High Pointe

[Tom_Doak]

Kalen:

I will send them tomorrow morning.

[Wade Schueneman]

Kyle,

Is that last photo the infamous 13th green?  What did you think of it?

[Sven Nilsen]

Kyle:

Funny that you say that the shots give you a good idea of the course as it was.  You seem to have captured most of the major memories I have from one play over ten years ago, including:

-the openness of the front nine;
-the fortress like feel of the par 3 4th;
-the cascading fairway of the 5th;
-the amazing green at the 8th;
-the climbing nature of the 10th with its green perched high above;
-the seemingly impossible target of the 11th
-the slightly claustrophobic contrast of the back nine

The only holes I don't remember that well are 16 and 17.  18 I remember well as I had a bit of a Tin Cup moment.

[Tom_Doak]

Kyle,

Is that last photo the infamous 13th green?  What did you think of it?

Kyle's last four photos are of the par-3 11th [from the tee], the par-4 12th [from the tee], and the par-4 13th [from the back tee and from the fairway].  You can see about 2/3 or 3/4 of the 13th green from the fairway there.  That green is the piece of the course I'll miss the most if it never comes back.

[Kalen Braley]

Here are the slides compliments of Tom....

...I re-sized them to better fit the page as there is some really good stuff there.  These are the best photos I've seen of the place.


A very wild looking Practice Green:




5th hole in the Rain...I like that bunker built into the slope on the right hand side:




5th hole looking back.




Looking in from the 9th fairway.




A look at the 14th hole, from the tee I believe:




A closer look at the crowned green.




The 18th hole from behind:

[Kalen Braley]

More photos....


Looking back at 10 from the forest!




The stunning 12th hole from the tee...very cool.




13th hole from the tee box...very nice!




A look at 13 green from the side.

[Tom_Doak]

Kalen:

Thanks for posting those photos.  You're quick!  And the reason these are the best photos of the place is because they nearly all from 1988, before things had started to change.

I'll tackle a couple of the slides now and get back to this later today.

The first photo shows my original "Himalayas" style practice green for High Pointe.  It's why I chuckle when people suggest building something like that on a new project.  [I've heard that Mike Keiser is thinking about building one at Bandon Dunes; he must have forgotten how little he liked the one I showed him at High Pointe 15 years ago.]  It went over like a lead balloon, mostly because the client did not understand it, and considered the $10k or so they spent to mow the green a waste of money, so only about 1/3 of it was maintained after 1990.  In the photo, the green went out of the frame to the left -- that was the really wild part, with maybe an 8-foot elevation change -- and around the little pine tree in the distance, very close to the back tee on the first hole.

The next two photos show the short par-4 5th hole, which played across some of the old orchard ground.  It was about 230 yards to the top of the ridge where the first photo is taken, and about 130-140 from there to the green, so you had to choose between driving over it and facing a possible weird stance, or laying back to the flat spot at 140 yards.  Management later put in a tee so you'd have to hit driver to the top, instead of making the choice. 

The main reason I included those two photos was to show all the cherry trees which were in play on the front nine when the course opened, and contrast those with the early photos of the back nine, which was much more open to start with.  There was never a time when people didn't comment on the contrast between the two nines, but the contrast became much greater in later years, after the cherry trees got old and were removed on the front, while the pine trees grew unchecked on the back.  The little cherry trees were not really close to the line of play, but they could be a factor on the fifth and seventh and ninth holes if you got yourself out of position, and especially at the fifth if you just whaled away off the tee without thinking a bit.

[Greg Tallman]

Had never seen any pics of this place before. It looks wonderful. What is the status as of now? Asking price?

[Kalen Braley]

I really love the look of the 5th and 9th holes.  It reminds me a little bit of what I've seen in pics of Wolf Point.  Who knows maybe Nuzzo used them as inspiration! 

But I must say, the original intent of the place where it was a lot more open really makes those holes pop alot more in comparison to some of the laters pictures I saw where many of those back 9 holes became overgrown.

[Keith OHalloran]

Tom,
It is hard to tell the slope of the fifth fairway from  the photos. Was it a similiar tee shot to the tenth at Shinncock?

[Tom_Doak]

Tom,
It is hard to tell the slope of the fifth fairway from  the photos. Was it a similiar tee shot to the tenth at Shinncock?

