With no master plan, Coore and Crenshaw are free to design the best golf holes without worrying about housing.
The team of Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw, one of the premium firms in golf course architecture, have signed on to design a new 18-hole course at Palmetto Bluff in South Carolina.
Owned by developer and course operator South Street Partners, the private Palmetto Bluff is already home to an 18-hole Jack Nicklaus course named May River that is ranked by Golfweek’s Best as tied for No. 171 among all modern courses in the United States. Palmetto Bluff also recently opened Crossroads, a nine-hole short course designed by the team of Tad King and Rob Collins.
For the newest 18, Coore and Crenshaw were given free run of 500 Lowcountry acres to choose the best spots for golf holes without worrying about where houses might fit, South Street said in a media release announcing the course. The course will anchor what is to become Palmetto Bluff’s third village, to be named Anson. The layout, yet unnamed, will play through four types of forest with coastal and wetland views.
The new course, located on the east end of Palmetto Bluff, is slated to open in the winter of 2025-2026 with a temporary clubhouse. A later Phase 2 will include a full clubhouse
Reaching for the putter from off the putting surface is often considered an effort of last resort for weekend hackers who can’t muster much muscle control to hit a proper chip or pitch. Just surrender to your inadequacies and grab that flat stick, so the stigma goes.
The Donald Ross-designed Pinehurst No. 2 is no ordinary Open test, and many of the shots and decisions required will be entirely different than those typically employed by tour professionals. The layout is ranked by Golfweek’s Best as the No. 1 public-access course in North Carolina, the No. 3 resort course in the U.S. and the No. 18 Classic course in the U.S.
It’s not just the chipping – or putting – onto No. 2’s notoriously domed greens. Open contestants will be met with acres of sandy scrub, where luck holds great influence on outcome. Additional wiregrass was planted in the sandscapes just off the fairways for this U.S. Open, adding even more intrigue as any ball bounds off the firm but ample fairways.
Max Homa putts up and onto the first green from the fringe during a practice round before the 2024 U.S. Open at Pinehurst No. 2 in North Carolina. (Katie Goodale-USA TODAY Sports)
Wayward pros might find their next shot sitting pretty atop a clear patch of sand. Or in a footprint. Or plugged at the base of an ill-willed plant. Is it fair? That’s not the point, and this week’s winner will be one of the few to withstand that kind of fair-not-fair mindset. Players need not worry about the randomness of bad lies and wiregrass that lurk away from the fairways if they keep their shots on short grass, of which there is plenty.
This will be an Open of survival. Of finding a way, regardless of convention. Of swallowing pride to ensure no worse than a bogey. An Open at Pinehurst is frequently less about great shots and more about minimizing the impact of bad swings and poor decisions, even more so since a 2011 restoration by Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw took No. 2 back to its raw, sandy, bouncy roots.
In an era of big swings dominating golf, Pinehurst No. 2 puts a premium on small-ball sensibilities. Of knowing when to pitch out sideways, when to play to the front of a green, when to leave the 60-degree wedge in the bag. Martin Kaymer proved as much in winning the 2014 U.S. Open by eight shots, deftly relying on his putter from off the greens.
The resort caddies at No. 2 don’t talk much about greens hit in regulation. Instead, they laugh about “greens visited in regulation,” so common it is for balls to scatter away from the crowned putting surfaces. Great shots will find favor, as they always should. Mediocre and even seemingly good shots, however, are subject to No. 2’s audacious greenside roll-offs.
Those slopes running off the putting surfaces frequently grow steeper and the bunkers more threatening the deeper a shot is played into a green. Ross, who lived for years off No. 2’s third fairway, mentioned the smart option of playing to the front of any of these greens, then putting uphill to the hole. It’s a sound strategy that doesn’t promise many birdies. Such a tactic would require a seismic mental shift for most tour professionals keen to attack.
It’s all decidedly old school – thinner grass on the perimeters of the fairways, bad lies in unpampered sand, a little dirt in the socks and no weak-kneed emphasis on equitable outcomes. May the most deserving player win. Pinehurst is a classic destination, and this Open has the potential for a return to classic sensibilities in which the game’s governing body never believed course conditioning was meant to meet any modern definition of fair or perfect.
