Keith Rhebb is one of the leaders of a new generation of golf course architects who have learned the trade shaping courses for design-build luminaries like Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw, Tom Doak, and Gil Hanse. He’s worked for Coore and Crenshaw at places like Lost Farm at Barnbougle Dunes, Cabot Cliffs and Streamsong…
To renovate or restore. That is the question many historic clubs must decide when their courses are in need of repair. Just as many would view it a tragedy to deface a pristine Colonial- or antebellum-era house with modern accoutrements, prominent golf voices believe the features of classic era courses, and the architectural intent behind…
I’ll be speaking soon to Ron Prichard, golf course architect and one of the most respected historic restoration specialists in the business (we’ll find out if he approves or disapproves of that term). I’m sure it will be a lively chat — check back in next week for the discussion.
On one hand it’s easy to recommend Southern Dunes because, between the ropes, it’s a Central Florida original. Steve Smyers’ design has much going for it — great raw material sitting atop a deep sand ridge, gliding elevations, distinctive bunkering that creates distance illusions and alternate angles of play, putting surface contour with knobs, slopes and other…
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…
In this episode of Feed the Ball, Derek Duncan speaks to Bill Coore, who along with design partner Ben Crenshaw and their team of shapers has built a collection of what are considered to be some of the greatest golf courses of the last 60 or 70 years. Bill shares his thoughts on life and…
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…
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…
We’ll never know how good this course originally was (for many years it was an amenity for the historic Belleview Biltmore hotel up the road) because it began to fall into disrepair due to various financial crises shortly after it opened in 1925. Likely it was never very special — Ross’s topographical map would have been pretty…
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…