Thanks, Phillip
Here's a few interesting points Kyle raised:
“What have we done to golf in America?” he asks pointedly, referring to aerial, target-style courses in shoe-horned into real estate developments. “Playing golf in tight corridors around houses takes angles and options away from the game,” he says. “We have taken golf design, made it like McDonalds: we’ve packaged it and sold it around the world at ridiculous prices. Now the world is choking on Big Macs. Instead, I like to have my courses look natural, I’m not going to take one style of course and drop it into another location...."
Phillips feels that subtle and well-planned enhancements to the less interesting portions of the property should not be dismissed out-of-hand. There’s nothing wrong with moving a little earth – a little mind you – to make a flat, unvaried parcel of land more interesting. Phillips describes the concept as “naturalism.”
“Naturalism uses existing natural landforms, but also – where the landforms might be devoid of character – allows for a natural looking shaping to be created, and then the holes to be overlaid this new, but natural looking and feeling landscape,” he explains. “The end result still looks and plays like what naturally was there, but we were able to make it more interesting – and most importantly strategic – than what was previously there.”