There's so much information out there now that real surprises are hard to come by, unless the course is very obscure and you just stumble over it. Even when I visited Cleeve Hill GC with Sean Arble and Tony Muldoon a few winters ago, Sean's previous postings about the course had led me to expect something quite good.
So most of my best surprises have come on construction sites or looking at bare land before it was developed. Without doubt the biggest and best of all these was...
1. Askernish. I've written about my trip up there with Gordon Irvine, Martin Ebert and Chris Haspell in 2006 on a number of occasions, but it's pretty hard to get across the astonishment on all our faces when we drove across the (apparently pretty flat and not very exciting) links, only to stop ten yards from the Atlantic, high on the seawall dune and see the valley that now houses the seventh hole straight in front of us, and an apparently endless range of huge sandhills beyond it. We walked off into the dunes looking for golf holes; about an hour later, Martin (who wasn't getting paid for this remember) said to me: "Well, this has just become the most exciting project on our books".
2. Streamsong. With apologies to Mark P, but the day I spent there with Bill Coore and Keith Rhebb, fairly early in the construction process, just blew me away. Keith - who I'd first met while he was building Lost Farm in Australia, told me a little of what to expect, but after getting lost in the flatlands of central Florida, to see a site of that kind, with the mining machinery still on it, was pretty mind-blowing.
3. Cabot Cliffs. I first visited Cabot five (I think) years ago, when the first course was about ten months away from opening. Ben and co had just acquired the property that would later become Cabot Cliffs, and I spent my last afternoon in Canada just walking the land on my own. The bluffs alone tell you it's going to be something pretty special, but the rest of the site is remarkable too. My biggest goal for 2015 is to return to see what Bill, Keith et al have made of it.
4. Sweetens Cove. I met Rob Collins when I was in Chattanooga visiting the ASGCA annual meeting back in 2011. His partner Tad King had built courses for a couple of my European friends, which is how I got the intro, and I had stumbled across Rob's presentation of the work on his website. Still wasn't prepared for what I saw. What kind of lunatic takes flat ground and builds a bloody great mound to deliberately create a blind par three?!
I loved it then and still think it's one of the coolest pieces of golf design I have seen.
5. Lofoten Golf Links in Norway. An authentic links 100 miles north of the Arctic Circle with a resident pod of killer whales swimming up and down the shoreline? How mad is that? Gotta get back and see the finished course next year.
Surprises on finished courses:
* Wolf Point. I knew it would be good, but I didn't know it would be _that_ good.
* Budersand in Germany. A proper links on what used to be an airbase? Very fine course, fantastic creation story.
* Le Touquet (La Mer). Well known, to be sure, but there is a very very special course trying to escape from under the tree and scrub growth
* Royal des Fagnes in Belgium. Could be magnificent with heavy duty Chainsaw Action (tm) and better greenkeeping
* Mazagan in Morocco. Hadn't seen work of this standard by the Gary Player group before. Frank Henegan did a great job on a lovely piece of dunes. Pity the greenkeeping isn't in sympathy with the design
* Bled, Slovenia. Gorgeous spot, nice piece of land, excellent routing. Needs more green interest and a sympathetic bunker job to be very good indeed.
* Yas Links, Abu Dhabi. Clearly from the publicity it was going to be good, but it really transformed golf in the Gulf. Nothing like that elsewhere in the region. Remarkable.
* Cork GC, Ireland. Golf architect Paul O'Brien and I were touring a few courses in that part of the country, and Paul, who grew up in Cork, took me to see the course, about which I knew little. I loved it, and still haven't seen a non-links in Ireland that I'd rather play. Even though I got into a bit of trouble for later complaining about the tree growth in the magazine, only to learn later that the trees I was complaining about weren't on their property!
* Dunstanburgh Castle, England. I met Tom Doak and Don Placek at the site of the Renaissance Club one cold, clear and beautiful early spring day. Afterwards, I fancied a few holes before heading back south, so rang the secretary at North Berwick to see if I could get on. They had a large visiting party playing, so I gave up on that idea and hit the road. Heading across the border, I remembered the selection of courses on the Northumberland coast, none of which I'd seen, so turned off the A1 and headed to Dunstanburgh. Not a cloud in the sky, but extremely cold and a brutal wind howling off the North Sea. I paid my £20 green fee, shoved half a dozen clubs in my pencil bag and went out. It was the day I discovered my love of playing golf on my own. I went round all 18 in a fraction over two hours with a huge smile on my face the whole way. A good, not great golf course, but a great experience.