Tag: Golf Architecture

Tom Doak’s take on minimalism: Famous architect stays true to himself and the origins of the game

‘What happens to the ball when it lands is kind of a key part of design.’

What is minimalism in golf course architecture, anyway? 

Several modern designers are frequently lumped into the same category of design under that stylistic banner, despite their sometimes wildly different products. Minimalism has become almost a catch-all for courses built by the likes of popular designers such as Tom Doak, David McLay Kidd, Gil Hanse, the team of Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw, and several others. 

The term is meant to contrast with the golf architects who came directly before them, designers who relied on heavy equipment and millions of cubic yards of earth moving to create new layouts. Greens would be pushed high above surrounding grade, hazards predominated and fairways would be sculpted by man. Think mounds – sometimes lots of mounds. Many of the courses built since the 1960s tried to create something out of nothing, or to greatly enhance what already lay waiting on the ground. 

Minimalists, to the contrary, look for natural landforms to accent their designs, allowing and usually encouraging the ground to influence the path of the ball after it lands. Golf balls are round, after all, and they’ll roll if the architects and course conditions allow.

But is it fair to lump all of a designer’s work into one such category? Any of the top architects have laid down many courses that exude their own character. It’s not a copy-and-paste procedure. Is it appropriate to use the same term – minimalism – to describe courses of wildly differing routings and tone in various regions of the globe? 

Doak, for one, is fine with it. 

Check out our recent rater’s notebooks for several Tom Doak-designed courses and a restoration:

The meaning of minimalism

Scotland
Tom Doak at Cabot Highlands, formerly known as Castle Stuart, in Scotland (Jason Lusk/Golfweek)

“The minimalist thing, I didn’t come up with that term originally, but I sort of like it from the standpoint of trying to use what we are given to work with as much as possible and kind of minimize the amount of artificial stuff that we have to do,” said the man behind top designs such as Pacific Dunes at Bandon Dunes Golf Resort in Oregon, Ballyneal in Colorado and Barnbougle Dunes in Tasmania, among dozens of others. His recent work includes the new Pinehurst No. 10 in North Carolina plus the short and fascinating Sedge Valley at Sand Valley in Wisconsin.

For Doak, it’s all about a philosophy. He lets the ground dictate how the game will be played on any given site instead of trying to force his will upon the ground by lifting and shoving. It’s especially true on rolling, firm and sandy terrain.

“When you’re building a new golf course, you’re pretty much always going have to build greens and green complexes,” he said. “But on a good site that has movement and drains itself, you really shouldn’t have to be doing a lot of other stuff. You shouldn’t have to be tearing things up and moving a lot of dirt in fairways. A good routing should solve most of that.”

Bandon Dunes
Nos. 10 and 11, which are back-to-back par 3s, helped put Pacific Dunes and Tom Doak on the map after the highly-ranked layout opened at Bandon Dunes Golf Resort in Oregon in 2001. (Courtesy of Bandon Dunes Golf Resort)

It was a somewhat radical concept, somehow, when Doak left an associate’s job working for Pete Dye and hung his own shingle. His first solo design was High Pointe Golf Club in Michigan in 1989, and it almost was as if he had to defend his close-to-the-ground approach at the time. 

This despite the fact that minimalism was nothing new. It was just largely forgotten in the United States. The old links courses in Scotland, Ireland and the rest of the United Kingdom were, in all respects, minimalist courses. They had to be, as their designers didn’t have heavy machinery with which to work in the late 19th century – can you picture Old Tom Morris on a bulldozer? Instead, they walked the ground and found the best golf holes, making tweaks where necessary while greatly limited by their reliance on teams of horses or men with shovels to move ground. A classic architect’s obstacles to construction were gifts that keep on giving to fans of true links golf.

Tom Doak’s philosophy

CommonGround
CommonGround in Aurora, Colo., near Denver was designed by Tom Doak and opened in 2009. The course was developed by the Colorado State Golf Association. (Jason Lusk/Golfweek)

Doak has come full circle, having just completed a renovation of High Pointe before its recent reopening after years of abandonment. What has he learned over the years, and how has his style evolved? 

“I think my philosophy hasn’t changed very much over the 35 years since I built High Pointe,” Doak said. “My execution is a lot better, and I’m probably more flexible, more interested in hearing what the client says in the beginning. I try to use that to make the next project a little bit different than the last project instead of just saying, ‘This is my thing, I’m going to do this everywhere.’ I don’t really want to do that. …

“You know, I still have the belief that you can’t punish the average golfer too much between the tee and the green because it’ll just be too hard for them. So the place where you make the golf course more challenging, because people have a chance to deal with it physically, is around the greens.”

It is there, on and around the putting surfaces, that a course is best defined. The closer a player gets to the flag, the more a great architect’s influence is felt. When applying a minimalist approach without much earth moving, it’s on the greens and along the ground approaching them that an architect’s creativity is best revealed. 

“Somewhere between 50 and 80 percent of golfers play a fair amount of their golf along the ground,” Doak said. “They can hit it in the air for a while, but they can’t make it stop like a really good player. So what happens to the ball when it lands is kind of a key part of design. That’s the thing we have to make things interesting. We’re trying to allow the people that have to play golf along the ground to still have a chance to get the ball close to the hole.”

How did golf course architect Beau Welling become one of the most powerful people in the sport of curling?

By the time the Winter Games were played in Turin, Italy, Welling had become a bona fide fanatic.