A golf ball rests in a nasty spot of bother with a wiregrass plant blocking its progress at Pinehurst No. 2. (Jason Lusk/Golfweek)
The return to a classic ethos was the focus of the restoration by Coore, who fell in love with No. 2 while still a boy. But by the end of the second U.S. Open at No. 2 in 1999, much of the Ross had been replaced. Acres of manicured grass had appeared, and increasingly precious water was blasted all about the property to keep it green. The more perfected No. 2 was much less perfect by classic standards.
“I grew up in North Carolina and I played golf at Pinehurst as a kid, and I remembered it from what it was in the 1960s, and I just knew from my own memory that it had changed dramatically through the years,” Coore said in describing the motivation for his and Crenshaw’s restoration. “Ben and I certainly never would have gone there and said you need to change this, you need to restore this. All that influence came from the Pinehurst people, who said we’ve been listening and studying that this course is not the way it used to be.”
Coore and Crenshaw wanted to put the Ross back into property. That meant sandy expanses straddling dry and bouncy fairways, with more natural bunker shapes and balls rolling endlessly across firm, tight turf. Work crews removed 40 acres of grass and reduced the number of sprinkler heads on the course from 1,200 to 450, following the still-buried original irrigation pipes as a guide. Coore and Crenshaw stretched the fairways considerably wider, but they frequently play less so because golf balls can trundle along across dry ground until they reach trouble in the waste areas.
It all made for a vastly different U.S. Open in 2014, which was the third at the course but the first after the restoration. Previous iterations had featured acres of lush rough to catch errant shots, but Kaymer won on a baked-out version of No. 2 with magnificent displays of grit from both the course and eventual champion. The USGA that year embraced the slogan “Brown is beautiful,” even if not every player, onsite spectator or TV viewer agreed. It all made for one of the most memorable Opens in recent history.
Martin Kaymer plays from a sandy waste area on No. 14 at the 2014 U.S. Open at Pinehurst No. 2 in North Carolina. (Jason Getz-USA TODAY Sports)
The USGA has dropped much of the attention on brown conditions for this year’s Open, and the course is some three shades greener overall than in 2014. But one notable change will keep things interesting: The putting surfaces were recently converted from bent grass to Ultradwarf Bermuda, a warm-season grass that requires less water during a North Carolina summer. That means drier greens, bigger bounces and more roll-offs. The new green surfaces fit in perfectly with Coore and Crenshaw’s restoration efforts to No. 2.
“It had become a very manicured golf course … it didn’t look like a Sandhills course,” Coore said more than a year ago in the run-up to the Open. “Things had happened over the years, and the courses had evolved and all that, and we just said … we need to be true to some sort of aesthetic, the Ross aesthetic.”
Ross’s artistry will be in full effect this week, especially if the dry and hot weather forecasts prove true and the course plays to its fiery potential. No. 2 has the firepower to be the star of the show, and the players must accept that.
Even if it means humbly reaching for a putter from off the greens.
If greens are the faces of a golf course, this one at Pinehurst has crooked, sandy ears and a wicked smirk.
What will be the most difficult hole at Pinehurst No. 2 for the 2024 U.S. Open? If recent history is any indication, forget about the long par 4s.
No. 6, a par 3 that is listed as 228 yards on the USGA’s official scorecard, could easily take the top spot … again.
In the 2014 U.S. Open – the only of three previous Opens at No. 2 since the Donald Ross design was renovated by Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw in 2011 – the sixth played to an average of 3.374. That made it the most difficult hole in relation to par.
No. 6 surpassed No. 16 and its 4.341 average, and No. 16 is a 536-yarder that plays as a par 4 in the U.S. Open but is normally a par 5 for resort guests and members.
The next three toughest holes were No. 2 (par 4, 4.339 average), No. 8 (par 4, 4.336 average, another converted par 5) and No. 11 (par 4, 4.323 average).
