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.
Tiger Woods’ TGR Design firm is building its first mountain course outside Park City, Utah.
Tiger Woods will tee it up next week in the U.S. Open at Pinehurst, but in addition to practicing his golf game, the former World No. 1 took a recent detour to Utah for his other job as golf course architect.
Woods, along with design consultant Beau Welling (who runs a successful design firm of his own), recently visited Marcella Club near Park City. Woods’ TGR Design firm is building an 18-hole layout there that is scheduled to open in 2025. Plans for the mile-high-plus course, Woods’ first mountain layout, have it stretching beyond 8,000 yards.
“I was completely blown away by everything about Marcella,” Woods said in a media release discussing his site visit. “The amenities, the commitment to excellence, not to mention maybe the best views I have ever seen on a golf course. I told the team that this is the perfect canvas, and we just need to make sure we live up to the challenge.”
Marcella Club, laid out by Tiger Woods’ TGR Design, will be the former World No. 1’s first mountain course. (Courtesy of Marcella Club)
The private course will be situated in the Marcella Jordanelle Ridge, part of a masterplanned community that is a partnership between Marcella at Deer Valley and Marcella Jordanelle Ridge. The club, which will include private skiing, plans to cap its membership at 500.
In all, the club will offer membership amenities in three locations: Marcella at Deer Valley, Marcella Jordanelle Ridge and Marcella on Main. The club is a collaboration between Reef Capital Partners, Raintree Investment Corporation and Cross Lake Partners.
During is recent site visit, Woods and his team previewed the layout of all 18 holes, signing off on seven of them and discussing the others, as noted in the media release.
“Despite a snowy winter, we have made substantial progress on the championship course,” Beth Armstrong, managing director of Marcella, said in the media release. “The walkthrough allowed us to fine-tune the layout and features to ensure a challenging and enjoyable experience for all golfers.”
Plans for Marcella include a second 18-hole course by a designer yet to be named, a short course designed by Woods and a ski-in-ski-out lodge at Deer Valley Resort.
The Keiser family plans two new courses in Texas to be designed by some of the biggest names in golf architecture.
The Keiser family is at it again, this time with a new resort named Wild Spring Dunes planned for East Texas. Several of the biggest names in golf course architecture will bring the project to life.
Chris and Michael Keiser, sons of Bandon Dunes Golf Resort founder Mike Keiser, have acquired a 2,400-acre site not far from Nacogdoches that eventually will be home to an announced two courses at Wild Spring Dunes. Draw a triangle from Houston up to Dallas with the third point in Shreveport, Louisiana, and the resort will sit just north of the center of that triangle.
One of the layouts will be designed by Tom Doak, who has completed his routing with construction set to begin soon. The team of Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw have routed the second course. There also are plans for a short course, a practice center, cabins and a clubhouse. The involvement of Doak, Coore and Crenshaw is an extension of a long relationship in which they have designed world-class resort courses for the Keiser family and at other world-wide destinations that have opened with financial backing from Mike Keiser.
The site for Wild Spring Dunes in Texas (Courtesy of Dream Golf/Jeff Marsh)
Wild Spring Dunes will be part of Dream Golf, which is the collective of courses and resorts operated by the Keiser Family. The collective includes Bandon Dunes, Sand Valley and Rodeo Dunes.
Chris and Michael Keiser hit a home run on their first swing with their development of Sand Valley in Wisconsin, and the brothers announced last year their plans for Rodeo Dunes to the northeast of Denver. Wild Spring Dunes is the next in line of a continuously swirling series of speculations and rumors about the family’s future development plans. The family recently celebrated the 25th anniversary of Bandon Dunes in Oregon, which set off a trend of developers searching for remote sandy sites.
Wild Spring Dunes looks to be one more such development. The sandy terrain features considerable elevation changes in four distinct ecosystems with pines and hardwoods, steep ravines and spring-fed creeks.
“This land surprised me,” Michael Keiser said on a website announcing the development to prospective early members. “I would never have imagined this kind of property in Texas. The pine forests. The steep ravines. The big hills surrounding it. You walk the site, and it’s always changing, and you can see golf holes on every part of it.”
Chris Keiser and Michael Keiser with their dad, Mike Keiser, at Sand Valley in Wisconsin (Courtesy of Bandon Dunes Golf Resort)
As spelled out on the website, Wild Spring Dunes has solicited early members with an initial price of $65,000 until May 31, with that price then increasing to $75,000. Early members will not receive equity but will be the recipients of various perks, including having their green fees covered at what will be a public-access resort and early access to any possible real estate developments. The model is similar to how the Keiser brothers developed the popular Sand Valley, which has continued to expand and soon will be home to four courses.