Beau Welling admits he’s quirky. He embraces it. Stop Welling — a golf course architect who helped his pal Tiger Woods put the finishing touches on both highly acclaimed Bluejack National outside Houston and Payne’s Valley at Big Cedar Lodge near Branson, Missouri — and you’re likely to get an earful on a topic that might surprise you.

For example, Welling is known for his love of Sasquatch, and even had someone dress up as the mythical creature at his wedding a few years back to peer in through a window. And it doesn’t stop there.

Welling, who grew up in Greenville, South Carolina, owns a degree in physics from Ivy League Brown University, and he also studied Irish literature at Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland, and is quick to evoke Oscar Wilde or James Joyce when it suits the conversation.

But when Welling, who still maintains a deep Southern drawl, started to actively follow the game of curling during the 2002 Olympics in Salt Lake City, what had started as a passive interest became an obsession.

Architect Beau Welling speaks on what will be the fifth tee at the Travis Club in Austin, Texas. (Photo: Errich Petersen for Travis Club)

“The more I watched, the more fascinated I got,” Welling told Golfweek when on-site for the official groundbreaking of the Travis Club in Austin, Texas. “It fits my brain. It’s strategic. And it’s a Scottish game that shares many qualities with golf. Both games are steeped in integrity and honor. In both games, you call your own fouls and there’s a degree of physics. So the science of it all just fascinated me. The friction and trajectories. There was a lot for me to chew on.”

Between the 2002 and 2006 Olympics, Welling found himself working on a few projects in Canada and that only helped to fuel the inquisitive fire he’d already been slowly building.

By the time the next Winter Games were played in Turin, Italy, Welling had become a bona fide fanatic. He estimated that of the 80-some hours of coverage NBC Sports had of the sport that year he consumed nearly all of it. Welling took vacation from a project he was working and learned everything about the sport he could.

“They all think I’m losing my mind in the office,” Welling said, as he’d then worked his way up to the position of executive vice president for Fazio Golf Course Designers.

Welling even researched many of the American team members and found an interesting similarity. Unlike other countries from around the world whose teams were stacked by various regions, the American team was comprised largely of members from one small town — Bemidji, Minnesota. Welling realized the U.S. National Championships were to be held that year in the same town, the home of Paul Bunyan and Babe the Blue Ox. And when a work assignment he had scheduled overseas was canceled, perhaps fortuitously, Welling says, he decided a field trip was in order.

“This starts to feel like a calling, a sign from God, that I’m supposed to go to this,” Welling said. “I look online and you can buy tickets, but I see the time has lapsed, so I’m worried about this. I get my longtime assistant on the case and she has a thicker accent than I do. She gets someone on the phone and says, ‘Hey, my boss just loves curling and he comes in here every day talking about it and I don’t know what the heck he’s talking about it, but I just know he’d love to come up there and is there any way you can help me get him a ticket?’

Moderator Stephen Reynolds, left, Gil Hanse, and Beau Welling, during an event in Frisco, Texas. (Photo by Tim Schmitt/Golfweek)

“The guy on the phone says, ‘Do you mind if I ask where you’re calling from?’ and when she says North Carolina he asks why anyone from there would interested in curling. And she says, ‘Well, he’s from South Carolina.’ And they got me a ticket.”

When Welling arrived, he was greeted by a blizzard, yet he still made his way to the event, and was welcomed with a seat on the glass underneath a handwritten sign with his name on it.

“I think they all wanted to see if this nut job from South Carolina was really going to show up,” Welling said.

He quickly ingratiated himself with friends, family and coaches, and by the time he left, he was looking to make a bigger impact on the game.

At the conclusion, the president of USA Curling named Welling the official “Southern ambassador” for the sport and he even took part in a parade through town.

“Everyone was so nice,” he said. “That Midwestern nice. I wasn’t sure if I was going to get bored so I had only planned to stay for a day or two, and I ended up staying nine days. People took me ice fishing, out for dinners and drinking. The town even threw me a birthday party.”

Soon after, he got a call from the president of the USA Curling Board, Georgia West, asking if he’d bring some fresh ideas to the board. He agreed and his role got even larger when he was elected to the role of president of the World Curling Federation board in 2022.

It’s a position that demands some of his time, although he’s been able to balance the gig with his full-time job as a course architect. Welling designed one of the two courses at Fields Ranch, the new home of the PGA of America in Frisco, Texas, and he’s got lots of other work in the pipeline.

But he still has an affinity for curling that has him plotting and planning, trying to push the game to new heights.

“I love it more than ever,” Welling said. “I can’t get enough. And to think that I would get to the point where I’m at, especially since I knew almost nothing about this growing up, it’s been an incredible experience.”

Lynch: The course architecture snobs will come for Valhalla. To hell with them!

Valhalla has no associations prized by the cool kids. Does that matter?

LOUISVILLE, Ky. — For golf architecture aficionados, teeing off on Valhalla Golf Club is a challenge akin to taking a baseball bat to a sackful of puppies, since any spirited defense of its design merits is likely to come only from members, parochial boosters or shameless bullshitters.

The snobbery that animates architecture geeks is suspicious of championship courses credited to someone who hasn’t been beneath sod for a century or so. There are exceptions though. A course will get a more favorable hearing if it has a noble pedigree or was made over by a young(ish), still vital designer who is choosy in his projects. See Los Angeles Country Club, which showcased the sublime work of Gil Hanse at last summer’s U.S. Open. Or next month’s edition at Pinehurst No. 2. Neither Bill Coore or Ben Crenshaw can claim youth, but are more vital than Donald Ross and their work at his original was impeccable.