In all, No. 6 gave up 12 birdies in that 2014 U.S. Open, with 270 pars, 150 bogeys, 13 double bogeys and one “other.” Martin Kaymer, who won that Open by eight shots, played the sixth in 1 over for the week, making one bogey in the third round against three other pars.
What makes No. 6 so daunting? For starters, it’s will be a long iron for most of the Open field. The green features runoffs in all directions – a Pinehurst No. 2 specialty – and the putting surface is set at an awkward angle, offset back and to the left. That makes it especially hard to hold the surface, as balls hit to the center/front portion of the green can run through if struck too firmly. Any attempt to fly the ball deeper into the green brings the bunkers even more into play.
Eventual winner Martin Kaymer blasts from a bunker on No. 6 during the second round of the 2014 U.S. Open at Pinehurst No. 2. (Photo: Jason Getz-USA TODAY Sports)
Even shots that land near the center of No. 6 green but are hit with sidespin are likely to turn and find one of two deep bunkers waiting on both sides. A hump and a slope on the front of the green also wait to reject shots, frequently forcing balls to the left and into the deeper of the two bunkers.
Players who find themselves in the left bunker must blast a high shot with spin onto the putting surface. Expect to see multiple efforts fail to clear the lip after players try to shave it too close when blasting out to a short-sided pin on a green that runs away from the trap – it really is a devilish spot, even for the best players in the world. If the rains hold off and No. 2 is playing particularly firm and fast, it will be even more difficult.
Basically, it’s just a very hard hole with no real place to miss. It’s often said the greens are the faces of a golf course, and if that’s true, then No. 6 has two giant sandy, crooked ears and a wicked smirk.
Less is more as Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw replace outlandish length with a focus on playability .
It’s a case of addition by subtraction at The International in Bolton, Massachusetts, as the famed team of Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw have replaced an emphasis on outlandish length with a much-improved golf experience on the club’s Pines Course.
Known for decades as the longest course in the U.S., the Pines opened in 1955 with a design by Geoffrey Cornish and legendary amateur Francis Ouimet. The course originally stretched to 8,040 yards, an extreme length for that time period. Nearly two decades later, architect Robert Trent Jones Jr. stretched it to 8,325 yards in a renovation.
Coore and Crenshaw have scrubbed that focus on length and difficulty in their total renovation that began in 2022. Scheduled to reopen this fall to limited member play, the private Pines is a whole new golf course. And they have removed some 1,200 yards – the combined length of three mid-sized par 4s – as the course will now play to a much more reasonable 7,103 off the back tees.
Architect Bill Coore walks the Pines course at The International in Bolton, Mass. (Courtesy of Escalante)
Not a single playing corridor or green site remains from the old layout, as Coore and Crenshaw reimagined the course to better take advantage of interesting topography and mature vegetation. Instead of length and head-banging difficulty, the Pines will now offer playability with an emphasis on natural and strategic golf holes.
“Bill, Ben, shapers Ryan Farrow and Zach Varty, and the rest of the Coore and Crenshaw team have worked their magic, taking an exceptional site and crafting what we strongly believe will be considered one of the country’s best new golf courses,” Paul Celano, director of golf at The International, said in a media release announcing the upcoming completion of the project. “Their deep admiration for courses built during the early 20th century, the so-called ‘Golden Age of Architecture,’ is an ideal match for our vision of a golf-first experience at The International that preserves and honors the club’s 120-year history.”
Another addition: The Pines will now feature fescue turf tees, fairways and rough. Besides making for amazing aesthetics in the rough, fescue provides a firm and bouncy playing surface that should highlight the strategic opportunities intended by the design team. Add in sandy waste areas carved through the pine trees, and it will be an entirely new experience for golfers versus the old layout.
The Pines is one of two layouts at The International, along with the Tom Fazio-designed Oaks course that recently received a lighter renovation by Tripp Davis. The club was purchased out of bankruptcy in 2021 by Escalante Golf, owner of golf properties in 15 states, which has invested heavily in the New England club.
Check out a selection of photos from the Pines course as the renovation nears completion.
