’s match play. Length doesn’t matter much.
We had the 2022 Presidents Cup at Quail Hollow [where Fazio is also a member]. We had renovated that course for a PGA Tour event, and then we had the 2017 PGA Championship. We’re going to host the PGA again in 2025. The majority of the money was spent on the last five holes because those would be on TV. Are we getting back to the money game again? Of course we are. That’s life in the Presidents Cup; they changed the numbers of the holes and how they would play them so that the finishing holes would be what were Nos. 14, 15 and 16. Matches generally end there. Maybe some matches would get to 17, but almost never to the 18th hole.
At Pine Valley right now, we just rebuilt Nos. 6, 11, 14, 16 and 17. We’ve done five greens where we took all the sod off. We put it to the side. We put in stone and put in new drainage. If you’re a minimalist and don’t want to change much, well, you’re going to have a bad golf course if you don’t make changes to fix the land.
If you’re the developer or owner, you can decide to find a natural, rolling, perfect piece of sandy terrain. That’s what Mike Keiser does, and that’s what the Cabot group looks for. That’s what they’re into, which is fine. It’s a good business plan, it’s a good model and they make it happen.
You’re not going to do too many golf courses on too many properties, though, because there aren’t that many properties like that, right? They become destination resorts, and now how do you get there? On a private airplane, most of the time.
There's a lot more, including quotes on "a restoration like the Seaside course on Sea Island, where we blew up an existing 1929 course that Harry Colt and Charles Alison designed," some commentary on the similarity on links golf holes, golden age courses could've been better if they moved more earth, etc. It's a very good read and worth your time if you're a Golfers Journal subscriber.
Anyone read it? Thoughts?