Valhalla has no such associations prized by the cool kids. It was designed from scratch by Jack Nicklaus, who is not only still with us but fiercely opinionated on his craft and prodigious in his output. Those are three strikes in the zone for highfalutins. Location matters too, of course. The nearest ocean to Valhalla is 700-odd miles away, or a couple thousand if you take a wrong turn at the gate. To find a sand dune you’d best drive to the landscape supply store a few miles north. That’s another couple over the center of the plate.

Elevated standards are fine, of course. To be encouraged even. How else to distinguish between a Rembrandt and the dreck adorning the walls of a hot sheets motel in Gary, Indiana? But when it comes to tournament golf — and major championships in particular — many a thrilling drama has been mounted on a humdrum stage. Like Rory McIlroy in 2014. Or Tiger Woods in ’00. And Mark Brooks in ’96. Same goes for the U.S. Open. Torrey Pines hosted a captivating contest once, but isn’t redeemed for the enduring association with tremendous theater.

PGA CHAMPIONSHIP: How to watch | Tournament hub

Majors are about venues, not golf courses. Particularly in this era when things like logistics, hospitality and merchandising trump quaint considerations like architectural merit, history and the pulse rate of the designer. One only need peruse Ryder Cup hosts over the last 40 years, especially in Europe, where the number of hotel rooms on-site often seems the highest priority. Measured against those metrics, Valhalla is a fine venue for a major. There’s ample space for infrastructure, no squeeze on corporate suites, and room to sling beer and shirts. It doesn’t matter that it’s an uninspired golf course on a suboptimal property.

More than anything, Valhalla can accommodate spectators. That isn’t always the case at golf’s biggest events. Los Angeles C.C. had limited space for non-members while Merion was (and will be) so cramped that spectators were in danger of inadvertently reaching second base with each other. Midwest venues seldom fail to deliver substantial attendance numbers. Bellerive in St. Louis was a middling design that drew enormous crowds in 2018. And rapt theatergoers tend to not much care about the aesthetics or provenance of the house.

2024 PGA Championship
Large crowds gathered for a day of golf at the 2024 PGA Championship at Valhalla Golf Club. (Photo: Sam Upshaw Jr./Louisville Courier Journal)

Low scoring is also often cited as a negative by design snobs, for whom it’s an article of faith that the birdie rate is inversely proportional to the caliber of the design. There were plenty of red numbers on day one at Valhalla, and while that disappoints those among us who enjoy seeing the thumbscrews turned on the world’s best, it’s tough getting folks to pay up or tune in to see guys hacking sideways from the hay. More than ever, the sport ought to be serving that constituency what it wants. The 106th PGA Championship will not be a good week for those who prize par as a proximate reflection of demanding championship golf.

Valhalla is 3-for-3 in proving that outstanding championships and outstanding architecture are mutually exclusive, that it can supply jolts to rival the electricity pylons dotting the property. Hopefully, that becomes 4-for-4. If not, well it’s unlikely a major will return here anyway since the PGA of America no longer has an ownership stake in the club. So tempting as it is for the course-centric congregation to condemn, chill a little. Perhaps by that wonderful rock-lined waterfall on the 18th hole.

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Architect Brandon Johnson, formerly of Palmer Design, launches own golf course firm

Harvard-trained architect Brandon Johnson hangs out his own shingle with new design firm.

Golf course architect Brandon Johnson has made it official: After 17 years working for Arnold Palmer Design Company, he is hanging out his own shingle with today’s introduction of Brandon Johnson Golf Course Design.

The Harvard-educated Johnson joined Palmer Design in 2006 when that firm moved to Orlando. Johnson and Thad Layton were the design leads in recent years for Palmer, which wound down operations late in 2023. Layton announced the formation of his own firm in September.

Johnson has worked on several dozen courses around the world for Palmer involving everything from renovations to new courses.

“I’m excited, and as I’ve explained it to people, it feels like I’m graduating college again,” said Johnson, who interned for the PGA Tour as a course designer in the mid-1990s before taking a job out of college with The First Tee. “There are a lot of opportunities, and there’s a lot of excitement.”

Palmer Design built more than 300 courses in 37 states and 27 countries, including many listed on Golfweek’s Best ranking of top modern courses in the U.S. and the state-by-state rankings of public and private layouts. The company really took off in the 1980s and has been one of the most recognized brands in course architecture ever since. But business, especially in constructing new courses, slowed for the company following Palmer’s death in 2016. Layton and Johnson had mostly worked on renovations since.

Old Tabby Links
Brandon Johnson led the renovation to Old Tabby Links in Okatie, S.C., which was originally created by Arnold Palmer Design Company. It was one of many jobs Johnson undertook as one of the lead designers for Palmer Design.  (Jason Lusk/Golfweek)

“I’m a very seasoned professional, but you know, I’m still young in the business,” said the 50-year-old Johnson, a native of Charlotte, North Carolina who did his undergrad in design at North Carolina State before attending Harvard for graduate school. “I had a professor in my junior year that said it’s going to take you 25 years to master this profession of landscape architecture. I think that we’re always learning and we’re always growing, so now I have this incredible kind of background in my career that I’m able to apply to my own firm.”

