Desmond Muirhead

[Robert Mercer Deruntz]

The MV thread brought up an interesting notation on Muirhead's involvement.  He created the worst course I ever was forced to play a tournament on--Stone Harbor.  He also created some of Southern California's best layouts--Quail Ranch, Soboba Springs, and Mission Hills.  Quail Ranch should have been a case study on working the desert ridges into an interesting golf course--this is the total opposite of SCGA Golf Club (Murrieta Hot Springs).  SCGA represents a generic RTJ on great land through moving amazing amounts of dirt, while Quail Ranch worked the ridges and really was rugged. Owners over the years have done most of the artificial shaping now in existence.  It probably was once the hardest course in SoCal--it made Pebble seem very easy when I was 10-12.  Balls out play usually were Nature encounters--From Mountain Lions to an incredible number of rattlers.  Until I read Muirhead's articles in Executive Golfer I thought he was one of the great designers.  Too bad his legacy is ruined by Aberdeen and Stone(d) Harbor!

[Tommy_Naccarato]

Robert,
Funny you shopuld mention this! Quail Ranch was the first course of his I ever played in the early 80's, and it had some of the best maintained and highly undulated greens in SoCal.

As you have said, the owners before the current owners erased all of the key features of those greens, and the course ceases to have the same excitment when playing it. they also reversed the nines--a horrible choice!

One of my favorite greens was the par 4, 4th, which had that tier that ran the length of the green instead of the width as most designers would do. Imagine putting that only to find out the putt broke out to Mount Tit in the distance!

The following hole after that which required you to carry the lake below was another great hole that could kick you in the gotchies if you didn't play it right. It invited you to slice!

[A_Clay_Man]

RMD- Are you aware of DM's shift in attitude?

While I have only seen QR, the others you cite, may provide a different perspective, if you know what caused him to crawl out on that limb, way before Shirley MacLaine.

[Lou_Duran]

"It probably was once the hardest course in SoCal--it made Pebble seem very easy when I was 10-12.  Balls out play usually were Nature encounters--From Mountain Lions to an incredible number of rattlers."  RMD

When I first perused this thread, I thought that it was just another rater bashing, but now I see that RMD is talking about the real slithering things.

DM is the architect of record at Bent Tree CC in north Dallas.  The club held an LPGA event for a short time back in the 1980s and the ladies complained about it being way too long (well under 6,400 yards for them).

Bent Tree is a development course surrounding by some huge homes on relatively small lots.  I doubt that DM had much to do with the land planning as the property was developed by a long-time real estate mogul and former Dallas mayor, Bob Folsom.

The course itself was long, relatively flat, and non-descript.
It did have a great clubhouse and served as the family club for the moneyed north Dallas folks, with a number of the men members also belonging to Preston Trail.

Bent Tree was rennovated and reopened late last year by D.A. Weibring.  I haven't heard any reports, but D.A. has done some excellent work in the Dallas area, including a highly affordable ($10m initiation; $300/month dues) private club called Gentle Creek GC near Prosper (Deon Sanders 45,000 sf house is 2 miles from the club).  

[Robert Mercer Deruntz]

I am not sure of its current ownership, but Quail Ranch is one of SoCal's best opportunities to achieve greatnes.  I thought about the course while playing San Luis Rey Downs today.  In some ways Quail Ranch represented minimalism before it was a popular idea.  I have an idea that lack of money was very much the reason for such a beautiful rugged outcome.  Years ago, only the greens complexes  and ridge tops were shaped.  With LA growing towards Hemet, a great restoration and some other improvements would result in another Rustic Canyon success.  Other than 2 rebuilt greens, the greens complexes are world class!

[TEPaul]

I think pushing the envelope in golf architecture is probably a good thing in the end---it creates real difference and probably better defines what can and can't be when one considers what will and won't endure--but one sure does have to understand that the result can be either heroic or basically tragic. Stone Harbor is probably the latter. With that one Muirhead definitely pushed the envelope and the envelope ripped--bigtime.

But still I think that ripped envolope (Stone Harbor) should be preserved as it represents the outside edge of one end of the spectrum of the art of golf architecture!