A new college golf tradition was born Wednesday night.
CARLSBAD, Calif. — There’s a new tradition in college golf.
The Haskins Foundation and Stifel started the Haskins Honors, a celebration of the 10 best male college golfers in the country, for the first time last Wednesday night. The Haskins Award presented by Stifel is given to the best male player in college golf, and it’s the premier award in men’s college golf. And last week, the Haskins Award hosted the first Haskins Honors.
The event was hosted at the Grand Blanc, up the hill from the first green at Omni La Costa Resort & Spa’s North Course, site of the 2024 NCAA Men’s Golf Championship. The 10 players on the Haskins Award final watch list, along with their coaches, members with the College World Golf Championships Foundation and select media members, among others, attended a ceremony to celebrate the accomplishments of the 10 golfers this season and continue the legacy of the Haskins Award.
Ben Crenshaw, one of two three-time winners of the Haskins Award, was in attendance as the guest of honor.
Ben Adelberg, founder and CEO of The Back of the Range, hosted the presentation that featured speeches from Texas coach John Fields, also the president of the College World Golf Championships Foundation, and John Shinkle, the vice president of the Haskins Foundation. Then, Adelberg conducted a Q&A with Crenshaw and each of the 10 players, talking about their seasons and accomplishments.
Crenshaw won the Haskins Award from 1971-73, also years he helped Texas win NCAAs. He won the Masters twice and has 19 PGA Tour victories.
Voting for the Haskins Award is open until the stroke-play portion of the NCAA Men’s Golf Championship ends Monday. Coaches, players, SIDs and college golf media are allowed to vote. Here’s a link to cast your vote.
Below is a link to watch the inaugural Haskins Honors ceremony:
Columnist Eamon Lynch dreams of Bandon Dunes, but there’s one hole that gives him nightmares.
(Editor’s note: Bandon Dunes Golf Resort is celebrating its 25th anniversary and Golfweek Travel EditorJason Luskput together a comprehensive package for the occasion, complete with Q&As of pivotal people in and around the operation. To see the entire package of stories, click here.)
The quality of sleep enjoyed by a tortured golfer is inversely proportional to the number of swing thoughts agitating the mind. Thus, on most nights my attempts at finding rest involve not counting sheep but playing golf in my mind’s eye. Almost always, those rounds are at Bandon Dunes.
It’s been over 20 years since I first visited Mike Keiser’s refuge on the Oregon coast, and the more than 100 rounds I’ve played there are among my fondest memories. Like the Solstice in 2012, four rounds in one day. The first ball was airborne (barely) at 5:35 a.m., the last putt dropped at 8:10 p.m., the first cocktail moments later. Or the time I watched with unsporting glee as a friend needed 51 putts on Old Macdonald (he was a perfect 33 through 11 until he unexpectedly two-putted the 12th). Or when I played a three-club tournament on the same course and chose my weapons badly: putter, hybrid, 7-iron. On the seventh hole, I tried the putter backward and left-handed to use the flange for a steep bunker shot. It worked, then I three-jacked on the green when using it conventionally.
But Bandon Dunes is also where apathy over swing dysfunction became apparent. Maybe a decade back, I was there with Brandel Chamblee, so already the trip was suboptimal. We were playing Bandon Trails, the Bill Coore-Ben Crenshaw design that features many holes I love and one I loathe. We reached the 14th, a 325-yarder where caddies will tell you they count many more 6s than 4s.
I’ve railed against the hole since it opened in 2005. Once, I was headed to Trails with a course architecture writer when he handed me his phone, mid-call. “Eamon, this is Bill Coore,” came a gentle drawl. “I just want to remind you, again, that No. 14 was Ben’s idea.”
On the tee with Chamblee, I sniped one left into the woods, a trend established over the previous 13 holes. Dejected, I handed the driver back to my longtime, long-suffering caddie, Shanks. “That’s my last swing,” I said.
“No, it isn’t!” Chamblee said, laughing.
“Watch me,” I replied.