Johnson is busy lining up jobs and plans several announcements of renovations and possibly new courses in the coming months. He intends to spend as much time as possible in the field working with course shapers – generally speaking, shapers are the highly skilled heavy equipment operators who turn an architect’s plans into reality.

“It’s interesting, in my early days at the Tour, Pete Dye had a lot of influence,” Johnson said. “He was almost always on-site, and there was always that mentality that even though we might be in the office some, how we thought about projects was the work being done in the field. Even in my time at Palmer, we certainly transitioned when Thad and I were running the company to be much more involved in the field through every step of the process. I think, for me, that’s the way I will be starting out on my own, and it’s always kind of been my mentality.”

Golf has boomed in recent years as more players took up the game during COVID, and there has been a greater interest in course architecture as well. Johnson said it’s a great time to strike out on his own.

“People are seeking out fun, new and interesting architecture,” he said. “To me, what fun means is golf is going to have a lot of variety, and it’s going to allow you to think and maybe execute a shot in several different ways. It’s drawing you in, and it’s going to make you want to get back on the golf course. I think of the feelings that I had as a kid and I just couldn’t wait to get to the golf course. …

“You hope you have the opportunities to show the golfing world what you can do as an architect, and I’m really excited about that opportunity and look forward to working with some really good clients on some unbelievable pieces of property, working with people who are equally as passionate and in love with this game as I am.”

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Arnold Palmer Design Company winding down as senior golf architect Thad Layton hangs own shingle

Arnold Palmer Design Company built a vast legacy with more than 300 courses around the world.

Golf architect Thad Layton couldn’t be much more excited to have started his own eponymous business after more than two decades working with Arnold Palmer Design Company, but his announcement on social media this week served in many ways as a closing bell for the company founded by Palmer in 1972.

Palmer Design has built more than 300 courses in 37 states and 27 countries, including many listed on Golfweek’s Best ranking of top modern courses in the U.S. and the state-by-state rankings of public and private layouts. The company really took off in the 1980s and has been one of the most recognized brands in course architecture ever since.

But business, especially in constructing new courses, slowed for the company following Palmer’s death in 2016, and the company plans to wind down operations as non-architectural matters shift from Palmer Design specifically to the greater Arnold Palmer Group. Brandon Johnson, Palmer Design’s other senior architect, declined to comment to Golfweek about the news. Calls to Palmer Design seeking comment were unanswered.

Adam Lawrence, writing about Palmer Design’s winding down for golfcoursearchitecture.net, pointed out that there has been no significant example of a branded golf design business surviving after the death of its principal architect, and now the same appears to be true for Palmer Design.

Layton said he has dreamed of creating his own firm for several years. The industry has boomed since COVID started in 2020, with the ranks of players swelling as they searched for outdoor recreation. Since 2021 there has been significant interest industrywide in building new courses along with renovations and restorations to existing courses.

“The timing couldn’t be better for me to enter the golf business as a sole practitioner,” said Layton, a Mississippi State grad. “I’ve been in this business now for 25 years. It’s just been good times in the golf industry these past few years, and I couldn’t find a better time to hang out my shingle. I have a lot of experience putting together strategic master plans for clients, being able to deploy their capital in a meaningful, sustainable way.”

Layton said he took on increased roles as a course shaper in recent years for Palmer Design, frequently spending time on heavy equipment turning drawings into golf holes. His most recent project for Palmer Design was a greens and bunker renovation at Peninsula Papagayo in Costa Rica, where he did the detailed shaping.

He plans to continue with a hands-on approach, using the term “design-build model” on his new website – in general, that indicates an architect who is intimately involved in projects, working with a specific crew of contractors on a frequent basis.

Layton also mentioned his love of golden age architecture with classic courses built in the four decades running through the 1930s. He then expressed a love of courses built by modern architects in that style, citing Sand Hills in Nebraska by the team of Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw as well as Pacific Dunes at Bandon Dunes Golf Resort in Oregon, built by Tom Doak.

Layton already has a project lined up, consulting on the Donald Ross-designed Lakewood Country Club in Colorado. He said he has been in talks with several other course operators about work on their layouts, too, and he hopes to soon get a crack at designing new courses.

“Where my heart is, I want to do new stuff, new courses,” said Layton, who moved to Denver four years ago after living for years in Florida, where Palmer Design was based. “I’m hopeful, once I get established, that I can show the golf world what I can do on a new site. …

“Golf has been a lifelong pursuit. I mean, I’m a golfer before I’m a golf course architect. That’s what got me interested in all this, all kinds of different golf courses. Seeing courses that have adopted Golden Age architecture, that’s where I want to get to. I’m super excited to get started.”

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Pete Dye originally sketched out just 17 holes for Austin Country Club, but his incredible quick fix is now deciding matches at the WGC-Dell Match Play

Looking for the perfect late-round match-play backdrop? How’s this sound?

AUSTIN, Texas — Looking for the perfect late-round match-play backdrop?

How’s this sound?

A short par 3 with a tee box perched on the side of a cliff. Unpredictable winds swirling from beneath, forcing players to use their best guess at a number, and a healthy dose of Scottish-style pot bunkers surrounding the green on the safe side, meaning those who get in but don’t get out smoothly can easily chalk up a wildly inflated score.

Welcome to the 17th hole at Austin Country Club, host of the WGC-Dell Technologies Match Play for at least two more days. This 150-yard shortie looks palatable from the tee but has often been the deciding factor in matches during the seven years the event has been staged in the state’s capital.

