Donald Steel

[TEPaul]

What's the feeling about Donald Steel's architecture from some of our European friends? The article about him in the last Golf Journal is very interesting and I've always liked Redtail his first course in North America a lot.

[Jack_Marr]

I think the new holes he has created in Enniscrone are excellent, some of the best on the course. The greens are much more undulating than the rest of the course, but do not seem out of character.

[TEPaul]

Jack:

The photograph of the 15th hole at Enniscrone is really lovely looking--rugged and natural in look. I assume it's Donald Steel. The hole looks a bit like Royal County Down's 1st hole to me.

[Jack_Marr]

Yeah, 15 is one of the best holes in the course, and it's a Donald Steel one.  The slope of the green is from left to right, so it's not really set up to take a ball from the fairway.  You have to shape your shot in to get close or go for one of the banks on the green. It's the kind of green you like to hit a few balls into. The drive is also good - sea on your left with no dunes to cut any wind out - hairy dunes on the right. Looks like an easy drive, but...  
The third (I think) is also a very nice Donald Steel one. A great semi-blind drive through the sadddle of the dunes.

The course has deffinately beneifted from his input, although he may only be responsible for about 4 holes. I would play there ahead of almost any course in the country.

He may also have made some new holes at Portmarnock, but I'm not sure.

[ForkaB]

Tom

I'm sure we've done this one before.  I think that Steele's company did a good job at Skibo (although I'm sure others could have done better) and a so-so job in a few attempts to try to extend/improve the 2nd course at Royal Dornoch

[TEPaul]

Rich:

Why? How about some reasons?

[ForkaB]

Tom

You go first.  I discussed and debated my thoughts on Skibo with Tom Doak and others only a couple of months ago here(can't remember the thread) and it seems a bit soon to be repeating (if I can remember what I said!).  I'm not sure if I've ever heard what you have to say about Redtail.  Why is it so good?

[TEPaul]

Rich:

I'm not asking about Redtail. I've seen it and played it a bunch of times. I was asking any Europeans that know of Steel over there what they think of his architecture and his architectural ideas. The article on him in Golf Journal was interesting and I wanted to know how some over there felt he carried through with what he's done over there. I don't remember the previous thread on Steel, but if you don't want to say anything about him because you said it back then--that's fine.

[Bob_Huntley]

TEP and Rihc.

I've played Skibo once. I did not return because I much preferred playing Dornoch, again and again. There was something about the course that just seemed missing, I have not been able to discern why. There was one walk back to a tee from a par three that I found grating. If Royal Dornoch was not next door I am sure the place would be considered a knock-out, as it is it's a good test with some delightful scenery and fine bunkering.

[TEPaul]

Dornoch is next door to Skibo? What am I thinkng of? I didn't think Dornoch was next door to anything. Which one of those famous old Scottish courses is off on the tip of nowhere? Whatever that is it must be where Rich lives.

[SteveC]

That famous old Scottish course on the tip of Nowhere is Machrihanish. Definitely out there.

Dornoch is indeed very close to Skibo, and there's plenty of company - Brora, for instance, is just a short drive up the road. Tain and Nairn are also nearby and worth playing.

[Mike_Sweeney]

Tom,

I read the same article and wondered why Donald Steel is not loved here at GCA more. Maybe not by the Americans as we have not seen much of his work, but certainly the Europeans who have more exposure to his work. He says all the right things in the article, and while there has been some discussion here, it has been short.

I am a International Member at Enniscrone, and while I did not play the course prior to his work, I can tell you all the local members that I have played with love what he did to the course. I played last summer with "Mixie" who is the former Captain of Enniscrone, and his enthusiam for Steel and the 4 new holes was contagious. I hope to see Carnegie Abbey this summer in Newport, RI to see a full Steel routing.

[D._Kilfara]

Tom - I'm the one who lives near Machrihanish. (I think that's who you're thinking of.)

I don't get warm fuzzies when I think of Donald Steele. He was the one responsible for butchering the Eden course and creating the very ordinary Strathtyrum course in St. Andrews, was he not? I don't hold the Strathtyrum against him, really, for which he was given was a flat piece of property and a mandate to build a course suitable for novices. But the Eden job - the whole back nine, really, but especially the pond (!) on the 15th - is a crime against golf course architecture.

Cheers,
Darren

[Neil Regan]

Darren,
  What about Steel's new (c.1990) holes at Machrie ? I think they are excellent in themselves and fit in very well with that unique course. I have vivid memories of New Mount Zion overlooking the moor seemingly on the edge of the world.

[TEPaul]

"But the Eden job - the whole back nine, really, but especially the pond (!) on the 15th - is a crime against golf course architecture."

Darren:

A crime against golf course architecture? That's a pretty strong statement that should probably include some evidence of the how and why of it.

[D._Kilfara]

Darren:

A crime against golf course architecture? That's a pretty strong statement that should probably include some evidence of the how and why of it.

Well...the Eden used to have 18 terrifically interesting holes. Now it has maybe 12 interesting holes - all of the original holes that are left - and six mundane holes with little interest and a friggin' man-made POND in the middle of a links fairway. The new holes were added (and some of the good old ones destroyed) because the Links Trust wanted to create a driving range and practice complex, but I find it difficult to believe that another architect couldn't have done significantly better in creating/finding replacement holes.

I'm hoping Messrs. Naccarato and Phillips will chime in here, as this subject is particularly near and dear to their hearts (from what I understand)...

Cheers,
Darren

[ForkaB]

Not being of the ripe old age of Darren, I have never played the pre-Steel Eden course.  That being said, I tend to agree with him, and Brian and Tommy, with the following comments/exceptions.

