Great land that you've discovered...

[Adam_F_Collins]

It is well known that the key to a great golf course is a great piece of land. There are certainly some land which is famous for being conducive to the creation of golf courses.

But I think that maybe we've all got a little site picked out for that dream course of our own...

Where's yours? What's the land like and why would it be great for golf?

[Jfaspen]

As I was driving from Moses Lake, WA to Walla Walla, WA.. I found a lot of deserted rolling land surronded  large hills and cliffs.  The area is windswept and generally dry.

I think it is wonderful inland links property.

[A_Clay_Man]

Ever since Dick Daley informed the world of the great soil make-up in the Sand Hills region, and with all the subsequent projects planned there, I wonder if telling people is a good idea. But that's just for those who are interested in '"the business".

The sprawl that is Florida, has some great land out west of route 27. That's all I'm saying except for the lack of flat, in and around that north central region of the state.

[Adam_F_Collins]

In the Annapolis Valley here in Nova Scotia, there's an area around Kingston which is all big pines and big sand blow-outs and scrubby, short undergrowth. The highway goes right through it. There are huge expanses of light, faintly reddish sand along the road. Its topography is rolling and ridgy, with a variation of about 100 feet, high to low.

It's beautiful.

There's one pretty interesting little old course down there now. It plays hard and fast in the summer.

[TEPaul]

Mine certainly would be that Ardrossan Farm project I've mentioned many times before on here. Various iterations were laid out on paper on that land. One by Gil Hanse independently, parts of one by Bill Coore that I used for some of the basis of a layout that was actually presented by my club to Ardrossan Farm that had initially come to us with the proposal to swap their land for the land GMGC is on.

The farm is still there just the way it was when we worked on it and it probably will be for the foreseeable future. In my opinion it offered immense potential for a really good course just the way it is. At that point I had little imagination to visualize how it might need to be changed to make it even better. I felt then and I still feel that a very special course could be put on that property with only doing very minimal earth work with tees and greens and of course the "designing up" phase of bunkering and such.

It has so much natural interest (including historic buildings) that Coore felt it made it more complicated compared to if they weren't there. He is certainly right about that.

I needed an evaluation from him to report to my club on and what he left me with was that he thought a really good course could be done there if various restrictions could be dealt with well---if in fact they were restrictions. The remark he made about the place that stuck with me most was he called it "instant maturity".

In my opinion, it would have made one of the coolest "parkland" style courses imaginable.

Maybe someday, but I'm not holding my breath.

(Another one for me was a part of the DuPont estate in Newtown Square Pa. I spent perhaps two hundred hours doing a layout on that one too. I never thought it was anywhere near as potential as Ardrossan though. Today there are some houses on it and the old line Philadelphia school known as Episcopal Academy is moving there from their long term campus closer to the city. Interestingly enough this very DuPont site is where Applebrook G.C. first wanted to go).

[Lance Rieber]

Near the Twin Falls region, on the Snake River Plain I am always drawn to a couple of places along the highway which have this great rolling nature.  Pockets for greens and bunkers, boulders strewn about and the grass already seems very strong and dense.  I always picture holes as I am driving near there.  There is also a place on the way to Ennis Mt from Henry's lake that has a great look.  Dry creek bed  with great curvature and these interesting trees.  
Lance

[Tom_Doak]

I lay out golf holes all the time when I'm driving.  I've also been known to scout out interesting property for courses while flying over the western USA.

However, the truth is that most of your fantasy courses have the same problem mine do ... highway noise!

[TEPaul]

"However, the truth is that most of your fantasy courses have the same problem mine do ... highway noise!"

TomD:

That's funny to think about. I've always heard you possess extremely strong visual recall---do you also have large rabbit ears?  

[RJ_Daley]

Adam, news flash!!!  Dick Daley did not tell the world anything about the sand hills.  Dick Daley wasn't even a glint in the old man's eye when folk like Perry Maxwell and other GCA pioneers where pointing out the area...  Heck, they found an old golf club in some Scotland born Nebraska sod-busters personal effects after his death in 1890s!  What the heck was he thinking?

But, that said, and having talked about it at nausium, that piece of land south of North Platte, and west of Lake Maloney is one of the finest I have ever seen.  

I'm like Doak in that regard,  I get sore necks from flying over the Western U.S., particularly the S.H. and grassland priairie regions... scouting.  I love giography and often watch my flight pass by as I try to identify various geographic and geologic features.  

I hate to predict my own demise, but I'm afraid my compulsion to lay out golf holes as I drive, is going to catch up with me some day...

[TEPaul]

RJ:

Thanks for pointing that out. I was going to but I thought I might offend someone!  

There seem to be a lot of very senstive people around here these days that take too many things personally!  

And one too often feels the need to use emoticoms for fear of being misunderstood by only the words he uses.

[Mark_Rowlinson]

I've mentioned it before on here, but there's some great heathland in Poland and when I was there in communist days the very few farmers had tractors.  Most still had to work with horses and very basic implements.  Surely some of them have retained those skills.  I could see a Sunningdale or two being hand-built there.