Keith:  Nothing that severe.  It was sort of a rollercoaster fairway, tee shot over one dip and second shot over another, climbing gradually from tee to green in the process.  [It played diagonally back up a sideslope toward the clubhouse, but didn't get all the way there.]  From the top of the ridges to the bottom of the dips was maybe 12-15 feet.  There was also a 3-5% side slope from right to left, and the green just laid on the crown of the ridge with that same side-slope, with some subtle changes to the interior shaped by me.  It was never singled out as a severe green, but there was never a dull putt there.

[Tom_Doak]

Next photos:  The ninth hole was a long par-five [557 yards and probably 30-35 feet uphill].  Photo is taken from the position of a very long drive, from where you could try to reach the green, though it was rarely done.  Originally I was going to put the green on the next ridge over to the right, but in the field, I decided I liked this position better, because if you went straight at it and wound up more than 40 yards short, the green was pretty much blinded by the rise up to it, because it sat back a way from the top.  If you were smart, and played to the right with your second, you got a better look at where the pin was on the deep, narrow green.  [You could also remember to notice the hole location when playing from the sixth tee.]

There was a long walk from #9 to #10 past the clubhouse and parking lot and into the woods ... the 425-yard 10th was one of only two holes really cut through big trees.  [The short 15th was the other.]  It was sort of a big boy version of the 5th ... over a valley to a ridge, then over another valley to another high spot ... but you were climbing 15-20 feet on each shot.  The saving grace was that the green was a natural punchbowl -- it really didn't drain out the front, the bottom was about 10 feet inside the green in the left third.  There was also some fairway to the right of it gathering onto the green, so if you got your second shot up the hill, which was tough to do, you were usually putting.  They widened it later on so everyone could try to hit driver over the top of the first ridge, but before that I used to play the hole with a 1-iron off the tee, and then a long iron or a 3-wood to the green.  The photo from behind the green gives some idea of the vegetation that existed on holes 11-14 when the course opened.

[Peter Pallotta]

Thanks much, Kalen and Tom.  It reminds me of Belvedere, on different land.  (That's not saying much, I guess -- anything can look like anything, on different land -- but I think you know what I mean).  Like Kalen, the 9th in particular looks lovely.

Peter

[George Freeman]

and





Pretty amazing growth!

[Tom_Doak]

George:

That's what 20 years will do for you [or do TO you].  I underestimated the change ... putting irrigation out back there in that dry, sandy environment really kick-started the tree growth.  [None of the irrigation sprayed directly into the trees, but the spray on windy days made a big difference.]

[Mac Plumart]

Tom, you've touched on this a bit here and there.  But if you would, please take some time to tell us some of the key learning points that High Pointe taught you.

[Bart Bradley]

Tom:

I am very saddened that I didn't get to see High Pointe in its day.  It looks wonderful and unique.  Ran speaks so highly of the place.  Really glowing stuff.  Thanks for sharing this with us.  What was the most "exciting thing" that you do there?  I know that you strive to make each course unique and fit the environment but are there aspects of High Pointe in your other work?  Would you be more willing to recapture aspects of High Pointe since it is possibly not coming back?  How big is the property?

Best,

Bart

[Tom_Doak]

Tom, you've touched on this a bit here and there.  But if you would, please take some time to tell us some of the key learning points that High Pointe taught you.

1.  If you don't get your client involved in the process, he may not understand why the course is the way it is, and he's more prone to listening to criticisms and to changing it after the fact.

2.  It is the client's course when you are done, and you only get a say in how it goes after that if they like you.

3.  If you want to be known as an architect, take your risks architecturally, not with grass choices.  Even if they are good grass choices!

4.  You can build severe greens and be fine, if you build them yourself and really study all the possible results carefully.

5.  If you want to build something truly original, do it all yourself.  If you want to build something truly great, get as much good help as you possibly can.  I built High Pointe with a great construction superintendent, Tom Mead ... but if I'd had someone who knew how to build cool bunkers, it would have been better.

6.  Try to anticipate the growth of trees over 10-20 years.  Then take out twice as many trees as you think you need to.  The growth is exponentially more than you imagine.

7.  Avoid holes with wetlands issues if possible.  If that's not possible, make doubly sure the wetlands are officially delineated before you try to design the hole ... because if they change the lines on you once you are committed to the hole, you're in trouble.  [That was the story on the 18th hole at High Pointe.]

