From our Raters Handbook:
Classic and Modern
The Golfweek’s Best program virtually transformed the golf course
ratings process and had a powerful influence on the perception of golf
course design when Golfweek initiated two parallel lists: one
recognizing Classic (pre-1960) courses and the other acknowledging
Modern (1960 and after) courses. Golfweek believes there are good
reasons for this split list:
At the heart of Golfweek’s Best course rating system is the distinction
between Classic and Modern courses.
Classic
Golfweek defines Classic courses as those opened for play prior to
1960. This includes 6,500 of the existing 16,000 courses, or 41
percent. Many of these layouts debuted during an unprecedented era
of creativity in golf course design called the Golden Age of
Architecture. This era, running from 1919 to 1939, saw the
introduction of 67 of the 100 courses on Golfweek’s Best Classic list.
During this era, design visionaries like Charles Blair Macdonald,
Alister MacKenzie, Seth Raynor, George C. Thomas Jr., Donald
Ross and A.W. Tillinghast were at their peak creative powers.
This Classic style of architecture was basically naturalistic, with
intimate routings that enabled holes to cling to native landforms.
These designers were not afraid to utilize dramatic vertical slopes or
to sculpt their bunkers into artistic shapes, but they did so by
enhancing the given features of the land. Earth scraping was
minimal, and what little was undertaken was carried out by draft
animals, not by mechanized earth movers deployed on a large scale.
Greens were built from native soil that was pushed up and shaped.
This gave designers of the Classic era enormous freedom to build
oddly-shaped putting surfaces with more contour than was the case
in the Modern era of cored-out, sand-based greens.
With respect to site selection, the greater abundance of buildable
land in those days gave architects tremendous creative freedom as
well. If they didn’t like one site, they could easily move down the road
to another empty parcel for consideration. For better or worse, they
were also unhindered by the regulatory process. There was no such
thing as a wetland in the 1920s; they called it a swamp back then, and
if it posed a design problem, they would either fill it or drain it.
Many of the great old courses could not be built these days
because contemporary regulations now prohibit what used to be the
commonplace practice of using low-lying wet areas.
Nor did designers have to worry about maximizing home lots on the
golf course. And they couldn’t rely upon paved cart paths to resolve
their routing problems. If they wound up with too long a walk from a
green to a tee, they headed back to the drawing board to reroute the
entire course until they got it right.
Courses didn’t have to be perfect on opening day. They evolved
slowly, were often tweaked and improved upon in their early years
and only gradually did they acquire a reputation.
But that reputation could often last for decades and still does.
The premier courses on the Classic list are today a roll call
of architectural tradition and greatness: Cypress Point;
Pine Valley; Shinnecock Hills; Pebble Beach;
and Augusta National.
Modern
Golfweek considers all courses opened after 1960 to be Modern. This
comprises 9,500 of the existing 16,000 courses, or 59 percent. In the
last four plus decades, there has been a phenomenal growth of the
game, in part spurred by the recreational needs of a rapidly expanding
suburban community. The growth of golf in the Modern era of design
starts with its popularization, the appeal of Arnold Palmer and the
consequences of bringing the game into the homes of television
audiences, especially with the widespread adoption of colorized
tournament telecasts in the mid-1960s. Additionally, popular glossy
magazines – increasingly featuring luscious color photographs of golf
courses – played no small role in making golf and golf course
architecture matters of public interest.
Mass access to golf travel also bridged the distance gap, making
previously out-of-the-way places and exotic resort sites well within
reach of avid golfers. This helped cultivate an awareness of golf’s great
courses and brought home, to both architects and students of the
game, the value of fine architecture.
It wasn’t just the market that changed. Design and construction
techniques for courses shifted fundamentally after 1960.
Mechanized earth moving became standard, with many sites
requiring 500,000 cubic yards to 1 million cubic yards of earth
to be moved in the construction process. The USGA developed
sophisticated methods for sand-based greens built as perched
water tables. This required extensive planning, documentation
and meticulous excavation. The advent of new, highperformance
bentgrasses meant better quality conditions, but
the quicker putting speeds meant that greens could not be built
with the same dramatic slope as had been the case before. As
mowing heights on greens came down from the quarter-inch of
the Classic era to one-eighth of an inch and now to one-tenth
of an inch today, Modern architects came to enjoy little margin
of error when building and draining their courses. These were
the skills of professionally trained landscape architects, not just
creative golf visionaries. Gradually, the profession shifted and
became more technically oriented, with architects spending less
of their time designing in the field and more time designing on
paper so that the project could be bid out to a contractor.
As the economic and technical requirements got more complicated, so
did the regulatory process. Plans had to be submitted well in advance and
were subject to scrutiny by local, state and federal authorities. Nowhere
was the regulatory process more evident than when it came to
wetlands and increasingly stringent requirements by the Environmental
Protection Agency. Moreover, golf was now part of ever-more
complicated land plans involving such mixed uses as residential
homesites and commercial real estate.
While golf architects had to be skilled landscape designers, they also had
to be gifted salesmen. Robert Trent Jones Sr. ushered in the era of public
relations as an essential to course architecture. Indeed, architects became
golf celebrities in their own right, and as a few designers (Tom Fazio, Pete
Dye) established themselves as big names, others sought to cash in on
their PGA Tour fame by marketing themselves as well. At least some
would-be designers (Jack Nicklaus, Arnold Palmer) were smart enough
to create technically qualified design shops and hire skilled architects.
At the same time, some Modern designers went back to basics
and adopted a more retro-Classic approach, spending time on the
ground, designing and working mainly in the field. Among its
many unique features, the Golfweek’s Best Modern Courses list
can be credited for discovering and publicizing the seminal works
of such designers as Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw, Tom Doak, Jim
Engh, Gil Hanse, Brian Silva, Steve Smyers and Mike Strantz.
Collectively, these designers represent an amazing proliferation of
talent. Their work, especially since the mid-1990s, has resulted
in what may be termed a Second Golden Age of Architecture.
The work tends to be technically brilliant, with flawless construction
standards and impeccable grooming to ensure that the courses are in
perfect shape on opening day. Among the leading courses recognized in this Modern category are: Sand Hills;
Pacific Dunes; Whistling Straits; Pete Dye Golf Club; Bandon Dunes; and Friar’s Head.