Tom Doak at Royal Melbourne

[Ben Jarvis]

Tom,

Welcome back to Melbourne, and in particular, Royal Melbourne.

As already said by many others, congratulations on being given the opportunity to be the consulting architect at RMGC.

I understand you are presently onsite. How is the progress of the East Course renovations going and can you provide some insight into the changes you are looking at, most notably the 15th?

I hope you brought the golf clubs with you and get a few games on the West Course in your "downtime"!

Cheers,
Ben

[Tom_Doak]

Ben:

Too late!  I'm already in Chicago, on my way home.  We have ten days to complete our proposal for the Rio 2016 course so I had to make this a brief trip.  It really sucked getting all the way there and not having time to get to Barnbougle or St. Andrews Beach.  But, I should be back again later for a new project in New Zealand, hopefully with more time to play.

My associate Brian Slawnik is there for the rest of the month (or longer) finishing up what we've been up to.

We have touched pretty much every hole in the eastern paddocks while they are being torn up for re-grassing, but most of the work is subtle enough that even a long-time member might not notice the differences on many holes -- for example, raising the front right corner of #9 East green to gain a hole location, or softening the contours a bit on the #7 green.

The significant work was as follows:

#6 E - re-contoured green and approach based on 1989 topo of original Alex Russell green

#8 E - changed fairway bunker on the left to allow players past it a bit more easily

#10 E - moved fairway bunkers downrange to protect the homes in the corner of the dogleg

#11 E - softened right-to-left pitch of green by lowering right edge, which had built up from years of topdressing

#15 E - added two fairway bunkers down the right side.  Redesigned green so that it favors an approach from the left, with hole locations on a shelf along the right side and falling away slightly from front to back left.  Built up fairway on left to give a better look at green from that side.  Tilted the neck of the approach to the green so a ball that comes up slightly short will leave a difficult pitch over the front right greenside bunker.


We are also going to build a 19th hole at Woodlands [in between #16 and #17] once they get some trees cleared for us.

[Michael George]

Tom:

Good luck with the Rio 2016 course.  I know you cannot comment on the process and wouldn't anyway.  However, here is one guy's hope that they review each proposal on its merits and, with a learned analysis, choose the best golf course, without influence or consideration of political or other factors. 

It would be really great to watch the Olympics and have them comment on the architecture of the course and how it reminds them of elements of other great early designs around the world.  I am sure there will be more than enough talk about the players.

Again good luck.

[Kyle Henderson]

#15 E - added two fairway bunkers down the right side.  Redesigned green so that it favors an approach from the left, with hole locations on a shelf along the right side and falling away slightly from front to back left.  Built up fairway on left to give a better look at green from that side.  Tilted the neck of the approach to the green so a ball that comes up slightly short will leave a difficult pitch over the front right greenside bunker.

These changes all sound like they are geared towards removing the temptation for players to challenge the waste area down the right side in attempts to drive the green.


They would also seem to remove the incentive for laying up as close as possible to the right side for a better angle to the (no longer) left-to-right sloping green.



Am I correct in my conclusions?

Why do you think these changes will make for a better hole?

Thank you in advance,
Kyle

[Ben Jarvis]

#15 E - added two fairway bunkers down the right side.  Redesigned green so that it favors an approach from the left, with hole locations on a shelf along the right side and falling away slightly from front to back left.  Built up fairway on left to give a better look at green from that side.  Tilted the neck of the approach to the green so a ball that comes up slightly short will leave a difficult pitch over the front right greenside bunker.

Thank you for your response Tom.

I have since seen the illustrations and comments that was sent to club members back in October. At that stage, it seems the intention was to have just the one fairway bunker at 210m on the 15th. Why the change to two bunkers - visually more intimidating, hoping to encourage more people to play down the left?

Kyle, the problem with 15 obviously stems from the boundary problem on the right, and is also somewhat impacted by the close proximity of those walking from the tee on the 5th. It's such a small piece of property for a golf hole but I'm sure Tom will do something very good with it. One way of promoting more golfers to play left would be to remove, or at the very least, trim those two trees you can see down the left side of the fairway. I'm not sure this can be done however, as it guards the path for those walking off the 5th tee.

Tom, all the best with your proposal for Rio 2016 - I'm sure everyone here on GCA have their fingers crossed!

[Tom_Doak]

These changes all sound like they are geared towards removing the temptation for players to challenge the waste area down the right side in attempts to drive the green.


They would also seem to remove the incentive for laying up as close as possible to the right side for a better angle to the (no longer) left-to-right sloping green.

Am I correct in my conclusions?

Why do you think these changes will make for a better hole?

Kyle:

You are correct in your conclusions.

I don't know that these changes will make the hole better than Alex Russell's original hole -- probably not.  However, we don't really have any choice in the matter.  This hole was deemed a major safety problem by the club, because the distance from the centerline [on the bee-line to the green] and the road on the right is only about 35-40 meters ... which makes it inevitable that people trying to play down the right side, as the original hole rewarded you for doing, will too often hit the ball o.b. right.

After identifying the problem, the club made some changes to the hole about five years ago, adding a sandy waste on the right and rebuilding the green, but neither of those things did much to reward the player for going left, so the safety problem still existed and the hole was neutered of its old interest.  Our mission was to find a way to redesign the hole to reward play down the left side ... not an easy task on a 277-meter dogleg right!

Our loose model for the hole is the 10th at Riviera, which is almost exactly the same length.  We didn't make the green as skinny as at Riviera, because that would be out of character for Royal Melbourne; but we did tilt it from right to left, to make any approach from the right side harder.  The bunkers we added are there to discourage the average club player from trying to drive straight toward the green, and to make a transition from fairway to native rough, through the "sandy waste" area which they have struggled to establish as something in keeping with the character of Royal Melbourne.

I wish I could have put back the old hole instead, but the day it was deemed "unsafe", it was history.  Perhaps someday I'll find a good situation for it with no boundary issues.  Hey -- maybe I'll build it in Rio!

[Tyler Kearns]

Tom,

How much did the current #6E green differ from the topo of Russell's original? The green was rebuilt to alleviate some issue with the boundary on the right hand side, and when I played the new version, I was told it had been faithfully rebuilt to match the Russell original.

TK

[Brian Walshe]

Tom,

The first set of changes to 15 East were made 8 or 9 years ago.  They had a couple of goes at it.

[David_Elvins]

Our mission was to find a way to redesign the hole to reward play down the left side ... not an easy task on a 277-meter dogleg right!

Did you think of the 3rd at Kingston Heath at all?  Another hole the same length that rewards approaching the green from the left.

[Tom_Doak]

Tom,

How much did the current #6E green differ from the topo of Russell's original? The green was rebuilt to alleviate some issue with the boundary on the right hand side, and when I played the new version, I was told it had been faithfully rebuilt to match the Russell original.

TK

Tyler:

It wasn't a lot different ... they tried to get it right.  On the green, it was mostly pretty close, though I don't think they had the swale on the left side quite right, and there was a bit of a shelf in the front right [not for a hole location but a place where an approach would stop] that didn't quite get in.  The bigger problem was and is the green surrounds.  By moving the green over to the left, where it was naturally lower, they wound up with the green too high relative to the right side and the area behind it, which were key recovery areas on the old hole.  We are trying to fix those as best we can.  And the main complaint from the older members was that a short ball did not feed back away from the right-hand bunker onto the green as it used to, which we've tried to fix, up to a point ... at some point, the ground has to start falling to the right instead.