Tag: golf course

Great Waters!

Great Waters!

The developmental timeline of Reynolds Lake Oconee (formerly Reynolds Plantation) is a little like the biological evolution of the human species. As time passes, organisms (in this case, golf courses) multiply, establishing themselves in their surroundings while slowly developing complexity surpassing previous versions. Eventually they become highly specialized within the context of their ecosystem until, finally, they’re advanced to…

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Straight Doping the Straits at Whistling Straits

Straight Doping the Straits at Whistling Straits

I don’t know what billionaire owner and developer Herb Kohler asked for when he hired Pete Dye to design and build the Straits Course at Whistling Straits, but if he wanted a true homage to an Irish links he didn’t get it. Though it looks the part in a sweeping glance there’s scant opportunity for the creative or interpretive play that real links…

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Seaside at Sea Island — In Its Element

Seaside at Sea Island — In Its Element

No one has ever accused Tom Fazio of being a minimalist. In fact Fazio seems almost hostile to the idea that there’s virtue in building holes with as little construction involved as possible. If the option is presented, why not take full control of the design process? Had modern industrial machines and equipment, Fazio has conjectured, been widely…

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Southern Hills Plantation: Dye Steps Forward

Southern Hills Plantation: Dye Steps Forward

I thought Southern Hills Plantation Club had a chance to win national acclaim when I first heard, around 2001, that Pete Dye was building a course in this part of west-central Florida. Being familiar with World Woods and the sand ridges that run through the Brooksville area, it seemed like the soils, the region’s big and graceful elevations…

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“Remembering” Craft Farms

“Remembering” Craft Farms

Critics are typically charged with making judgments based on first or preliminary impressions. Movie critics don’t typically have the luxury of watching films over and over to absorb their intricacies. Wine critics can render reviews after rifling through dozens of glasses in one sitting. Book reviewers have to process enormous amounts of material on deadline.…

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Episode 4: Bill Bergin

Episode 4: Bill Bergin

In this episode, architect Bill Bergin and Derek Duncan catch up and discuss a wide array of subjects including Bill’s recent and upcoming re-workings of several historic clubs, WWSRD (what would Seth Raynor do?), keeping pace with Bob Tway and the northwest Atlanta high school golf scene, going low at St. Andrews, Bill’s top 3 Atlanta…

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RTJ Trail – Oxmoor Valley: Vertigo at the Ridge Course

RTJ Trail – Oxmoor Valley: Vertigo at the Ridge Course

Certain elements of the Ridge Course at Oxmoor Valley in southeast Birmingham are fairly outrageous. I think of the 1st and 2nd holes (formerly the 10th and 11th, a par-4 followed by a par-5, one going uphill, the other downhill) that are so steep they play like a life size Q-bert pyramid where the only place a ball can come to rest…

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RTJ Trail: Smoothing Into Oxmoor Valley’s Valley Course

RTJ Trail: Smoothing Into Oxmoor Valley’s Valley Course

The Valley Course at Oxmoor Valley makes a dramatic entrance with a tee shot that drops nearly 200 feet to a fairway bracketed by large clover bunkers. The rest of the routing covers the tamer flats on the western side of Little Shades Mountain with none of the big up and down movements of the Ridge Course, at…

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Another Round for Druid Hills

Another Round for Druid Hills

Druid Hills is one of Atlanta’s original surviving clubs along with Ansley, Capital City Club–Brookhaven (also an H. H. Barker design, completely reconfigured by Bob Cupp in 2009) and East Lake. The design is nestled snugly into one of the city’s most prestigious old neighborhoods near Emory University where Atlanta’s moneyed set built estate homes in the early…

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