Two of the courses at Sand Valley were built by Doak: the Lido, which is a re-creation of a century-old but defunct layout on Long Island, and the new Sedge Valley that is scheduled to open in July this year. As part of the communications with prospective members, Doak said he plans to make the most of 60 feet of elevation changes for his course at Wild Spring Dunes.
“The site in East Texas is not the sort of windblown dunes land we’ve worked on in Bandon and at Sand Valley,” said Doak, who recently opened a new course at Pinehurst Resort in North Carolina named No. 10. “It’s more like Pine Valley, rolling land that falls off on three sides into deep barrancas. Reminiscent of Pasatiempo or L.A. Country Club (both in California). Pine trees abound, as does a heathery ground cover.”
Coore and Crenshaw built the original and eponymous course at Sand Valley for the Keiser brothers, as well as designing two full-size courses – Bandon Trails and Sheep Ranch – and the popular Bandon Preserve par-3 course at Bandon Dunes for the brothers’ father. They also are building one of the first courses at Rodeo Dunes.
“It’s a marvelous place that feels as though it was destined for golf,” Coore said of Wild Spring Dunes in the communications with prospective members. “The site is thrilling, sandy, and the routing has come together very naturally. We can’t wait to see it come to life.”
The Torre Course will be the second 18 at the high-end development south of Lisbon.
Sergio Garcia has signed on to design a second course at Terras da Comporta in Portugal, which will be the Spanish LIV golfer’s first as lead designer.
Terras da Comporta already is home to the David McLay Kidd-designed Dunas Course, which opened in 2023 and has been well-received. Garcia’s addition will be named the Torre Course and is slated to open in June of 2025 about an hour’s drive south of Lisbon.
“When it comes to full-on design, this is my first project and we are very, very excited about the course,” Garcia said in a media release announcing the planned opening timeline. “It’s something that I can really put my stamp on.
“The site is located in striking scenery, just a couple of kilometers from the beautiful beaches of Comporta, and the land has all the ingredients for a spectacular golf course. It’s a beautiful spot for a golf course, and we are building it using the best sustainable methods.”
Citing former Ryder Cup site Valderrama in Spain as his favorite course, Garcia said he intends the Torre Course to play tight with small greens amid a pine forest. Work already has begun, with Garcia utilizing Olazabal Design – founded by Garcia’s former Ryder Cup teammate, José María Olazábal – and lead shaper Conor Walsh for construction. Vanguard Properties, the largest real estate developer in Portugal, is leading the project on the high-end community.
An 18-hole course will be built alongside an already existing short course by Tiger Woods.
Nicklaus Design has started construction on an 18-hole course at Jack’s Bay Club in Eleuthera, The Bahamas.
Jack’s Bay Club is a 1,200-acre resort club and community that already features a 10-hole short course named Playground that was designed by Tiger Woods’ TGR Design firm. The Nicklaus Design course will be the 18-hole, full-size counterpart to Woods’ short course.
The new layout is scheduled to open in 2025 and will be branded as the first Jack Nicklaus Heritage course. Jack’s Bay Club also will be the only Nicklaus-branded community in the Bahamas.
Jack Nicklaus himself is not involved in the project. Instead, Chad Goetz, a senior design associate at Nicklaus Design, will oversee the creation of the layout. Doug Maslo, director of development and construction for Jack’s Bay, will oversee the construction.
The course will feature several oceanside holes while interior holes will cover land said to include rolling terrain, lakes and blue holes that connect with the ocean.
“This may be the most spectacular piece of land that I have been blessed to work with in my career – this is the opportunity of a lifetime,” Goetz, who has designed courses around the world for Nicklaus Design over the past 25 years, said in a media release announcing that construction has started. “We want to create a course at Jack’s Bay that harmonizes with the environment and features strategic shot-making opportunities. Most of all, we want to create a course that is fun for all types of players and immerses them in the natural splendor of this remarkable piece of land.”
The routing and site plan by Nicklaus Design for an 18-hole course at Jack’s Bay Club in the Bahamas (Courtesy of Jack’s Bay Club)
Nicklaus Design is part of Nicklaus Companies, which Jack Nicklaus founded but is now controlled by American businessman Howard Milstein, who owns 8AM Golf. That family of companies includes Golf Magazine, Golf.com, Miura Golf and other golf brands.
Jack’s Bay Club is being developed by Eleuthera Properties Ltd. The club includes four miles of oceanfront property and a wide assortment of high-end amenities.
Cabot Highlands in Scotland reveals the name and logo for its new Tom Doak-designed layout.
Cabot Highlands in Inverness, Scotland, has chosen a name for its new Tom Doak-designed course that is now scheduled to open for preview play in 2025: Old Petty.
