In his book Grounds For Golf, Geoff Shackelford once compared great golf courses to epic films. For example, he called Pine Valley The Godfather and he called National Golf Links of America Citizen Kane.
The analogy has merit. To continue the exploration, it’s clear that Mike Strantz’s tour de force at Tobacco Road is clearly akin to Quentin Tarantino’s celebrated, polarizing, avante garde neo-classic Pulp Fiction. After all – Tobacco Road is celebrated, polarizing, avante garde and neo-classic.
Part Pine Valley (and therefore World Woods) for its vast sandy waste areas and part Prestwick for its numerous blind drives and approaches, the result is a dazzling and unique synergy flawlessly executed to produce a course rich in risk reward options on a breathtaking canvas. It’s easy to see how players find Tobacco Road the most atmospheric and enjoyable four miles of potential eagles or triple bogeys ever designed.
But like Pulp Fiction’s divided initial reception – where it won the Palm D’Or at the Cannes film festival but lost every U.S. Academy Award except one to the more accessible Forrest Gump starring the “safe” Tom Hanks - the road to recognition and respect for Tobacco Road has been as bumpy as the great rumpled course itself. As Strantz correctly anticipated, the course divided some in the golf community and triggered controversy and frustration along with well-deserved acclaim.
Like Pulp Fiction, many knew The Road was destined for greatness right from its opening, even in the face of vocal opposition. Just as Pulp Fiction stirred bitter controversy at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences with its black humor, unabashed violence, deviant sexual exploration, and promotion of various aspects of criminality. so too did Tobacco Road stir controversy with its fearless courage in demanding blind and semi-blind shots to devilishly positioned greens. Nevertheless, Pulp Fiction’s riveting, poignant dialogue and virtuoso acting performances transcend its colorful subject matter. The movie made the careers of Uma Thurman and Samuel L. Jackson. So too do the strategy and artistry and other worldly, eye-popping visuals elevate The Road to legendary status in our game. With every hole playing like a crucial chapter in a book you can’t put down, The Road’s whole is greater than the sum of its mighty parts.
Both pieces were instant classics. Both are also enduring classics and are examples of the highest form of their respective crafts, raising the bar for all that followed. TR even inspired the great Black Mesa. Some feared each piece’s raw power and unabashed personality. Some panned them, but they were proven wrong, others embraced them and have been shown to be visionary.
Why? Easy. They have depth of substance and integrity. Every scene in Pulp Fiction is critical to its intricate plot, but the scenes are never rushed, for great dialogue creates endearing characters, whether they discuss mayonnaise on French Fries, sleeping like spoons, small talk on dates or matters of life and death. God was in the details. The movie’s forest is made from a grove of mighty trees: its great writing and career-defining acting performances.
Just like Pulp Fiction elevated Tarantino to the pantheon of great screenwriters and director, Tobacco Road was a defining moment, indeed career moment for Mike Strantz too. Like Tarantino, he dared to be different and challenge us. Tarantino rubs sex and violence in our face, but we tolerate it because with skillful dialogue and poignant acting he shows us how genius creates a legend – a silk purse out of a sow’s ear. So too, Strantz turns convention on its ear and says, look how much further we can reach when we suspend expectations and take some chances. Only now are we beginning to appreciate just how visionary he was, yet also how true he remained to the design strategies he imported from courses overseas.
Further, as Strantz’ idol Alistair Mackenzie believed, great courses are meant to be replayed over and over and that is when they reveal their secrets. (Just like a great movie must be seen again to reveal great dialogue.) Although both Strantz and Tarantino have reached great heights since the works discussed here, they are indelibly defined by their breakout works, their magnum opus which rightfully catapulted them to well-deserved stardom.
What other courses are like great movies? What would Sawgrass be? Would any course be Kill Bill? Black Mesa perhaps? Part samurai film, (for its seminal devotion to great design strategies and concepts) and part spaghetti western?