I'm sure I will think of a few more later, but those are the ones that jump off the page.  Oh, wait:

8.  Continuity of management is key to the success of any course.  In 20 years of operation, High Pointe had at least 6 different superintendents and 8 different head professionals, and there were years where they didn't even have a head superintendent, and other years where they didn't really have a head pro, if you can believe that.  Whenever they managed to build up a bit of local support by hiring a popular pro, they'd blow it by firing him and alienating the regulars.  And of course, each superintendent tried to do his own thing, which changed the mowing lines and the grassing concepts and the bunker edging and just about everything else that wasn't nailed down.

[Steve Lang]

  Disclaimer: I played HighPointe on average twice a summer for every year it was open.. and last played 17 from Bates Road on west flank of property.

The early years we often saw HP fast and furious, as we're in the area usually late July.  One got to play the land quite a bit, but aerial shots of precision were definitely required to many greens, and usually away from the pins.  The angled par 3 4th green was probably the most gratifying to get on safely.. followed closely by the 11th.  

When it opened, I think that many people may only have noticed it on their way to play the Bear at the Grand Traverse Resort..

My favorites on the front were #1 and #7,.. loved that little pothole bunker on the back of the 7th green.

Over time the 9th lost its allure..

My favorite stretch on the back was 11-14, the tiered 12th green with guarding tree, the potato-chip green on 13 and the view from the upper tee at 14  were all love hate realtionships

I only remember a few years when the folks running the place from behind the counter seemed to be more interested in people than in taking your money..  

p.s. thankfully The Black Forest is still open

[Tom_Doak]

What was the most "exciting thing" that you do there?  I know that you strive to make each course unique and fit the environment but are there aspects of High Pointe in your other work?  Would you be more willing to recapture aspects of High Pointe since it is possibly not coming back?  How big is the property?

Bart:

The property was 320 acres, although there were 40 acres out front by the road that we didn't touch.  The routing of the front nine was done to allow for possible future development that never happened.

The course was intended to be a reaction to what was happening in modern golf architecture at the time, and more specifically, a rebuttal to The Bear, just down the road.  My goal was to err on the side of moving too little earth, instead of too much, and in some places I succeeded at that.    Most of the course [greens, tees, and bunkers] was shaped by me on a D-3 bulldozer.  The only bigger earth-moves were to build the 11th tee and to cut the 12th fairway for visibility purposes ... I'll get to that in the photo descriptions tomorrow.

One of the things that was REALLY different about the course were the severely crowned greens on #3 and #14.  I think this was a reaction to Mr. Nicklaus saying something at the time about how courses should be concave rather than convex.  Anyway, those greens were both sited on little knobs, and they were exciting to play right up to the day the course closed.  I really haven't built many greens like them since, but I might have to try.

The 13th green was also unique ... more about that tomorrow.  

[Doug Wright]

I only played High Pointe once, in 2000 shortly after getting on GCA and learning about the course. It was my first Doak course (if you exclude the holes he did at Riverdale Dunes) and I was very impressed (except for 18  ). I thought the course opened very well through #4, then was a bit blah from 5 tee to 8 green, which was amazing (the hidden pot bunker behind #7 green was cool too), and #9 was a fine par 5. I didn't like #10--seemed like a slog to get to the higher ground--then IMO the stretch between 11-14 at High Pointe is as good as anything Tom Doak has done anywhere. #11 was simply an outstanding par 3, and the 13th green needed to be seen to be believed. The finish wasn't as strong, but the 16th green was another over the top wonder. Tom took a lot of risks at High Pointe, and succeeded in most respects in my view. Really a shame it's returned to nature. Never say never--maybe someday it will be restored to its former self.

Thanks for the info Tom. Look forward to hearing more. I particularly like your comments #6 and #8 in post 42. Between High Pointe and Apache Stronghold you've had your share of issues with management of your courses!
 

[Tom_Doak]

OK, the last three photos Kalen posted in reply #30 are of holes 12 & 13.

When I did the routing of the back nine, I thought either #12 or #14 would be the star of the bunch.  The twelfth featured a second shot down between two massive sugar maples, to a green set on the shoulder of a hill falling from left to right, with #10 fairway just to the left.  I built a green that had a higher left tier and a lower right tier, and it angled just slightly to the left, back behind the big maple at the front left of the green.  It was a very difficult second shot, although some of the difficulty was that the tree was so big they were always losing the grass underneath it, so if you missed left you had to scuffle a shot under the tree from a bare lie.

