Golf Club Atlas
GolfClubAtlas.com => Golf Course Architecture Discussion Group => Topic started by: Bart Bradley on November 13, 2011, 02:35:07 PM
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I recently discovered that a well-received modern course had originally been routed by a different high profile design company. The leadership at the club did not feel that the routing took full advantage of the property and wouldn't deliver the sort of product that they hoped to provide. They went back to the drawing board and hired a different architect and got a totally different course than the original plan.
How often do clubs change jockeys in the process and should it happen more or less often?
Bart
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Bart:
It happens fairly often, if you count all the times that one developer group fails to get the project launched, and another group comes in and decides to go with a different architect. There are also lots of times where multiple architects will produce a routing on spec [for free] in hopes of landing the job, but someone else gets it instead.
However, it doesn't happen often at all [in my experience] that the client decides to change architects after paying an architect to develop plans. In thirty courses, exactly one of my clients had started with a different architect -- Stonewall started with Tom Fazio -- and exactly one client dumped me for another architect -- Red Hawk GC in East Tawas, Michigan, finished by Arthur Hills. In neither case was the change of architects based on the routing, it was because of other factors.
Brian Sheehy: It's possible to change a routing, but it's difficult. In the case of a links such as Tralee, presumably you would want to return some of the fairways that exist back to nature in order to move them somewhere else ... and that's difficult to achieve. But, it might be easier on an open links site than on a parkland course, where years and years of planting have reinforced the original routing.
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Tom Doak:
Typically, if a club asks for multiple routings on spec, would the club have ownership of said routings?
If so can they permit the eventual architect to peruse the unused routings for ideas and possibilities?
If so does this happen?
WW
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Does what is happening at Renaissance touch on a portion of Bart's question?
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Perhaps someone knows more about this story than I:
Mirabel in AZ I believe spent a huge amount of money to build a Greg Norman course. When it was finished, the club decided it was too hard and brought in Tom Fazio. I understand the whole course was scrapped in favor of a new one.
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Perhaps someone knows more about this story than I:
Mirabel in AZ I believe spent a huge amount of money to build a Greg Norman course. When it was finished, the club decided it was too hard and brought in Tom Fazio. I understand the whole course was scrapped in favor of a new one.
think thats true Steve...dont think anyone ever played the Norman design
talk about deep pockets!
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Steve & Paul,
The original Norman course was Stonehaven. It was to be another high end and residential CCFAD in North Scottsdale. Before it opened for play, the property was sold to Discovery Land. They determined that the course was too difficult for a private club and brought in Fazio ,as they had worked with him at nearby Estancia, to bulldoze the course and start anew.
http://www.hideoutlake.com/pr/PropertyAppreciation.pdf
http://golfclubatlas.com/forum/index.php?topic=3246.0