[Mike Hendren]

Glenn,

Step away from the keyboard and put the whip in the closet.

Maybe the man is just trying to earn a living - not be the next Mackenzie.  Does not your criticism more appropriately lie with those who hire him?

A wise man once said you can't always get what you want, but if you try sometimes, you just might find, you get what you need.

Let it go, brother.

 

[Sean Remington (SBR)]

 
Steve Shaffer nailed it:

  " Perhaps Art Hills is a very personable guy, is a good salesman and charges less than others. Perhaps that's part of  his formula for getting these jobs. The members are probably happy with his work. I haven't heard anything to the contrary from Craig and Jerry who are tuned into the DC market. "

  Mr. Hills is a true gentleman and was a pleasure to work with at Chevy Chase Club. He was also very willing to listen to the committee and work within the requirements set for him.

   

[Sean Remington (SBR)]

  If your looking for an alternative in the D.C. area look up Joel Weiman. He's local and very good.

[Glenn Spencer]

Bogey,

Mick is a very wise man. I think my 'problem' lies with both parties. I have heard some horrible things about the Inverness restoration, but I don't know what to blame on Hills. I wish someone would help me with that. You will all be sorry if he ruins some classic that is close to you or your heart. It is all fun and games till Inverness and Oakland get hurt.

[Andy Hughes]

Mr. Hills is a true gentleman and was a pleasure to work with at Chevy Chase Club. He was also very willing to listen to the committee and work within the requirements set for him.

Sean, if you don't mind my asking, what was your role, and what exactly was the membership looking for Hills to do?  
I assume they had seen prior Hills work in the area, liked what they saw, and therefore hired him. Did they get what they were looking for?

[Chris Burgard]

If you had the chance to have someone that has built over 150 golf courses and has 2 of them ranked in the Golf Digest Top 100 public and 0 ranked in the top 100 in the country, wouldn't you jump at the chance to have him 'restore' your club? Hills is obviously a great architect, he has the built the 'Pebble Beach of the Midwest'- Bay Harbor ranked 35th and Longaberger-65. Bay Harbor looks like unbelievable property, so I guess that is why it is ranked higher, so I guess these courses are just about even in quality. Let me know when Pebble Beach is ranked 35th in anything!!

Glenn,

While I have no opinion on Mr. Hills' restoration work, I do know that he has more than 2 courses in Golf Digest's Top 100 Public list, having played Red Hawk (#66) and Shepherd's Hollow (#43).

[Andy Hughes]

I am also just saying that I find it hard to believe that the members at a course like Burning Tree have really done their homework if they brought in Hills.

Glenn, I wish I could answer that yeah or nay.  I have to assume that a course like Burning Tree has a number of bright people, and that they would at the least take a look at a goodly portion of Hills work around here before making such a big leap.  
And that means they must have liked what they saw if they made the decision to hire Hills.

There seem to be two different things at play:
1. What do the members want?
2. What makes the course a better (or worse) one?
And these two, at least according to many on gca, do not have the same answer.  Interesting that Sean and Jason have both commented favorably about Chevy Chase.

[Glenn Spencer]

Chris,

Sorry about that, you are correct. I missed those two.

Andy,

Great point about the membership, I agree. You would think that in a well-heeled crowd like that, they would know who to hire. So that just makes me wonder even more. How many people on this site would hire Hills to do anything at their course? Why are well-heeled people in Washington coming up with a most likely different answer than the ones on this site. Now, don't everybody answer at once, remember Hills is a busy man and he has a lot of great sites to hack up.

[Bill_McBride]

Glenn, just wondering what you consider to be the correlation between "well-heeled" and "bright?"  

It is always important, in my opinion anyway, to remember that 99.9% of golfers are not nutsy about golf architecture the way this crowd is.

Guys at country clubs tend to be sheep in some respects.  They like green and they like well-watered.  Don't you think they would want to hire the guy who did some renovation work at their buddies' courses?  Once Hills did a couple in DC, don't you think the members of the other courses would say, hey, if it's good enough for (fill in the blank) and (fill in the blank), it will be good enough for us?

Literally not one in a hundred "regular" golfers (as opposed to GCA acolytes) cares about whether that redan is uphill or downhill, or what kind of grass this is, or much less what the maintenance meld is.

My guys at CC of Fairfax used to say our super had things backwards, because he had hard greens and soft fairways.  They wanted hard fairways and soft greens.  I wanted it all hard and fast but that would have driven them crazy!