This is where Billy Horschel closed out Scottie Scheffler for the title in 2021, and a host of superstars – Rory McIlroy, Jon Rahm, Dustin Johnson, Brooks Koepka, Sergio Garcia and more – have found themselves in dire straits on this short, seductive hole, as seen in the photos below.

But here’s the little-known fact that often goes untold:

No. 17 wasn’t even part of the original plans.

When the club’s membership looked to make a second move to a new property, this time to a hilly piece of land along Lake Austin, legendary architect Pete Dye was brought in to design the masterpiece on display today.

Austin Country Club
The StrackaLine yardage book for Austin Country Club in Texas, site of the PGA Tour’s WGC-Dell Technologies Match Play (Courtesy of StrackaLine)

Dye originally sketched out the routing on a napkin, putting together much of the track as it currently exists. He proudly passed the drawings along and was a little miffed when someone noted that he had not routed enough holes in the plan.

Legendary University of Texas golfer and World Golf Hall of Famer Tom Kite picked up the story here during Friday’s third round of play.

“Pete had the thing on a napkin, he just drew the thing out,” Kite told Golfweek while standing on the practice putting green at ACC. “I think it was probably (architect) Roy Bechtol who looked at him and said, ‘Hey Pete, there’s only 17 holes here.’ Pete looked at him and said, ‘I can find a par 3 anywhere.’ ”

And that’s how the 17th hole, which plays as No. 8 in the normal, non-tournament routing, was born.

More: Pete Dye’s top 10 courses according to Golfweek’s Best rankings

Of course, it also explains why the hole hangs precariously on a hill, a characteristic that has given many players fits. The hole was shoehorned in after the initial concept was hatched, needing to be short so players wouldn’t have to backtrack too far to the next tee box.

Kite, who has played the famed course more times than he can count, said the breezes can make the hole tricky for players who aren’t accustomed to the area’s topography.

“The winds come up through the canyons, and you get back on those tees and you can’t always feel the wind,” Kite said. “And so it makes choosing the right club there very, very problematic. I mean, it’s really tough to pull the right club and get it close. And even for those of us that have played it numerous times, it’s always difficult, but we know the tendencies.”

Kite added that players needed time to adjust to the winds upon arriving in Austin in 2016 for the first playing of the Dell Match Play there – the first few years the hole wreaked real havoc on the world’s best.

“You see the guys that come in here and they obviously know a lot more now than they did the first couple of years that we played here,” Kite said. “And while it’s a tough, tough club to pull, if you do get it right the green is pretty demanding. It has a lot of undulation in it. It’s an interesting hole for sure.”

Dye, who died in 2020 at the age of 94, was particularly proud of the course, telling Austin American-Stateman columnist Kirk Bohls in 2016 that the partnership with designer Rod Whitman proved to be one of his favorite projects.

“I love that golf course,” he said. “It was a difficult job, but it worked out OK. It was really remarkable. I don’t think they changed it very much.”

Dale Morgan is the longtime head pro at ACC and someone who also figures largely into the club’s lore. Morgan is one of only three pros the club has ever had, the others being legendary teacher Harvey Penick and his son, Tinsley Penick.

And he also marvels at how Dye’s quick cover-up produced a masterpiece.

“When he realized there were only 17 holes, he said, ‘Well, there’s an area over here and I think we can make one,'” Morgan said. “He ended up making one of the best little par 3s in the world.”

Morgan said Dye had no idea when he first put the plan together that the club would end up with a World Golf Championships event for the better part of a decade, and he certainly didn’t know the little hole that was an afterthought could be a deciding stage for some of the world’s best golfers.

“He thinks he’s building a golf course for members and he has no idea we’ll be playing these championships out here,” Morgan said.

“I know he’s looking down and smiling on us right now.”

Here’s a look at some of the trouble No. 17 has offered up through the tournament’s run:

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Architect David McLay Kidd breaks ground on GrayBull, a new Dormie Network course in Nebraska’s Sandhills

The Scottish architect tackles the Sandhills, a geologic region blessed with great golf terrain.

David McLay Kidd made a name for himself by building a course in a far-flung outpost far from any major cities. His Bandon Dunes layout was the fuel that propelled the resort of the same name into the national spotlight a little more than 20 years ago, despite the effort required for golfers to reach the now-famous destination on the southern coast of Oregon.

Now Kidd is tackling a new project in a region known for out-of-the-way yet exceptional golf: The Nebraska Sandhills. But his new course might be a little easier to reach than most of the top destinations built in the Sandhills in recent decades.

Kidd and his crew have broken ground on the private GrayBull, a Dormie Network project just north of tiny Maxwell, Nebraska – less than a 30-minute drive from North Platte and its commercial airport. The site is in the southern reaches of the Sandhills, more than an hour south of several top courses such as Sand Hills Golf Club (Golfweek’s Best No. 1 Modern Course in the U.S.) or Prairie Club (with the Dunes, the No. 1 public-access layout in Nebraska).

Kidd just had to cross a river to find it.

A road stretches past GrayBull, a new Dormie Network golf course in Nebraska being built by David McLay Kidd. (Courtesy of the Dormie Network)

Dormie Network is a private course operator based in Lincoln, Nebraska. Currently available to its members are six courses spread about the central and eastern regions of the country: ArborLinks in Nebraska City, Nebraska; Ballyhack in Roanoke, Virginia; Briggs Ranch in San Antonio, Texas; Dormie Club in West End, North Carolina; Hidden Creek in Egg Harbor Township, New Jersey; and Victoria National in Newburgh, Indiana. Members of the network have access to each course – many of which rank highly among private clubs in their states – and its amenities, which include on-site cabins.