I spent the remainder of the trip beating balls on the range and saw more of the milkshake lady at the Dairy Queen downtown than I did of Chamblee (so it wasn’t all bad).
It was an ominous sign of my eventual descent to total range rat, happy to hit balls all day as long as I didn’t have to go find them. Which explains why I haven’t been back to Bandon Dunes in eight years.
No. 16 at Bandon Dunes, which Eamon Lynch considers among his favorite holes on the planet (Courtesy of Bandon Dunes Golf Resort)
Yet still I lie a couple thousand miles east with photographic recall of holes that gave me fits (the aforementioned 14th at Trails, the fifth at Bandon Dunes) and those I rank among my favorites on the planet (the fourth at Pacific Dunes, the fifth at Trails, the 16th at Bandon Dunes). I don’t dream of the Sheep Ranch though. I only saw that property when one group a day would be dropped off to devise their own layout from 13 green complexes scattered on a bluff north of the resort, years before it became the latest acclaimed course in the portfolio.
Each fitful night of near-sleep brings a reminder of what I’ve lost by not playing much golf anymore, hence a recent desire to get back into the swing, as it were. Every few months for almost eight years, I’ve gotten a text from my buddy Michael Chupka, who works at Bandon. “Ready to come back yet?” he asks, like a patient counselor.
One of these days I’m going to answer in the affirmative. If only to see if Bill and Ben have done anything yet to redeem that damned hole.
“It was a great night; an emotional night. Ben (Crenshaw) made sure that tonight was all about Jon, Seve and Jackie Burke.”
AUGUSTA, Ga. — The Champions Dinner tipped its hat to Spain on Tuesday evening.
On what would’ve been the 67th birthday of Seve Ballesteros, the table of 33 champions welcomed its newest member — Jon Rahm — before flooding the room with memories of Augusta’s first European victor.
“It was a great night; an emotional night,” said Larry Mize, the 1987 winner. “Ben (Crenshaw) made sure that tonight was all about Jon, Seve and Jackie Burke.”
Rahm sat at the head of the table, side-by-side with Ben Crenshaw, marking the first time a LIV golfer played host to the dinner.
And even though the narrative of PGA Tour vs. LIV Golf remains heated to some, for one night, the sides united.
“We’re a fraternity,” said Crenshaw, who emcees the annual supper.
Added Charles Coody: “It couldn’t have been more congenial. Even Tom Watson at the very end of dinner, he stood from his chair and said how happy he was to see the camaraderie within our group. It was a wonderful night.”
Crenshaw, in his Texas drawl, opened the evening by welcoming Rahm to the Masters Club; he then gifted the Spaniard an inscribed gold locket in the form of the Club emblem.
Two years ago, at the 2022 Champions Dinner, Hideki Matsuyama stunned the table by reciting a speech in English, prompting Gary Player to toast in Japanese.
When asked earlier in the week about congratulating Jon Rahm in Spanish, Ben Crenshaw reflected on his Austin High School diploma.
“I took French,” said Crenshaw, laughing.
A Masters pin flag blows at the practice facility during the second round of the 2023 Masters. (Photo: Danielle Parhizkaran-USA TODAY Network)
From there, stories immersed the room about Seve.
Bernhard Langer orated a tale about the 1983 Ryder Cup at Palm Beach Gardens when Ballesteros struck a 3-wood out of a bunker from 230 yards onto the green.
Langer told the table that from the lie Seve had, no golfer — aside from Ballesteros — would’ve cleared the lip with anything less than a six iron.
Crenshaw also mentioned the passing of 1956 Masters Champion Jackie Burke.
Burke, who shared a Champions locker with Tiger Woods, died on Jan. 19, 10 days before his 101st birthday.
“God put me down here for a long spell,” Burke said on his 100th birthday.
Thirty-three past champions attended the dinner. The only two absent were Angel Cabrera and Sandy Lyle.
According to Mize, Lyle’s wife, Jolanda, was having inner ear problems, and the 1988 Masters winner elected to remain home.
“Jolanda tried to get Sandy to come,” Mize said. “But he didn’t want to come without her.”
