Adam, I apparently am not that good at the search engine. But I did dig up a bunch of Tom's old comments on Stone Eagle in the early planning and construction phases -- reproduced below. I think they're pretty interesting, esp. the ones describing the planning of a specific feature that we (at least the ones of us lucky to be out there) can see now.
3 / 29 / 2004
We do detailed contour drawings for big earthmoving projects, too -- the job we're planning in Palm Desert has so many grading lines I can't look at it for too long without getting a headache!
But we would never tell a client that a contractor could just take that drawing and feed it into a machine and wind up with a great golf course. I believe strongly that ALL sites are "the type of site that required [the architect's] time because there were constantly decisions needing to be made by him." Do you feel the same way, or not?
8 / 19 / 2003
The routing I've been working on the past year and a half for Stone Eagle in Palm Desert is similar to what you describe, Mike. We've got several holes that are sharply uphill and downhill on the same scale as Pasatiempo 1-9-11-12.
I'm a bit nervous about how well it will work. I'm comforted by the fact that the uphill holes are playing right into a mountainside so they won't be playing "blind to the sky." But I'm certain that shelving all the holes into the sidehills was not the answer here ... especially since you overlook most of the golf course from the starter's shack and it would be a shame not to be looking up and down the holes.
8 / 31 / 2004
However, the site I am working with in Palm Desert is very hilly and there will be many strongly uphill or downhill holes. I've been thinking that was a good thing, because it will make the long uphill par-4's play much longer than the card says ... like #11 at Pasatiempo ... and some of the downhill par-4's will be in that awkward drive-and-half-wedge category.
The visuals on our uphill holes will be much better than normal because all of them are playing directly up into a mountain background, which is so steep that it's VERY hard to perceive just how much uphill you are looking. It will take a lot of local knowledge, but I'm sure it will cause problems for the one-time visitor or rater.
It wasn't so much that I was looking to do this in the routing, it's just where the most interesting holes were, and about the only way I could make the golf course fit onto the site physically. But I'm sure there will be "shot distortion." Is that a bad thing, a good thing, or just a fact of life on a hilly site?
P.S. The poster child for "shot distortion" is the Plantation course at Kapalua.
10 / 31 / 2004
There have been lots of sites that were more challenging than Shadow Creek. The TPC at Sawgrass, which was two feet underwater when Pete started, is just one example. So are Yale, Lido, and the Stone Eagle course we're doing now in Palm Desert.
12 / 16 / 2004
Tom P: What National should have done was either a) keep grazing the cows, or b) place some of the holes a bit closer together so they could mow everything between them a la St. Andrews, and vary the sizes of the turfed areas instead of having them all of a similar width. We are essentially doing this in Palm Desert now to break up the "desert" look of that site.
4 / 21/ 2005
For the record, Stone Eagle does have a water feature which is now complete. I haven't seen the finished form yet, but I asked Eric Iverson about it just today, and he told me I would be really pleased with it, that they made it look about as natural as you could for water in the desert. (The water feature is located in two deep natural washes which run through the site into the irrigation pond, next to the 4th green and 5th tee.)
You're welcome to bash the waterfall all you want, of course, but I don't really see the point. Features like this really don't have much to do with the quality of the golf, pro or con ... so the only reason to rip them is if someone thinks they are actually an important feature. In the case of Stone Eagle, the water feature isn't even the main feature of the fourth or fifth holes. The ravines and the rock outcroppings are the feature.
7 / 23 / 2005
I don't know that Stone Eagle could be described as having a "clean" look -- many of the bunkers have their outside edges defined by rock and desert, but we do not intend to have much long grass anywhere as that would look weird in the desert (though, admittedly, so does green grass). The client's main input was that we needed to make it extra-wide in order to keep it playable for their member profile -- 225 to 300 feet of grass in the landing area of most holes. I cheated that down a bit, but that is the main reason why few courses in Palm Desert are named among the classics ... good players think they are too wide open.
PS We have talked about throwing a little fescue seed around the edges of the course with the winter overseed, to break up the clean lines where the maintained turf bleeds into the desert. Just my way of messing with the establishment.