Dormie began considering the addition of a new facility near North Platte several years ago, starting the search south of the Platte River. Kidd was recruited to scout one proposed site, but he didn’t like what he saw that far south.

“The Sandhills of Nebraska, which are the famed area where Sand Hills (Golf Club) and Prairie Club and Dismal River and others are, are all north of the Platte River, not to the south,” said Kidd, who has built more than 20 courses around the world. “The first time I went there and we crossed the river headed south, I immediately thought, ooh, this is not the direction I want to be going in. I want to be going north, not south.”

To the south, Kidd said, he saw steep terrain with dense vegetation and heavy soils – “Not great golf terrain.” He and his group turned the car and headed north across the river into the Sandhills, starting a long search for a new site for what will become GrayBull.

The site of the new GrayBull in Nebraska in the southern reaches of the Sandhills

After months of seeing proposed sites that didn’t tick all the boxes – great golf terrain, sandy soil, unspoiled views ­– Kidd was pitched a parcel that was part of a ranch. He loved it from the moment the topo charts loaded on his computer, and the Dormie Network set about acquiring almost 2,000 acres from the rancher.

“I learned that bad ranch land turns out to be great golf land,” Kidd said with a laugh. “The ranchers on the Sandhills want relatively flat land because they want the cattle to just eat all the grass and not exercise, so they just keep putting on weight. We golfers don’t want the flat land. We want the rumply sand with ridges, hummocks, holes, bumps and all that going on. The cows would be climbing up and down hills all day, damn near getting exercise. That’s no use. Skinny cows are no good. …

“This site, it’s like the Goldilocks thing: not too flat, not too steep. It’s kind of in a bowl that looks inwards, and there are no bad views. It’s wide open, no big roads, no visual contamination – ticks all the boxes.”

The site for GrayBull, a new Dormie Network golf course being built by David McLay Kidd (Courtesy of the Dormie Network)

Kidd and his crew broke ground in June with an unspecified target opening in 2024. It will become Dormie Network’s seventh facility, and unlike many Sandhills courses, it will not require a long drive from the North Platte airport.

Kidd said the course will continue in his ethos of playability, a mantra he has preached since building a handful of courses more than a decade ago that were deemed too difficult for most players. His more recent efforts – particularly the public-access Gamble Sands in Washington and Mammoth Dunes at Sand Valley in Wisconsin – have been lauded for their fairway widths, creativity and playability. Kidd said GrayBull will retain those sensibilities, even if he does add a few more testing shots, especially around the greens.

A diagram for a proposed hole at GrayBull, a new Dormie Network golf course in Nebraska being built by David McLay Kidd (Courtesy of the Dormie Network)

“The landscape is so expansive, it’s hard to imagine building a 30-yard-wide fairway and it not looking ridiculous in the landscape,” the native Scot said. “For sure, the golf course is going to be brawny. I would want it to be forgiving for the average guy when they make mistakes, but I also think the Dormie Network is for golfers … who are probably a little more into it than the guy who makes that once-in-a-lifetime trip somewhere. I’d think these golfers are a little better players, so we’ll adjust accordingly but not by a whole lot. We still want it to be super fun, and we still want them to be able to screw up a little and still get back into the game to some extent.

“The site is extremely unique. It’s like nothing I have ever seen before. Because of that, the golf look, the golf feel, the golf design will be responding to the site. I don’t think anyone who plays Mammoth Dunes or Gamble Sands will show up and say this is an exact copy of those because the site is so different. But, will my ethos change massively? No. I will be staying in my lane, creating golf of that ilk – broad fairways with tight aggressive scoring lanes with wide areas to recover.”

David McLay Kidd (Golfweek files)

GrayBull likely will become a big part of the golf discussion of the Sandhills, a geologic region blessed with incredibly rolling and bouncy terrain that has exploded onto any well-versed traveling golfer’s radar since the opening of Sand Hills Golf Club in 1995. And GrayBull is not alone as a new development in the state, as architects Rob Collins and Tad King of Sweetens Cove fame plan to open the public-access Landmand Golf Club on the eastern side of the state, not in the Sandhills but also on dramatic land.

“(Bandon Dunes developer and owner) Mike Keiser proved that a good location for golf design was more important than a good location for demographics,” Kidd said when asked about building in far-flung locations instead of near larger cities. “The demographics were surmountable, but a poor golf site was not. You just can’t build a good golf course if the site doesn’t allow it. Doesn’t matter how much money you throw at it, chances are the golf course will almost always be inferior because you started with a poor site. …

“The Sandhills are incredible for golf, and this is by far the largest site I’ve ever been given for one 18-hole golf course. Everywhere you look there’s a golf hole.”

Re-routing Pebble Beach into a figure 8? One golf architect says it would enhance the experience

The course is a national treasure, but it perhaps could stand to use some tweaking, at least according to one leading architect.

Pebble Beach Golf Links provides magnificent backdrops for the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am each year, the famous course taking center stage on the final day of the event.

But while the course is a national treasure — and leads Golfweek’s Best list of the top 100 courses you can play — it could perhaps stand to use some tweaking, at least according to one leading course designer.