As defending champ, Rahm selected the menu for Tuesday evening, with his spread giving homage to Spain’s Basque region.
The meal began with six options for tapas and pintxos, Spanish for starters, before offering two main courses: Chuleton a la Parrilla, a ribeye with Piquillo peppers, or Rodaballo al Pil-Pil, a fish dish with white asparagus.
José María Olazábal chose the fish. Craig Stadler ordered red meat.
Coody picked fish.
“I didn’t want to venture too far into no-man’s land,” Coody said.
According to multiple past winners, similar to last year, Phil Mickelson remained quiet, and despite being close to Rahm, he elected not to give a toast.
The innovator of the 16th hole skip returned Tuesday to Augusta National.
AUGUSTA, Ga. — The innovator of the 16th hole skip returned Tuesday to Augusta National.
Fifty-two years ago, Gary Cowan was playing a practice round with Ben Crenshaw when the pair reached No. 16 tee. Cowan, the reigning U.S. Amateur champion, turned to Gentle Ben and said, “Watch this.”
The Canadian skipped a 3-iron across the water, starting a Masters tradition that has lasted half a century.
On Tuesday, Cowan returned to the 16th hole and, alongside countrymen Mike Weir and Corey Conners, shot a pellet across the pond.
“Ben couldn’t believe what I was doing,” said Cowan, reflecting on 1972.
Many Masters traditions have indisputable timelines, such as the creation of the Champions Dinner in 1952, or Sam Snead being awarded the first green jacket in 1949. Other tales have gained legs over time without a surefire genesis.
One such custom is skipping balls over the pond at No. 16.
Ken Green and Mark Calcavecchia claimed to have started the tradition in 1987, until Lee Trevino and Seve Ballesteros one-upped the pair by saying they did it in the early 1980s. Then came photographs of Tom Kite mastering the feat in 1979.
“I was there. It happened,” Crenshaw said. “Gary used a 3-iron, put the ball back in his stance and bam, skipped it straight across the water.”
With Ben’s urging, Cowan successfully knocked three over before Crenshaw – competing in his first Masters – tried to duplicate the achievement to no avail.
A first try went kerplunk. Then a second.
“Ben was playing it too much like a chip,” Cowan said. “I told him, ‘Hit it hard and low,’ and sure enough his third one skipped right across. The crowd went crazy.”
For Cowan, skipping balls over bodies of water had become a favorite childhood game in Kitchener, Ontario. The member of the Canadian Golf Hall of Fame said, “I always liked to horse around.” So when he got to the 16th tee box, Cowan didn’t think twice about dropping a ball and skimming it at Augusta National.
“Did I think I’d get in trouble?” Cowan asked. “You know, that never crossed my mind.”
Crenshaw, Sergio Garcia, Kyle Chandler, Asleep at the Wheel and more were on hand for the event.
AUSTIN, Texas — Ben Crenshaw has worked on golf courses all over the globe, first as a two-time Masters champ and PGA Tour star and now as part of the illustrious Coore & Crenshaw golf course design team.
But one of the courses he’s worked hardest on, Lions Municipal Golf Course in this Texas capital city, still hasn’t seen the outcome he’s been hoping for.
On Sunday, Crenshaw and a cavalcade of stars were on hand at Austin City Limits’ Moody Theater, raising money as the Muny Conservancy attempts to purchase or lease the land and maintain it as a golf course and greenspace.
The land on which Muny sits is part of the 500 acres known as the Brackenridge Tract, all owned by the University of Texas. The course is considered the first fully desegregated municipal course south of the Mason-Dixon line and the city has leased 140 acres for Muny since 1936, paying UT about $500,000 a year. If the parties don’t come to an understanding, the university could be free to lease the property to another entity, develop it or sell it.
On Sunday, the group raised another $1 million for the cause, marking the third straight year the gala could be considered a major success. Musical talent included Asleep at the Wheel lead singer and Save Muny Board Member Ray Benson, Larry Gatlin, Jimmie Vaughan, and Gary P. Nunn.