There was also some great heathland west of Berlin in the former DDR.  I remember flying in from Hanover in communist days and the East Germans were making the planes fly very low to burn more fuel.  This was just empty country with a few tank tracks.  It's just crying out for a design in the classical style.

And then, of course, there are existing golf courses which perhaps don't make the best of their natural attributes.  I suspect Harlech and Aberdovey might fall into that category, but I doubt if they'd let you change them.  

[Kyle Harris]

My grandfather's old strip mine in the PA Coal Region is screaming for an "out and back" mountain routing. Just walking along it nowadays reminds me very much of the terrain that Dornoch is built on... not so much links land, but just the topography.

It's a narrow strip of land with two distinct levels. Also some interesting outcroppings of rock and an old railroad bed to play around with.

[Sean_A]

Mark

Harlech kills me.  Just a few holes in those lovely dunes, such a waste.  Pyle & Kenfig may even have a better case.  How many courses are sitting there?  Saunton and Birkdale as well!  It's all too painful.

Ciao

Sean

[A_Clay_Man]

Da' Mayor, Anything pre-gca.com doesn't exist, as it pertains to global information spreading.

[RJ_Daley]

Well, if we are going to widen our search, I saw some remarkably interesting sand barrens along the coast of Southern Italy, south of Salerno near the ancient Greek City of Pasteum.  Unfortunately, the Italians seem about as interested in golf as they are in lutefisk...  Boy, would I love to be the first guy to bring high quality golf to that area!

[JohnV]

There was a piece of land just to the west of Interstate 5 in the foothills about 1/2 way between Redding and Red Bluff California that always looked interesting.  You could probably only see about 100 acres, but for a few years there was a sign saying that 3000 acres were for sale.  If much of the rest of that was similar it looked like it could be great and with 3000 acres it should have been possible to get away from the road noise.  The last time I drove that in 2002 the sign was down so I assume it was sold.

[John Foley]

For all of you window-seat discovering architects out there,

Can you see Sand Hills from the air on any of the east/west routes? When I fly Chi-SF/SJ/Oak I always look and can never find it. I've seen Wildhorse, but no SH. Any one lese had any luck?

This next few trips I'll just have to look for the clouds of dirt comming from the dozers in the zarea and I'm sure I'll see it

[Tom_Doak]

I have never seen Sand Hills from the air, and I've never seen a plane while I was at Sand Hills.

Flying Chicago or Detroit to Denver, you nearly always pass over North Platte ... I think the planes are routed along a path there.

[Gib_Papazian]

The Inch Peninsula in Ireland . . . . but it may never happen

There is another one that strikes my fancy. It carries the dreaded "highway noise" problem, but also on land reminiscent of Ballybunnion.

Across the highway from Fort Ord (Monterey), Seaside, Marina etc, there are some wild dunes along the beach, much of which used to be used as a gunnery range for the military.

Breathtaking, craggy bluffs, windswept hollows and majestic, broken sand dunes right against the water.

It is such an obvious spot - and right in the shadow of the Monterey Peninsula.

Traffic noise is not ideal, but neither are noisy trains in the U.K. - Prestwick is next to an airport!

Huckster will puke if he reads this, but Bayonet and Black horse ought to have been situated on the water and the firing range and military training equipment should have gone where the golf courses are routed.

General McClure must have had rocks in his head because most of the junk that clutters the ocean side of the road is easily removed.

Tom Doak,

Had the sad occasion to attend a funeral at Meadow Club the other day. Jimmy O says your project is coming along extremely well. Any thoughts?        

[Doug Siebert]

A former gunnery range?  That would give one incentive for hitting it straight and not venturing off into areas where no foot has ever fallen!

[RJ_Daley]

Tom, I don't fly all that much.  But I have seen SH from the air.  You are correct, they tend to fly along specific routes.  One of them is a portion of the I-80 corridor.  The flights out of Minneapolis always seem to be on that path.  Once, we flew so perfectly over the land I was so hyped about near lake Maloney south of North Platte, that the view onto that 800 acres was exactly the same proportion as the aerial photo from Terraserver.

Man, you know we must be in the winter doldrums when we even have a seasoned old archie like Tom D talking windowseat design...

[Mike_Sweeney]

Robbins Island, NY

http://www.golfclubatlas.com/forums2/index.php?board=1;action=display;threadid=6933;start=msg132740#msg132740

[Michael Whitaker]

Here are a couple of shots of some property on Long Island that was shown to me by Mr. Sweeney. Looks like it has possibilities... it would be a wonderful spot for his "dream" course.

[Sam Sikes]

There is some awesome looking, lush, rolling property in and around Pascagoula(sp?), Alabama, about 30 miles west of Mobile on I-10.

[Wayne Freeman]

I was recently on the Big Island of Hawaii and past the Mauna Kea is all this rolling ocean front property for several miles that seems unreal for a golf course-  every hole would have a beautiful ocean view.  But I assume it all belongs to the Parker Ranch.