Jay Blasi is a golf architect who has worked on courses such as Chambers Bay, The Patriot and Santa Ana Country Club. He also serves as a Golfweek’s Best rater ambassador and contributes frequently to Golfweek.

In 2019, Blasi tweeted that he felt the experience at Pebble could be even better. We caught up with Blasi at a Golfweek Raters event in Las Vegas this week, to ask his thoughts.

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“If you take a hard look at it, there would be an opportunity to create a figure 8 out at the end of the property away from the clubhouse,” Blasi said.

Blasi’s point is valid — although the dynamic stretch of holes through the last five holes of the front and first after the turn offers breathtaking ocean views, the cliff consistently plays along the right side, making it more dangerous with those who play a fade.

But a re-routing could bring a figure 8 into play that offers more variety and a better all-around experience.

According to Blasi, the changes would bring a little added distance while creating a wider variety of shots needed.

To end his tweet stream in 2019, Blasi summed up his thoughts.

“All told, the refinements would add 66 yds to championship length. Add variety to par 5 orientation. Add variety to par 3 distances. Add a cliffside green. Add variety to coastline. Use compression and release to build drama. Fit the natural terrain. YOUR THOUGHTS????”

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10 questions: Course architect Robert Trent Jones Jr. on golf trees, Chambers Bay and more

The golf course designer has thoughts about trees, Chambers Bay, distance and changing fashions.

Robert Trent Jones Jr., designer of more than 250 golf courses around the world, has plenty of strong views on architecture and the state of the game. The 82-year-old is the son of famed architect Robert Trent Jones Sr., and he’s seen many changes and trends in design over his six decades in the business – some he loves, others he would love to see discarded.

Jones Jr., a past president of the American Society of Golf Course Architects, recently spent several days with Golfweek’s course raters at the Golfweek’s Best Architecture Summit at Ross Bridge near Birmingham, Alabama. Ross Bridge is part of the Robert Trent Jones Golf Trail, an ambitious project largely designed by the senior Jones that now includes 26 courses at 11 sites. Jones Jr. attended the summit to speak about his father’s legacy on the Trail and beyond.

Jones Jr. graciously answered many questions after playing one round of golf at Ross Bridge and another at nearby Alpine Bay Golf Club – which is not part of the Trail but which was designed by Jones Sr. and reopened in 2016 after having been shuttered for nearly two years. Following are selections of his replies. Editor’s note: These responses are not shown in their entirety and have been edited for brevity.

A Monster no more? Oakland Hill Country Club is ready for its next major after restoration

A South Course renovation stiffened the test for the better player while making the track at Oakland Hills more fun for the average golfer.

BLOOMFIELD HILLS, Mich. – When golf course architect Gil Hanse has time to play golf these days, he abides by his three-strike rule.

“If it’s cold, windy and rainy I’m out,” he said. “If it’s two of the three, I’m OK.”

On a warm July summer day near Detroit, Hanse managed to squeeze in nine holes at famed Oakland Hills Country Club, fresh off a $12 million restoration he led with design partner Jim Wagner and onsite coordinator Kye Goalby, son of Masters champion Bob Goalby. With its testing doglegs, sea of sand and some of the trickiest undulating greens, Ben Hogan nicknamed it “the monster.”

Hanse chuckled when asked to reveal his score. He noted that whenever he and Wagner turn up to play one of their courses, the superintendent always picks the hardest flags on the course. Nevertheless, Hanse was pleased with making five bogeys and four pars before Mother Nature intervened. And yet that nine-hole score perfectly illustrates how Hanse has stiffened the test for the better player while making Oakland Hills more playable and therefore more fun for the average golfer.

Players on the practice green during the first round of stroke play of the 2016 U.S. Amateur at Oakland Hills.
Players on the practice green during the first round of stroke play of the 2016 U.S. Amateur at Oakland Hills with the iconic clubhouse in the background (Tracy Wilcox/Golfweek).

“That’s the magic sauce,” Hanse said. “That’s what all of us architects are trying to do. The level of precision required to play the golf course is fairly low. There are wide openings to the greens where you can run the ball where you couldn’t before but we made the fairways narrower where Tour players hit it, or where there are bunkers.”

Oakland Hills, which was founded in 1916 and counts Walter Hagen as the club’s first professional, always has been considered one of golf’s great cathedrals. Even before the restoration, the South ranked as No. 2 in Michigan on Golfweek’s Best Private Courses list. It also is tied for No. 23 on Golfweek’s Best Classic Courses list for all layouts opened before 1960 in the United States. This is land that original designer Donald Ross once proclaimed, “The Lord intended it to be a golf course.”

It gained a reputation as one of the toughest tests of golf after Robert Trent Jones Sr., sharpened its teeth ahead of the 1951 U.S. Open. In the first round, Hogan bogeyed five of the first nine holes and shot an opening 4-over 76 to dig himself a hole but rallied with a final-round 67, at the time the competitive course record, and famously said, “I brought this course, this monster, to its knees.”

That was the first of six U.S. Opens the club hosted, but none since 1996. Oakland Hills was the site of the 2004 Ryder Cup and Padraig Harrington’s victory at the 2008 PGA Championship, but it is one of the worst-kept secrets in golf that this latest renovation was green-lit with the objective of being awarded a seventh U.S. Open and with ambitions of becoming the USGA’s Midwest rota choice for years to come.