But those on hand admitted some frustration as talks continue to lag, and university officials have done little to show which direction they might be leaning with the property.
“We’re hoping for a long-term resolution. We’d love to have a long-term lease,” Crenshaw said while flanked by his wife, Julie. “The city and the university need to get together somehow. And we need to extend it. It’s a hundred years, 100 years of success in our town. It’s not only a golf course, but it’s a great space. We’re growing so fast. In this town, we’re losing space rapidly. So it’s a multi-pronged asset. To me, it’s the health and vibrancy of the community. Because I think it raises good people.”
Among others on hand was actor Kyle Chandler of “Friday Night Lights” fame. Chandler has long been an advocate of the cause and he lives in Austin, where he has been known to play Lions with Crenshaw’s longtime manager and friend Scotty Sayers and others.
Chandler is hoping the fundraising and visibility will be enough to dissuade university officials from making a poor decision, but he’s also surprised this has carried on as long as it has.
“I’m always kind of shocked that it’s even an issue that this piece of property, this land, this piece of history would be an error on a piece of paper erased from the community,” Chandler said. “That is what it is. It’s community. It’s family. It is the history. It means a lot to people.
“And hopefully, the people involved in making these decisions can be a lot smarter than expecting people 20 years from now saying, ‘Man these strip malls are absolutely gorgeous, I hope they last another 80 years.'”
Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw turn up the volume with The Chain at Streamsong.
BOWLING GREEN, Fla. – There are expectations for architects as they design a golf hole. Length, width, severity of contours, difficulty, placement of the green – there’s room for creativity, sure, but stray too far from tradition and a few eyebrows certainly will be raised.
Except for short par 3s. Great architects have long let their imaginations wander with the most miniature of holes on many acclaimed courses.
“It seems that’s there a theme that every wonderful, great course I’ve ever seen always includes a little short par 3 somewhere,” said Ben Crenshaw, the two-time Masters champion, golf historian and design partner with Bill Coore. “Short par 3s are pretty tantalizing for a lot of people. There’s so many brilliant examples of that. It just adds spice.”
Coore and Crenshaw have included many such holes on the dozens of golf courses they have designed together. Often not much over 120 yards or even shorter, these pint-sized par 3s are famed for offering intrigue as players plan for birdies but often pencil in bogeys or worse on their scorecards.
Soon comes a new chance to play a string of such holes as Streamsong opens all of its newest short course, The Chain, to preview play March 31. Until then, the resort is allowing limited preview play on less than the full course as it continues to grow in. The Chain is expected to fully open to resort play later this year.
The new par-3 course, The Chain, at Streamsong in Florida (Courtesy of Streamsong/Matt Hahn)
Built by Coore and Crenshaw, The Chain will offer 19 holes ranging from 41 to 293 yards, each offering a vast teeing area that allows players to pick a length. Want to play No. 8 with a driver? Step back to the huge metal chain link sunk into the ground and swing away. Want to play the same hole at 170? Go for it. It’s totally up to each group, or even each player. No. 1 can be 57 yards or 110, all the way to No. 19 at that ranges from 115 to 145.
The resort never refers to par for any hole, though the vast majority of them will require just one full shot for most players. Call them par 3s, or call them whatever you like – the resort’s operators don’t really care as long as players are having a blast.
The course was laid out in such a way that players can take a six-hole or a 13-hole loop, but resort operators expect most to play all 19. The Chain is a short walk from The Lodge at Streamsong, so late-afternoon tee times will be at a premium after many players tackle one of the resort’s highly acclaimed full-size courses – Red, Blue and Black – in the mornings. The Chain should prove especially popular during Streamsong’s peak winter season, when curtailed daylight might prevent a second 18-hole loop, and among players arriving to the resort mid-afternoon or simply those who just don’t want to stretch their golf to 36 traditional holes a day.
Nos. 18 and 19 of the new short course, The Chain, at Streamsong in Florida (Courtesy of Streamsong/Matt Hahn)
Also expect to encounter plenty of fun shots on The Chain. Coore and Crenshaw were granted a feast of freedom in designing the layout that maxes out at 3,026 yards, and they dreamed up plenty of internal contours and ground features that will only improve as the greens and their sandy surrounds continue to mature and become even more firm and bouncy.