The Steel holes are 12-17.  1-11 and 18 are fine links golf holes, not great (in toto) but fine and with lots of what Cirba and Naccarato would call "soul."  11 is particularly good.  After that, however, things go downhill pretty rapidly from 12 (an OK driving hole and a moderately interesting green); to 13, one of the most ridiculously bland greens I have even seen; to 14, which has absolutely no redeeming qualities.  Afte that, however, things to get a bit better (they can't get worse!).  15 is an OK over the water, into the wind to a somwhat subtle green par 3.  Not links, but not bad.  Quite a bit better, for example than 17 at Pacific Grove.  16, despite the right hand mounding that Brian had showed us looks so funny from an aerial view is a good 4.5 par hole with an interesting two tiered green.  17 is a tough long 4 with a good left to right sloping green with grunge/OB on the right that makes a GIR a real achievement.

As mentioned before, I've played the Eden 4 times in the past 5 year, 2 in tournaments, and latterly one month ago.  I doubt if Steel will highlight it on his resume, but as the land he was working with was pretty marginal (more meadowland than links) and the budgets when he was working on it were substantially smaller than they are today, not a complete bollocks, just a lost opportunity.

PS--Steel (operating under the monniker "Steel, Cotton & Pennink") was the official architect to the R&A in the mid-late 1980's.

[TEPaul]

Thanks fellows--that's a much more comprehensive and understandable architectural analysis.

PS;

Darren is an old guy? I thought he was some young Harvard guy. But old Harvard guys are even better. It does take some distance and time away from Harvard to begin to see the realities of what the world truly is, though--I think!

[NAF]

I actually met Donald Steel on the practice green at West Sussex 2 years ago.  The problem was I never got to ask him anything interesting but for good reason. I was out until 5am the night before and had a short nap of 1 hour before heading down to play West Sussex that morning.  My friend Jim Reilly and Russell Talley were with me and RT introduced me to Mr. Steel who was a gentleman to say the least.  I can recall seeing an aura around him but I believe that was the reminants of a gin hangover that made me sound like something out of a Monty Python movie.  Anyway Ran is still mad at me for not asking him to do a feature inteview for the site.  In all seriousness he was doing some work at West Sussex that did not look natural to me when I played it 2 years ago but looked fine when I returned last summer.  He did also speak with particular pride about the Arran course and that we should go see it.  I wonder if he would ever recall the incident because he must have smelled my hangover a mile away and thought me some bloddy "septic tank yank" in cockney rhyming slang.

[TEPaul]

NAF:

If the Brits minded a hangover the Empire never would have happened in the first place!

[Ville Nurmi]

Hello!
Their office has opened new homepages at: www.donaldsteel.com.

And regarding their courses, I hope to tell you more in two years time, because we have commissioned them to design our new course in Finland.

The routing looks really good to me and the topography is interesting. I hope the greens will be interesting.

If Ran wants, I could ask Donald questions for a feature interview.

Ville

[D._Kilfara]

Full disclosure: I never saw the pre-modified version of the Eden. (I'm a young Harvard guy, Tom, as you first thought - Class of '96-7, to be precise.) I've read and heard in the past that the holes which were eliminated were more in character with the good holes on the first nine, and it's so transparently obvious which holes are new and which holes are original - always a bad sign - that I stand by my original analysis, but I suppose I might have pointed this out in the first place.

By the way, to follow up on what Rich mentioned, Steel is also responsible for much of the "upgrading" (as he calls it on his website) of the Jubilee Course. I don't know for sure what is Steel's and what was there beforehand, but I could guess. By the by, I note on the website that the Jubilee Course was Steel's first completed job in the UK - I wonder why the Links Trust would give an unknown architect the chance to cut his teeth on such a high-profile job?

Cheers,
Darren

[SPDB]

Only Steel i've seen is at Carnegie Abbey, and I was impressed by the routing, and the design (although it ends sort of awkwardly with a driveable par-4 - stunning hole, but an odd way to end). It wasn't the easiest task to route the course given that he had to negotiate a revolutionary war battlefield, and dispersed graveyards of Hessian soldiers. Nevertheless, the course moves nicely to the top of a ridge overlooking the Narragansett before settling back to the flat, and returning once more to the ridge.

[George Pazin]

Tom P -

Rich's & Tom's discussion on Skibo could hardly be termed such. My recap is as follows (can't remember the thread title):

Rich: blah blah blah Skibo is better than North Berwick blah blah blah

Tom D: Rich, you really think Skibo is better than North Berwick? That's really bizarre.

Rich - Maybe bizarre to you, but I don't share your bizarre preference for the handful of quirk & abundance of blah at Berwick.

-----

Okay, maybe I paraphrased a little. Rich usually uses bigger words.

 

[TEPaul]

GeorgeP:

Now you've got it. Rich continuously struggles to form a cogent and understandable opinon on golf architecture other than to imply that ultimately architecture is nothing much more than a hole is a hole is a hole and further that architects really are not important and are probably completely interchangeable for the task of producing any degree of art in architecture. Strike some of that--Rich thinks golf architecture is incapable of being termed art.

When one presses him to look a bit deeper into things to do with architecture he only reverts to bigger, more obscure words, and what he thinks appears to be abstruse and complex ideas and analogies in an attempt to hide the fact that he's never been able to advance beyond middle school existentialism, a philosophy which is of no use in architecture anyway even in its most developed form.

He won't or can't admit he's an existentialist because in true existential jargon he allows that existentialism is too simplistic but he devolves into ultimate middle school existentialism when he doesn't understand something by saying if he can't understand it consequently it must be absurd.