[Glenn Spencer]

Thank you Bill, that was a good explanation of the inexplicable. Can anyone supply us with the first dominoe in Washington then? I guess you are correct about most people, I must have been fortunate to run with the right crowd when I was younger.

I am sorry for all the negative posts about Hills, but I am just fascinated at how something like this happens. I just find it amazing that I can go to Longaberger and find nothing but a reasonable 17th hole and play his other courses and just absolutely HATE them. Noone else has ever had this kind of effect on my golf, just him. I hear all about Fazio haters and I liked Victoria and Belfair, I am somewhat easy to please, Hills is the only guy whose work I just think is mostly worthless. He does seem like a good guy though.

[Craig Disher]

I think Hills' first work in the DC area was at Bethesda CC in the early 90s. That and his renovation of Chevy Chase a few years later made him the go-to guy for work here, displacing long-time local favorites Ault & Clark.

[Glenn Spencer]

Thanks Craig, I figured you would know.

[Sean Remington (SBR)]

Andy,

   I was lucky enough to work on the course at Chevy Chase for 17 years and was the Superintendent for ten of those. Craig Disher is correct that Mr. Hills was working at Bethesda C.C. when we first started talking with him. The work at Bethesda was getting favorable comment and it was easy to schedule a visit as he was in town often. Beyond that there was a few very interested CCC Members that did do some visits and talked with other clubs as references but there was no real search committee. Once we met Mr. Hills and heard what the fine people at BCC had to say I think we had our Architect.
   There were a few large ticket issues that drove the development of the master plan at CCC. Most of these were developed prior to Mr. Hills being hired and he agreed to work towards these goals:
   Create a par 70 course if possible. CCC was a par 69 prior.
   The old tenth hole, a par three, needed a new location due to a proposed indoor tennis complex.
    Create four or five sets of tees, lengthen back tees where possible.
    Create the best possible practice facilites
    Create a storage area for irrigation water. No lakes on property previous and 100% dependent on city water.
    Keep the course looking like CCC and retain contours where possible.
    Bunkers will have grass faces and flat bottoms

    It boiled down that, when completed, the course should look it's age (73 at the time) but have modern construction and drainage. Once you push over the first domino a lot begins to happen and the look of the property did change in some areas. I think the look of the holes remained similar, although imporved, to what it had been. Mr. Hills seemed very willing to work with the members and had no interest in leaving any identifiable signature o the golf course.

   

[Andy Hughes]

Sean, thanks for the reply. That must have been a very enjoyable experience (being the sup. at Ch Ch during the work, not making the reply ).
Interesting how Hills was chosen.  I would have assumed it was a more involved process for a large private club, but you make it sound like that is not the case. Did you have any input?

Were you/the members satisfied with the end result?  You certainly sound like the course was better for the work Hills did.  

PS OT, but could you please tell me what the hole that runs along Bradley is like? I have driven past countless times, and all I can really tell is that it appears to be a slightly uphill par 4.

[Jason Mandel]

Andy,

The hole that run's along bradley is a par 5th 8th hole.  About 250-300 yards out there are a set of diagonal cross bunkers, from there the hole drops down and then back up for the last 100 yards, like most greens there, but this one especially, is sloped severely from back to front.  its a very tough hole in my opinion and the only par 5 on the front side.  

Jason

[Andy Hughes]

Yeah, like I said, all I can tell is it is a par 4!  Couldn't even get that right.
Thanks!

(at least throw me a bone and tell me it is a shortish par 5  )

[Jason Mandel]

off the top of my head i want to say its about 560, but its at least 4 years since i've played it

Jason

[Andy Hughes]

Rats, foiled again!

[Glenn Spencer]

Sean,

Thanks for that response. I now have a better idea of how it happens and what takes place. I honestly thought that there would be more of a design element in the work that would be done in a restoration. Not much, but some more. If the membership gave him those directives and he was just fiddling with the contours, I think Hills was the right guy for the job and I am glad that it worked out for them.

[Sean Remington (SBR)]

  Start with the easy one first. Jason has given a nice description of the 8th hole. I think the card has it at just under 600 from the tips now. The distance did not change from the member tee. For me the coolest thing about #8 was that you could see 2/3 of the green from the tee. The longest hole on the course and you got a glimpse of the green just to the right of the cross bunkers at the top the hill. Mr. Hills made very few changes on this hole, not really needed. He slightly adjusted the tee shot bunkers by offsetting them. Before the were directly across from each other. On the second shot you aim over a certin part of the cross bunker mounding depending on your position in the fairway. Two well hit shots and you might have W - 8 remaining. The green is very severe and it may have served better if Mr. Hills was more willing to change green contours than he was. Above the hole is trouble.