[Forrest Richardson]

Mr. Muirhead had great interests well beyond golf. Ultimately that may have influenced his career in golf — he was clearly not "one of the status quo" in terms of golf architects or golf-oriented chaps. He was a well educated and terribly interesting gentleman. At times — the right times — he knew how to transcend "gentleman" and become a tyrant!

[Tommy_Naccarato]

DEsmond was a man that did not lik to be put on the spot. I don't think  he liked it one bit at all. As some may know from the past, I presented Desmond with a list of questions for a Golf Club Atlas Feature Interview, and he was more then willing to submit to the interview and answer the questions at his leisure.

About three weeks went by, and I hadn't heard from him, so I called him on a Friday night. He was in one of his moods as Forrest has described, and after some very careful walking around the subject he finally admitted he just couldn't and wouldn't do it. The questions I think got to him and they weren't too much different then questions he had answered before, but this was the feature about the guy if you know him you granted him that space and he appreciated you for it.

It was tough telling Ran that Desmond was out because the questions could have relieved a lot of preconcieved notions about the guy. He was genuine to a fault, and once again, Brad Klein's description said it best--he was a snake charmer.

Robert is right--Quail Ranch has a lot of possibilites of being some of the best if not most stern test of golf for the public in the Inland Empire (Riverside and San Bernadino counties) the two best greens on the course are the ones that got changed; The current #1 formerly #10, and the old #4 currently #13, and their contours were inspired by the Old Course--Desmond told me so when I asked him if that was what he was thinking when he built them. Hole #16 (currently the 7th) at one time was considered the toughest hole in All of the Inland Empire.

If it was me, the first thing I would do would be to reverse the nines again and re-institute those greens and get them lighting fast like they used to be. Their destruction was at the hands of the former superintendent who also planted 200 palm trees on the course during his reign.

And this is a little known something that some might find of interest: Desmond's favorite hole he ever designed was the current third, a really tough par 3 that has a vary of tees from all over the place that can take it from 190 to 110 yards. Why he lied this hole is beyond me because as Robert and I both have stated, Quail Ranch is one tough hombre.

[Lynn_Shackelford]

When I first joined American Golf in 1983, we were discussing golf courses one day.  Someone mentioned that the hardest course in Southern California was a place called Quail Ranch.  He said it was like being in Scotland, windy, no trees.  We didn't pursue it for acquisition purposes, too far from population.  Ownership, like Desmond Muirhead, must have been a lover of this kind of course.  I don't think it has ever done well financially.  It is certainly different today.  I regret I didn't play it in the 80's, passed right on by so I could arrive in the desert and play Ted Robinson courses.  Could have met Tommy earlier I suppose.

[TEPaul]

Lynn;

I love that post! You could've played the mad genius Muirhead's super hard course and maybe even met TommyN years earilier and what did you do but pass it up and went and played a bunch of Ted Robinson courses. It never ends, does it? Golf just like life is a series of Goddamned uneasy choices! Even if you make the right ones you never really know!

[Forrest Richardson]

At the very end it's best to assume you made the right choices...or, at the least, that they were made for you by some grand design. Had any of us met Tommy earlier it might actually have changed golf design forever.

[Robert Mercer Deruntz]

Financial viability has been a problem at Quail Ranch for years.  I am not sure of its current economic well being.  Over the years Quail Ranch was a popular tournament host because very few other players came.  The mini tour pros actually enjoyed the layout because it always separated the field unlike the more infamous Ted Robinson layouts.  The deal breaker for mini tour tournaments was the atrocious conditioning--it was not uncommon to witness green reconfiguration due to extreme scalping by the triplex mowers.  I can't count the number of hydrolic spills--it could qualify as a brownfield!    The other Muirhead course is still popular for mini tour events--Soboba Hot Springs.  Though Soboba has some wacky holes because of the riverbottom trees, there are a bunch of excellent green complexes and world class par 3's.  For a course with 16 almost flat riverbottom holes, Muirhead created a really challenging fun to play layout.

[JohnV]

The two years I worked the Futures Tour we played at QR.  It was a really fun course and I can just imagine how it must have been.  It was definitely one of the toughest courses the ladies played those two years and coming as the first event of the season definitely got us off to a good start each year.