I read this in Golfweek and felt it was pretty solid in terms of what and how Tiger should be doing in terms of his new venture.
An open letter to golf’s newest designer
By Bradley S. Klein
Dear Mr. Woods:
News that you are opening your own golf course design shop has prompted lots of interest throughout the industry. Students of golf course architecture have been quietly speculating for a decade about the kind of golf courses you might prefer to build. Now we will all get a chance to see if your achievements on blueprints and in dirt come close to or equal your amazing accomplishments as a golfer.
One thing is clear; you’ve been able to win, and win decisively, on incredibly diverse playing surfaces. It’s hard to imagine a greater range of golf course styles than were the venues for your two most recent major championships. To go this summer from the baked, firm and wide open links of Hoylake for the British Open to the lush, tree-lined aerial golf required a month later at Medinah for the PGA Championship suggests that your own game is not limited to one style of play.
It will be interesting to see whether you build 280-yard par-3s, 9,000 yard golf courses, fairways with central bunkering and dramatically tiered greens. Or will you provide run-up and alternate fairway options to accommodate the classic ground game? Will everything be there right in front of the golfer to see, as with Firestone? Or will you build in the quirky, odd, and occasionally arbitrary (perhaps even unfair) element) just to test a golfer’s patience, as does St. Andrews. In the past you’ve expressed admiration for both courses, yet their basic design styles are wildly divergent. Not that you need to resolve the tension or opt for one style over another.
What’s also crucial is the kind of design shop you create and how you structure the business model. Will yours be the kind of place where you have lots of hands-on input and spend considerable time in the field on job sites? Or will you make the same mistake that some of your PGA Tour comrades have made, including some multi-time major champions, who have taken on so much work and created such vast firms that they are little more than clearing houses and brand-names.
There will be great temptation to sign up projects yielding fees in the $5-$10-$20 million range. At that level, clients would be paying for your name and its marketing power, not just your designs. With astronomical fees like that, it’s likely your clients will be overseas, especially from the Middle East and East Asia, or perhaps from high-end real estate developers and casino operators in the Caribbean or Latin America. The danger is that you could easily lose control of the process, with the detail routing, shaping and finish work not coming to your attention until way too late, if at all. The industry is legion with tales of big-name designers showing up on opening day to claim their check and yet not knowing which way the first hole doglegs.
Here are some ways to make sure that Tiger Woods Design is not an exercise in empire building but instead, a substantial commitment to the game.
1. Work with highly qualified, experienced designers. As a prelude to getting into design, Jack Nicklaus apprenticed with Pete Dye and Desmond Muirhead, then hired proven professionals as his chief design associates. Don’t just become a “signature name” that emerges from behind office-bound land planners and Computer Aided Design screens.
2. Spend time looking closely at what makes the great courses great. It’s not necessary to study everything. But it is necessary to study the 50-75 designs, both old and new, that inspire you and that have inspired the history of architecture.
3. In selecting jobs, don’t let budgets be the determining factor. The quality of the land and the character of the site are what basically determine a golf course. Budgets can help, but they can’t account for what make a Sand Hills, Pacific Dunes, Shinnecock Hills or St. Andrews special.
4. Don’t let the client determine the routing; do it yourself and with your own staff. Too many big name designers end up tweaking a sequence of holes that has been pre-established for them by the developer’s land planners. Don’t accept a project where the envelope for holes has already been established for you. If so, you’ll lose the opportunity to endow the site with your own character and vision. In other words, command the process from the outset.
5. Be environmentally sensitive. Most of your projects will be in countries where land use issues are paramount and the ecology is under threat from development. Demand the highest standards for wetlands preservation, low-impact development and environmentally friendly maintenance, even when it goes beyond locally required laws. Set a standard that will be respected and will establish you at the forefront of the industry.
6. Just do a handful of jobs, don’t take on so much work that you lose control and end up having an office that mails in its “Plan-A” and “Plan-B” out of file drawers just to meet schedules and deadlines.
7. Don’t forget the everyday golfer. Personally, I can never tell when you are on a golf course if you are working hard or having fun -- probably both. Remember that everyday golfers are out to have a good time. That means creating interest and quality with subtle elements that don’t require everyone to play up to your skill level. It also means doing the occasional public-access course, whether a First Tee Course or a modestly-budget daily-fee layout.
You have a chance to do now with golf course design what you have done in championship golf, namely to set a new standard of excellence and passion. Here’s hoping that you will let that commitment guide your business decisions, and not let business drive the operation.