Nobody’s roots stretch deeper into the field of golf architecture than Robert Trent Jones II’s. Oldest son of Robert Trent Jones and now in his sixth decade of design, he’s been literally almost everywhere, seen everything and been a prominent voice the industry his entire life. After some light banter about fatalism and nuclear bombs,…
Had a lively and entertaining conversation tonight with Robert Trent Jones II, discussing topics like the opening of Hogs Head near Waterville in Ireland, the reception of Chambers Bay during the U.S. Open and the enduring legacy of his father. Look for the podcast to go live this weekend.
Holston Hills has the reputation of being a Donald Ross course that time forgot because so little has supposedly changed over the years. The story is that the club, increasingly located on the “wrong” side of Knoxville and challenged to hold onto members, never had the money to unwittingly hire an architect to come in and modernize the course,…
With a lovely, forested site (though not one necessarily great for golf), recurring views of Lake Oconee and the surrounding development’s once deep pockets, you’d think The National’s 27 holes would comprise some of the most spectacular destination golf in the Southeast. In actuality, the National bats in the middle of Reynolds Lake Oconee’s (formerly Reynolds Plantation) lineup. That’s…
Rod Whitman has been one of golf’s masters of construction for nearly 40 years and has designed a number of courses on his own. In 2010 he got the call every architect dreams of — an offer to design and build a course on one of the world’s great new seaside properties, in this case…
One of the reasons Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw’s golf courses are held in such high regard—by architectural cognoscenti, by magazine ranking panels and international developers—is that they’re so often, so obviously, brilliant. The pretext is that they’ve been hired to construct courses on some of the greatest sites made available in the last 40 years. But when they get there, they…
Will be speaking shortly with Rod Whitman, the designer behind the highly-lauded Cabot Links course on Canada’s Cape Breton Island (rated no. 43 and no. 96 in the world by Golf Digest and Golf Magazine, respectively). Keep an eye out toward the end of the week for when the podcast goes live.
Suddenly, Wisconsin has become a powerhouse golf destination, at least as unlikely a place for extraordinary public play as Nebraska has become. The state hit the big stage in 1988 when Pete Dye built Blackwolf Run’s original 18 at Destination Kohler. That begat another 18 holes and, several years later, 36 more for the resort at Whistling Straits, including the famous Straits Course on bluffs…
From the time the earliest links were staked out, whenever that was, golf course “design” has been in a continuous state of development. That’s not to say it’s been a smooth or straight evolution–there have always been stops and restarts. Pete Dye almost single handedly reset the direction of golf architecture in the mid-1960’s following the pre-fab boomer period…
What does it say about Tom Fazio that the finest work to come out of his studio might be a public course in Florida that you can play for $50? It doesn’t square with the closed-door, big budget design extravaganzas we usually associate with Fazio, does it? He’s never built many public courses to begin with, much…