When Oakland Hills hosted the 2002 U.S. Amateur – won by Ricky Barnes in a flowery Hawaiian-print shirt that hangs in the clubhouse – technology advances to the driver and golf ball had given players the upper hand. Bill Haas shot a 29 in match play and members were none too happy to read headlines in the local papers proclaiming, “The Monster has lost it teeth.”

Rees Jones, son of RTJ Sr., had inherited his father’s moniker as the Open Doctor, and was called in to bring The Monster back to life. He narrowed fairways and added steeper bunkers, but in doing so made the course a test where an aerial approach of long, high and straight was required. Steve Brady, director of golf at Oakland Hills for 24 years, said that the course was still a bucket-list item for architecture buffs, but golfers crossed it off and didn’t want to come back. It was too hard and, dare one say, boring. When members asked Brady if he’d like to play with them, he’d check which course they were playing – Oakland Hills’s sister course is the North Course, a Donald Ross dating to 1924 – and if they said the South he’d answer, “I’ve got a thing.”

Hanse and his team returned The South to Ross’s original intent, a course that both asks and allows the golfer to consider myriad options to get at a flag. With the exception of the short par-3 13th, every hole provides some front-door entry for a running shot. The course is far more interesting and, by design, more fun for the membership.

“The best architecture doesn’t dictate to the player how they are going to play the golf course,” Hanse said. “When it becomes singular and one dimensional, it’s not great architecture.”

Later, during the same conversation Hanse added: “This game is supposed to be fun, right? We learned a valuable lesson from Mark Parsinen when we did Castle Stuart. He said, ‘Keep the average golfer hopeful and engaged.’ ”

This latest restoration began in the fall of 2019, a 21-month project, to unlock the original design features laid out by Ross. Archived aerial photos and original plans, along with a program from the 1929 U.S. Women’s Amateur, allowed them to get the details right and lent scale and perspective.

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“It became our bible,” Hanse said of the tournament program. “Kye Goalby probably knows by memory every word of that 1929 program. I think he put it under his head when he went to bed.”

All 18 greens were restored to their original size and shape while constructing them to USGA specifications. Precision Air sub-surface units were installed to control moisture and temperature. Bunkers also were restored with new drainage, fairways were restored to their original widths, new irrigation was installed and a significant number of trees were cleared to improve playing conditions and reopen the vistas. Could these measures be the difference maker in scoring Oakland Hill’s next major? Hanse argues in the affirmative.

“I don’t think the litmus test for the USGA or PGA is going to be can it still challenge the best players in the world? If you get the greens firm and rolling and the rough growing, you can host any championship out here. The thing that will be the most interest to them will be the infrastructure changes and the ability to host a championship with a more predictable outcome with relation to conditions,” Hanse mused. “They want to be able to understand how much control do they have over the setup? The infrastructure, the precision air system, the drainage, the bunker liner system, all the things we’ve done will yield a much more predictable outcome if we have a bad weather week.”

To that point, Hanse said that every green has at least three restored hole locations bringing the severely undulating green complexes front and center as the primary challenge again. Short or long shots now experience the classic Ross table-top runoffs. This will give championship setup committees the options it prefers.

“Can they dictate the way the golf course is presented to the players?” Hanse said. “If there’s only three hole locations, they’re stuck. If more, they can ratchet it up if playing too easy or back off if too hard.”

The creek at the seventh hole was restored to the design settings of Donald Ross (Adam Schupak/Golfweek).

One of the most notable enhancements is the return of the seventh hole’s putting green to its original location, along with the original size of the creek, which bisects the par 4. It looks like it’s been there all along, and has been widely praised by the membership as the course’s most popular new-old feature.

Some of the improvements are more subtle. Landing areas were made larger – Hanse removed 10 bunkers on the second hole and 15 trees at the eighth and another 23 at the 11th – most notably at the par-4 16th, which was widened by 30 yards. En route to winning the 1972 PGA Championship, Player pushed his drive into the right rough about 150 yards from the lakeside green. He had a stand of willow trees in his way, but he gambled and hoisted a 9-iron to 4 feet. The signature shot of the championship earned a plaque at the spot of the shot. The willows, planted in the 1950s to create The Monster, are no more and today Player’s drive would have rested 10 yards into the fairway.

The plaque for Gary Player’s iconic 9-iron from the rough at the 1972 PGA Championship can now be replicated from the fairway (Adam Schupak/Golfweek).

“That avenue of play was taken away unless you were Player. We felt like stripping away the evolution was another way of letting golfers decide the club. Longer shot, less water, but now the golfer has the freedom (to choose their angle of attack),” Hanse said.

The removal of superfluous trees – crimson, silver and Norway maples, Siberian Elms, Ohio Buckeyes, Honey Locusts, ash, birch, pines, spruces and sycamores – opened up site lines and allowed the club’s iconic neo-colonial white clubhouse that stands on the crest of a hill to be viewed from the most distant spots.

Asked to highlight one of his own touches he left on the famed layout, Hanse didn’t hesitate. “Hopefully nothing,” he said.

He delivered on his promise to make Oakland Hills stand out enough that it should deserve strong consideration to be awarded its seventh U.S. Open while making the course more playable for the members. The USGA’s Jeff Hall, Jason Gore, John Bodenheimer and Mark Hill, the key decision makers in evaluating future sites, all have visited to see the changes. What they found was a kinder, friendlier, more strategic course, but still every bit a monster. And one that is all dressed up and ready for its next major.

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