Is it possible to turn a featureless site with no interesting views into a top 100 golf course, while still making it an affordable experience for the general public?

Everybody knows it can be done because of Shadow Creek....  But could it be done without spending an insane amount of money?

If so, what would be the necessary ingredients?

I'll supply my personnal ingredients (in no particular order), but would like to hear from others....

1. Lots of room to create a good routing with wide, varied holes;
2. A client committed to the project;
3. No time pressure to plan it properly and to build it;
4. A budget that is somewhat reasonable without going overboard;
5. Lots of talent to spare....

What do you think?

YP

Bayonne Golf Club is a worthy example.

Eric Bergstol was brilliant in negotiating to be paid to dredge the Bayonne Harbor for his fill material.

I also think it takes courage on the architect's part -- courage to trust that his vision of a low-profile, elegantly simple, subtly varied golf course will find/draw a clientele; and courage/determination not to try too hard to 'compensate' for the site's deficiencies.  

Peter

Sort of like a publication designer trusting that white space is as important as the elements, or that good writing doesn't require a "too cute" design.

Or, better yet, like a jazz piano player having the courage to trust that fewer, well-chosen notes is the source of genuine elegance. Like Basie, for instance.

Ken

Yannick:

I am sure that it could be done, but I'm not sure that it HAS been done.  The Rawls Course is never going to be one of the top 100 in America, and I would bet against Bayonne as well.  Most of the land in Florida is featureless except for Seminole, Jupiter Hills, Black Diamond and World Woods ... coincidentally the only top-100 courses there aside from the TPC at Sawgrass, which was admittedly pretty plain and maybe the best case study so far.

A lot of making the grade for the top 100 in America depends on emotional connection, and if you don't have a beautiful piece of land for people to connect with, you're starting behind the 8-ball.  If you don't have some good features on the site, at least you'd better not have any bad features off-site that you have to hide ... like if the golf course was up against state forest so you wouldn't have to do a lot of work to block a bad view.

The last problem is familiarity.  I am sure there is a way to come up with something strategically that feels really unique, even on flat ground.  But then if the same architect gets a better site, he can probably apply the same ideas, and people will be inclined to like that more, and then the original course will slip off the rankings over time.

Yannick,

you could built a very good course...

To make the top 100 would take 4 things I think, granted that you start with a very good routing, greens and all that crap:

1) the real way: it would take TIME. With a good and visionary landscape plan and people to stick with it, it could make the top 100 in 25-30 years

2) the fake way: a lot of money can buy TIME to make the landscape beliveable in 10-15 years

3) the lucky way: your featureless site has great views, where the scale would dissipate the lack of perfection in the details, that would help on the first 5 years...

4) the usual way: it would take a great PR guy and a spa in the nearby hotel

Since Shadow Creek the only course that has accomplished this is maybe Kingsbarn and it had water frontage so I'm not sure it was completely featureless.

Joel,

I would die to work on a site like Kingsbarn.  If that's a featureless site, I don't know how we could classify most of the sites we usually work on in Quebec!

Tom,

I think your post describes exactly what I had in mind.  I don't want to say it is impossible to do, but I fear it might never be acheived for the reasons you mention.

Steve,

You are right, there is no featureless sites, but I can assure you that there is a lot of sites with very little features!

Peter,

It was nice meeting you on saturday.  I hope we have the chance to discuss again in the future.

Steve L.

I would have to dissagree with you on many fronts....  Bayonne has some very nice views, IMHO, and I would guess that the construction budget must have been pretty high up there, with the likes of the Shadow Creek's of this world, even if people had to pay to dump material there....

Steve S.

I knew someone would probably bring up the Rawls Course at Texas Tech as an example.  I don't doubt that it is a good course, but I do doubt that it is top 100 material....

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Thanks guys, lets keep this discussion going!

YP

 

Philippe....maybe it's just verbage but to me views are a feature...as would be the coastline ....or like Dye's work at Lake Michigan... or montains in the distance

as to developing a top 100 with none of the above...don't think that it could happen given talented designers that have inherntly beautiful sights are way too far ahead coming out of the gate

Perhaps as a hypothetical we could use Bandon as a general site image to start with

If Bandon were completely flat, but it still had the sandy soil and the gorse.  Could a top 100 course be built out of it, if dunes and the undulating landscape didn't exist there.  Certainly its locale to the Pacific would help.

Thoughts??

I don't know if Kingston Heath or Garden City are featureless, but they have at least 15 feet of elevation change and not only because of a long 1% slope.

I think Yannick is talking about a flat farm field with nothing but a long 1% slope.

Wasn't Whistling Straits a runway beofre Pete Dye worked his magic??

Archie,

A little advice...plan an extended trip...it's a long flight both ways...but more than enough great golf to make it worth your while...

I would assume that the definition of a "featureless" site would be in the vast land of the Dakotas... Take Grafton, ND for instance. DEAD flat, no water, not much for trees... take a 300 acre parsel that once was a potato field, and there you have featureless... Would that qualify? Because, if anyone has been in the Sand Hills region, in no way is that land featureless... Beyond the 1000's of golf holes that one imagines after turning N. from North Platte, there is sooo much natural movement and features to the land... Or, am I completely off-base???

Take the land in ND, and I see alot of skyline greens, blind shots, and the possibility of a world-class "prairie links" design... Nice, I've been waiting all day to use "prairie links!"