   I don't really think there is a formula for sellection of an Architect. I did not really have a say in the process at CCC. I was quite fine with that at the time. The process started slowly and through the efforts of a few interested members it gained momentum. There may have been talk of other Architects in the Men's grill but I did not hear of any. It just seemed to follow that Bethesda C.C. had great results with Mr. Hills and McDonald & Sons, so should we.

    I believe the results where good. I'm sure there are plenty of opinions out there. After a year or so we realized that the flat sand bottom bunkers needed some subtle modifications. To often a ball would fall down a grass face and stop close to the edge of a bunker. We began to move the grass back slowly on some edges. I think Mr. Hill went along with this but it differed from his original vision. At one point before the project was done he told me that I should not use anything metal to edge the bunkers. He wanted a rough edge look. But bunkers are an ever changing part of the course anyway.
    Being the Super my biggest fear was building greens that wouldn't work and would need to be rebuilt. I guess so far so good on that front. The #14 green was the first completed on 10/25/96 and I don't think there has been any reconstruction yet. I know the slope was softened on the 11th green but that was just a surface modification. The entire process was the best and worst experience of my life to date. I loved the daily challenge of the construction and my interest in Architecture was peaked. But it completely consumed my life and I never really recoverd from the effort the construction required. It was hard to focus on growing grass when the dust settled and I found myself in the middle of a divorce. But I felt I had to put that job before everything else during that time. Funny, a year or so before we broke ground my Green Chairman at the time showed me an article from one of the trade mags. It was about how most Superintendents change jobs within two years after a major project. I guess you can call me a statistic. I will always love that ground and will forever be thankfull to the people I worked for.

[Mike_Cirba]

off the top of my head i want to say its about 560, but its at least 4 years since i've played it

Jason

Andy Hughes,

Remind me to never ask you for yardage.  

[Andy Hughes]

Andy Hughes,

Remind me to never ask you for yardage.  

Thanks Mike, I really needed the Diet Coke sprayed on my monitor.

Anyway, what, you think there is an appreciable difference between 560 and 400 yards??  I think the real key is to never ask for yardage when I am in my car.  On the course itself, I can invariably get within 150 yards for almost any hole  

[Andy Hughes]

Being the Super my biggest fear was building greens that wouldn't work and would need to be rebuilt. I guess so far so good on that front. The #14 green was the first completed on 10/25/96 and I don't think there has been any reconstruction yet. I know the slope was softened on the 11th green but that was just a surface modification. The entire process was the best and worst experience of my life to date. I loved the daily challenge of the construction and my interest in Architecture was peaked. But it completely consumed my life and I never really recoverd from the effort the construction required. It was hard to focus on growing grass when the dust settled and I found myself in the middle of a divorce. But I felt I had to put that job before everything else during that time. Funny, a year or so before we broke ground my Green Chairman at the time showed me an article from one of the trade mags. It was about how most Superintendents change jobs within two years after a major project. I guess you can call me a statistic. I will always love that ground and will forever be thankfull to the people I worked for.

Sean, thanks for the reply. I can barely imagine how all-consuming it must be for a super to work through a remodel.  I still believe the ultimate measuring stick for a remodel is not what others believe, but rather if the members got what they wanted and if they are happy with the changes.  It would be an odd result of the GCAers here applauded an architect's work, yet the members no longer liked their course.

Sean, how would you compare ChCh and Columbia?  Is there much similarity, or just similar Connecticut Ave addresses?  I found the ground at Columbia to be very good in places, interesting rolls and elevation changes that were well-used. As the courses are so close together, does ChCh have similar topography?

[Sean Remington (SBR)]

Andy,

   Columbia and Chevy are both very good but I think better golfers appreciate Columbia more. The ground at Columbia has more movement and some would say more interest. Columbia probably has more to offer for GCA discussions as well although I haven't seen Columbia since some work was done. Chevy is more gently rolling and more open feeling. I would consider Columbia the ideal golf club course and Chevy the ideal country club course. What a great day if you could walk and play them both. Play Columbia in the morning and have lunch. Have the afternoon round at Chevy and when done sit behind the 9th green and watch the sunset with a cocktail. That's a great day on Connecticut Ave.

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