I mentioned above that #12 fairway had the only real earthwork of any fairway on the course.  Originally, the fairway went out flat about 200 yards and then dropped to a lower level ... so you could not have seen players ahead of you in the landing area.  To fix that, we made a big "U" shaped cut across the fairway from right to left, and pushed up the material into a big mound on the left, and then built a sprawling fairway bunker into it.  My younger brother worked on the crew for a couple of months to help me out, and it was he who named the bunker "Bullwinkle" because he thought the shape of it looked like moose horns.

As I just said, I thought #12 or #14 would be the best hole on the course; #13 was just the hole I had to build to connect them, although I had high hopes for the green, which was set on the saddle between two small hills.  It was the first green we actually built, and turned out to be one of the best greens I ever built ... the front right and back left sections were lower, and the front left and back right sections worked up into the hills.  The really fun hole location was the back left.  Instead of playing straight at it, and going out the back, you could play up toward the back right of the green and there was enough tilt that the ball would turn left and come back down the slope to nestle close to the flag.  [I only ever saw one person hit that shot on the approach, but it was often done by players chipping and putting from the right who knew the green.]

The fairway was tilted quite sharply from right to left; it went over a crown about 220-230 yards from the back tee, leaving nearly everyone with a downhill / sidehill lie for the approach.  I think the tilt was 6 or 8 percent from the crown in three directions; most anyone now would have softened it, but it worked fine without it, though it did exaggerate the benefit of being able to carry the ball a certain distance.  Also, from the back tee on top of the ridge, the trees on the left made it hard to aim left if you were a fader, and this got worse over the years, to the point that they couldn't use the back left tee at all the last few years the course was open.  This was also the hole where the natural ferns provided a great hazard on the right when the course first opened, with a few small trees spotted here and there, but as the pines got bigger the right side became too thick and you just couldn't afford to miss it there, a problem which was exacerbated by the trees off the tee.

In all, I still consider #13 at High Pointe one of the best par-4 holes I ever built.  I don't know if it will really be possible to build a green like it on another course, but I will certainly keep an eye out for the right opportunity.

[George Freeman]

A look at the 14th hole, from the tee I believe:

Does anyone have a more recent picture of the 14th hole?  I'm having a hard time visualizing which hole it is, most likely bc when I played it it didn't look anything like the picture above!

[Brett Hochstein]

The greatness of 13 at High Pointe is how ridiculous the green looks from the rest of the hole but how playable it is when you get up to it.  That's what stands out to me.  Visual details.

[Tom_Doak]

A look at the 14th hole, from the tee I believe:

Does anyone have a more recent picture of the 14th hole?  I'm having a hard time visualizing which hole it is, most likely bc when I played it it didn't look anything like the picture above!

George:

That's #14, from the spring of 1988, before we'd planted the tee.  This was from the back tee which was way up in a corner of the property.  If you didn't go up there it's no wonder the hole looks different ... the regular tees were way down to the right, not far from #13 green, and from there you played uphill to the right part of this fairway.  From the back tee, it was about a 220 yard carry to the top of the fairway, which was 80 yards wide at that point, but crowned hard.  If you played left of center, your ball settled in a swale and you could only see the top of the flag for your approach; if you hit a good one just right of center, the ball stayed up on top of the ridge, and you could see the whole green clearly, but then you were flirting with losing your drive to the right and winding up in the ferns.

You can see in this picture how small the pines were on the back forty when we built the course.  The face of the hill was full of ferns, this was just taken too early in the year, before they came out.

The approach to the 14th is shown just under the above picture, in Kalen's post #29.  This was the other really crowned green at High Pointe ... and if you missed it right of center you might bounce off the green and into the native.  I usually tried to approach it with something like a punch six-iron toward the left front of the green, to take the big bad bounce out of play.  But it's safe to say that most visitors [especially the ones who drove it left] failed to figure out how to play the hole, and thought it was pretty severe, even though it had an 80-yard wide fairway and only a single narrow bunker at the back right of the green, the sole purpose of which was to keep you from losing your ball in a shrub behind it.