“We can do things with a shorter course, where players are hitting shorter shots and you can be a bit more aggressive with the greens and some of the things,” Coore said recently after a tour of the layout alongside Crenshaw. “Things are in more of a reduced scale, and you can take more liberties and a few more risks to do greens and surrounds with interesting things that you might not be able to do with a regulation course. …
“For years, people have said (about full-size courses), ‘You can’t do that, it won’t be accepted, that’s too radical.’ With a par-3 course, you can kind of dispense with that a little and say, ‘It’s a par-3 course; we can do that.’ If you’re in our profession, it gives you freedom to work.”
The Chain includes a bunker in the middle of a green at No. 6, the aforementioned No. 8 that can play for many as a short par 4, and several trips across water and quarries at the former phosphate mining site. There are plenty of slopes that will help feed golf balls onto the putting surfaces and more devious contours that can sweep a ball off a green.
The tee markers at The Chain at Streamsong are huge chain links left over from mining. But instead of markers on each side of the tee, these links mark the front and back positions for each tee, which can stretch for dozens of yards, allowing players to select the yardage they will play each hole. (Jason Lusk/Golfweek)
The hole most likely to be relived over post-round beverages is the 209-yard (max) 11th, where a punchbowl green awaits on the opposite side of a pond, just a thin slit in the nearly vertical bank showing the putting surface from the tee. Players can try to just crest the forward mounds with their tee shots, or they can intentionally take it deep past the flag and trust that the ball will roll backward onto the green – this might be the safest route, and it’s a blast to watch balls scamper back toward the putting surface as if pulled by a string.
“Probably most people would point to that hole,” Coore said when asked what he anticipates will be the biggest talker among the 19 holes. “You play over the beautiful lake. It used to be a flat piece of ground out there, and we just mined a bunch of sand out of it and made a big hole.”
But don’t expect No. 11 to be a pushover, even with slopes on all sides of the green to feed the ball toward the hole – especially for players who flirt with the water short or right in trying to play a shot to the yardage instead of just hitting it long. Streamsong Black, the 18-hole design by Gil Hanse, already offers a famous punchbowl green, but The Chain’s variation is much smaller and tighter in scope, fitting with Coore and Crenshaw’s focus on right-sized targets for the par-3 course.
“I think the long punchbowl hole, in this little family of holes, will probably be maybe the toughest hole because it’s a long carry,” Crenshaw said. “It’s basically an old idea if you have a long shot across something, that you have a gathering green, a punchbowl. That may be one at the top of the list” that players remember.
The new Bucket putting course at Streamsong in Florida (Courtesy of Streamsong/Scott Powers)
Before or after a loop around The Chain, players can tackle The Bucket, the 2.6-acre putting course that sits within the par-3 course. Drinks and snacks also will be available onsite with the resort planning to add a clubhouse later, surely making the new complex a preferred hangout for resort guests.
Coore and Crenshaw also designed the Red Course at Streamsong, which opened in 2012 and ranks as the No. 2 Golfweek’s Best public-access layout in Florida and ties for No. 16 among all resort courses in the United States. The resort’s Blue Course by Tom Doak also opened in 2012 and ranks No. 3 among Florida’s public layouts and No. 20 among all U.S. resort courses, while the Black by Hanse opened in 2017 to become No. 4 in Florida and No. 23 on Golfweek’s Best resort list.
Coore said he’s always loved the allure of the site, where sand was piled high for decades as part of phosphate mining operations. The name of The Chain references the dragline chains used by miners, and The Bucket is so named because of the massive scoops once used to move earth at the mining site, one of which has been placed at the new putting course.
“People love it when they get here,” he said. “It’s a little mysterious the first time, but when they see it, they say ‘I’ve never seen anything like this in Florida.’ It has been so much fun to be a part of it.”
Crenshaw summed it up: “We do believe the Chain will be a positive extension of the journey.”