The name is a nod to the Old Petty Church, which was built in 1839 and sits off what will become the 16th green. The now-unused church is believed to sit at the site of an even older church, and the Old Petty Church is reported to have hosted an unusual custom: Mourners in the early 1800s would run to the church’s graveyard during funerals while carrying the coffin.
The logo for the new Old Petty course will be the highland cow, or “Hairy Coo” as the locals call them.
Cabot revealed the logo, based on a highland cow, for Old Petty, the new course being built by Tom Doak in Scotland. (Courtesy of Cabot)
Cabot revealed Doak’s planned routing for Old Petty last summer, with holes passing a 400-year-old castle that provided the previous name for the property, Castle Stuart, before the Canadian-based Cabot bought it and rebranded the northern Scottish resort in 2022.
Old Petty will be on the southwest side of the property’s original Castle Stuart Golf Links built by Mark Parsinen and Gil Hanse, which ranks as the No. 4 modern course in Great Britain and Ireland. Built on land that was previously farmed, Old Petty will wrap down and around an estuary, offering stunning views and a layout that crisscrosses in a huge shared fairway for Nos. 1 and 18.
Cabot also plans to extend the unique white clubhouse to include a new whiskey and cigar bar, a clubhouse grill bar and a chophouse restaurant.
Check out several recent illustrations that provide a glimpse at how Old Petty might look.
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.”
Already home to one of the best par-3 courses, Bandon Dunes will open a new layout on wild dunes.
Bandon Dunes Golf Resort, to a large degree, reinvigorated par-3 courses at resorts around the U.S. – and the world. The Oregon resort’s Preserve – opened in 2012 with a design by Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw on cliffs above the Pacific Ocean – has proved to be a massive hit with guests looking for a non-traditional layout that promises plenty of fun. All five of the 18-hole courses on the property are among our top 11 resort courses on the Golfweek’s Best 2024 list.
In May, the Preserve will have a sibling. Bandon Dunes’ new 19-hole par-3 course, named Shorty’s, will open in wild dunes not far from Bandon Trails. Built by the WAC Golf team of Rod Whitman, Dave Axland and Keith Cutten, the layout will play down a large hill, around and through the dunes and back up to a new clubhouse. Holes will range from 60 to 160 yards.
Used in the opening battle scenes in Saving Private Ryan, an Irish beach will soon be home to golf and a resort.
The American design team of Dana Fry and Jason Straka is headed to Ireland with plans to lay out a new course adjacent to Curracloe Beach in the southeast of the island.
If the beach looks familiar, you might have seen it on a big screen, as it was used in filming the opening landing scenes for Allied troops in the 1998 blockbuster “Saving Private Ryan.”
Named Curracloe Links, the new layout will be part of Ravenport Resort, which is scheduled to open this spring about a two-hour drive south of Dublin Airport, just north of Wexford. Groundbreaking for the golf course takes place in February with an expected full opening in 2026. The resort will include 50 rooms, a spa and a leisure club near what has been called the best beach in the island nation by the Irish Independent.
“The ancient linksland of Curracloe Links, with its rolling hills, long sea views and rugged natural bunkers, will offer a quintessential Irish golf experience and lure people from all over the world to its fairways,” Straka, past president of the American Society of Golf Course Architects, said in a media release announcing the news.
The planned routing for Curracloe Links in Ireland (Courtesy of Neville Hotel Group)
Straka, who plans to spend considerable time at the site, should be getting used to working near the sea: His recent renovation of Belleair Country Club near Tampa has proved especially popular since it opened in 2023.
Ireland-based Neville Hotel Group is developing the project. It will be Neville’s fifth property, joining Royal Marine Hotel in Dun Laoghaire, Druids Glen Hotel and Golf Resort in County Wicklow, the River Court Hotel in Kilkenny and the Tower Hotel in Waterford.
Check out the photos of Panther National in South Florida.
Jack Nicklaus and Justin Thomas have teamed up to design Panther National, a new private club in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida, that officially opens Friday with a star-studded exhibition match.
Rickie Fowler, Xander Schauffele, Morgan Hoffmann, Erik van Rooyen and Lexi Thompson will tee it up alongside Thomas for the course opening.
The course will offer up double fairways, deep bunkers and expansive sandy waste areas amid what the club calls an unusual amount of elevation changes for a South Florida course. The club also will feature state-of-the-art training facilities, a 9-hole, par-3 practice course and a huge putting course named The Cub. It’s all attached to a residential offering of 218 high-end, custom estates on 400 acres surrounded by Panther National Wildlife Refuge.
“From the start, the vision was clear – to create a golf experience unlike any other found in South Florida,” Nicklaus said in a media release announcing the opening. “Every opportunity to design a golf course brings challenges, but in the case of Panther National, uniqueness triumphs. You won’t find any golf course remotely close to it in South Florida.”
Check out a selection of images of the course and amenities below.
