Going around Red Hawk Ridge you can see the ideas and embryonic elements of the shapes and playability motifs that Jim Engh would further develop in the early 2000’s at a number of nationally acclaimed courses that launched him into the upper orbit of golf architecture. Built in 1999 in Castle Rock, just south of Denver, Red Hawk Ridge is a more modest…
Many people, and many rankings, consider the Lake Course at Grand National the best stop on Alabama’s Robert Trent Jones Trail. I’m not sure I agree (Ross Bridge) but I wouldn’t waste time arguing with them. Other locations have their strong points, but if you want to know what the Trail is all about visit here…
Ross Bridge is one of the biggest courses you’ll ever play. I’m not just talking about the 8,200-yard “Black” tees that are purely marketing fodder (although the way things are going, there could be a PGA TOUR event coming in the future), but rather the overall size, shape and scale of the property and its golf…
Rock Creek, a development course southeast of Mobile, is less than a mile inland from Mobile Bay but it might as well be in the mountains north of Birmingham. The land is quite hilly creating some adventurous up and down shots as the two nines circle out casually through shaded homes and corridors of thick…
I confess I’m not always able to wrap my head around Bob Cupp’s courses. The architectural features often feel out of sync — or out of proportion — with the properties and with each other. For example: Big holes with wide fairways leading to small greens; slender fairways on properties with lots of room; small bunkers where…
The Landing (née Port Armor, née Reynolds Landing), was the first course built on Lake Oconee in Central Georgia in the mid-1980’s, and for a while Bob Cupp had the only two courses on the lake when he followed this design a few years later with The Preserve (née The Plantation course) at Reynolds Lake Oconee (née Reynolds Plantation). Got that? Cupp once told me a…
You can’t teach an old dog new tricks, but apparently you can teach an old dog old tricks. I’m not saying Denis Griffiths is old, but at Old Union in north Georgia’s Appalachian foothills near Blairsville the architect created a look that might have come straight out of the early 20th century. Or before. Old Union is brightened with…
“A good idea is a good idea, forever.”–David Brent The above quote, proclaimed by Ricky Gervais’s character in the original British series The Office, is clearly false. Especially in real estate, where timing is as important as location. For the developers of Echelon, a would-be prestige-level golf community north of Atlanta, what seemed like a good idea in the early-2000’s…
If I had just one round to play and it had to be in the greater Atlanta area, with no access to private clubs, I’d probably take it at Cobblestone. The land is a paradox — it’s scenic with a lot of shoreline along Lake Acworth, but everywhere away from the water is steep, wooded…
MetroWest Country Club opened in 1987 and for a dozen or so years it was considered one of Orlando’s better public golf courses. But a lot happened to golf and golf design in those years, especially around Central Florida, and today the course feels old fashioned and ordinary, a benign but banal throwback. The routing runs…