A PANEL DISCUSSION:A Critical Look at ContemporaryGolf Course ArchitectureEDITOR'S NOTE: One of the key seg-ments of the February, 1986, GreenSection Educational Conference in SanFrancisco was a panel discussion ofContemporary Golf CourseArchitecture.The tone and stage for the discussionwere to be set by Ben Crenshaw, PGATourplayer and a member of the USGAMuseum Committee. Unfortunately forus, Crenshaw was unable to attend theConference because of a rain-delayedtournament at Pebble Beach. However,the other panel members were:

Gene D. Baston, President GCSAA andCGCS, Waco, TexasRees L. Jones, golf course architect,Montclair, New JerseyJerry Tarde, executive editor, GolfDigest, Trumbull, ConnecticutFrank Hannigan, Senior ExecutiveDirector, USGA, ModeratorThis is a transcript of their views on thesubject.

Frank Hannigan

18 USGA GREEN SECTION RECORD

FRANK HANNIGAN: The panel todayis comprised of a golf course super-intendent, a golf course architect, andthe editor of that publication which,more than any other medium, definescontemporary architecture. We wereto have a fourth expert this morning,but he is not with us for the best ofall possible'reasons. Ben Crenshaw shot68 yesterday at Pebble Beach, and he isplaying in the fourth round of the rain-delayed tournament. Ben Crenshaw wasreally looking forward to doing this. Heis a golf course freak and has been sincehe was a kid. It is no secret that he is verymuch a traditionalist and that he ischagrined by much of what he thinks ofthe dominant trends and influences intoday's golf course architecture.

Before we begin, we had better definethe subject. What is meant by "modernor contemporary golf course architec-ture" are those courses built mostly inthe last decade and a few as early as1970 that have attracted the mostattention. That attention derives fromword of mouth, from advertising andpromotion, from television, and fromgolf magazines. To name names, we aretalking about a few designers and theirwork. They are Pete Dye, Jack Nicklaus,and the Fazios, Tom and George. Ofcourse, there may be as many as 75 ormore other practicing architects in thecountry today, many of them bothsuccessful and excellent. We are goingto hear from one this morning. For thepurposes of this discussion, however,we are going to operate on the premisethat a disproportionate amount ofattention is being paid to the work ofjust a few men, and because of thisattention and their success, they have agreat deal of influence. Many of theelements they put into their workinevitably drift over and down throughthe rest of the field.

Some of us tend to think of a particularperiod in American golf as the goldenage of golf course architecture. Thisperiod began at the end of the FirstWorld War and ended with a thud at

the onset of the Great Depression of the1930s. The high priests of that periodwere Donald Ross, Alister MacKenzie,A. W. Tillinghast, Seth Raynor, BillFlynn, and a couple of others. They werefortunate that they operated in a specialtime with special privileges and advan-tages. For the most part they weredesigning courses for the members whohad equity. The courses were to be play-grounds, places of pleasure. They hadnothing to do with commerce.

TODAY, we live in an age of notoriety.Refrigerator Perry is nowhere nearly

as good as Howie Long, but HowieLong doesn't get invited on the DavidLetterman Show. This same syndromeapplies in golf today, where the nameof the game is to be noticed, to drawattention to the product. Notice andattention convert to money. That is notnecessarily the fault of the golf coursearchitect. He didn't create this society.I have read a good deal of golf's litera-ture of the 1920s. Donald Ross waslargely an anonymous figure; somebodyway behind the footlights even thoughhe was going around sprinkling theselittle jewels of golf courses throughoutNew England like some architecturalE.T. dropping off candies. Remember,Ross had the luxury of building formembers.

Today, the architect builds for acompany which, by definition, has tothink of a bottom line. Green fees, thesale of real estate and housing adjacentto the property, and making the courseinto an arena or stadium may conspireagainst art. It is not at all certain thatDonald Ross could have survived inthis climate.

We now move on to the Panel.Our first panelist is no less than the

President of the Golf Course Super-intendents Association of America. GeneBaston grew up in Augusta, Georgia,where, as you know, there is an annualtournament of some repute. Gene'sfather was in the construction businessand supervised all the renovations that

were done on the Augusta National GolfClub for a period of more than 20years. Young Gene observed his workand he was part of it. He went to GeorgiaSouthern University and after that,took a job as an assistant at AugustaNational Golf Club, where he workedfrom 1950 to 1965. His first head super-intendent's job was at the Savannah Innand Country Club, in Georgia, a DonaldRoss course, I believe. After five yearsin Savannah, Gene moved on to BayHill, in Orlando, Florida, the flagshipcourse of the Arnold Palmer empire andsite of an annual PGA Tour event. From1972to 1985 Gene was at the BirminghamCountry Club, in Alabama, where theyhad 36 holes of Donald Ross. Gene isnow at the Ridgewood Club, in Waco,Texas, and has served on the Board ofthe GCSAA for five years. Gene will tellus how it feels to be a superintendentat a modern course.

GENE BASTON: Contrary to popularbelief and some rumors that go around,I do not shoot all golf course architects.It is a pleasure for me to be here andI hope that any of my expressed com-ments will be received as pertaining tomaintenance and not criticisms of designfeatures that mayor may not enhancethe game of golf.

The golf course superintendents oftoday can and do maintain excellentturf under some extremely difficultsituations. We accept this challenge.But another challenge we often face,and one that is becoming more and moredifficult for us to sell, is large budgetsto our clubs to maintain turf under somevery difficult situations. I have just afew quotes that may prompt furtherdiscussion:

"The Lord made golf courses. Golfcourse architects simply discoveredthem. " - Donald Ross

"Golf should be a pleasure, not apennance. " - Donald Ross

"I am not trying to creat~ maintenancepro blems. I'm trying to red uce them!" -Contemporary Golf Course Architect

"Hand mowers are a lot less expensiveto operate than gang mowers." - Con-temporary Golf Course Architect

"Grasses planted on a one-to-oneslope, or even a zero slope, i.e., straightup and down, do not retain water, donot retain fertilizer. Get a grass thatgrows very slowly on that bank. Thenyou'll only have to mow it four or fivetimes a year.

Figure 1 (top). Figure 2 (above).

MARCH/APRIL 1986 19

"It is my belief that, if you removewater and fertilizer from a grass area,you won't have to maintain it at all. Itwill die.

"Each course requires a design planthat takes into consideration what isright for that course, its maintenancebudget, climate, and the golfers who aregoing to play it regularly. An architectshould not force his style on a course." -Gene Baston

The most successful use of waste areasor minimal-maintenance areas that Ihave observed are areas that would notbe in play under any circumstances. Theyare non-play areas, and I feel this is aterm that should be applied to them.

When reading a newspaper story notlong ago about a city considering con-struction of a swimming pool, one of thecouncilmen opposing the pool gave thesereasons for his opposition: it was toocostly to construct, it was not conducivefor the enjoyment of the people whowould use it, yearly maintenance costswould be excessive, and the proponentwas only building a monument to him-self. For a minute, I thought a golfcourse architect had gone into theswimming pool business!

IHAVE SOME illustrations of archi-tecture that created maintenance

problems. (1) We recognize that it isbeautiful, but can we afford it? (2) Con-tours are beautiful but when wearoccurs, we have a maintenance problem.(3) Is this purpose or is this signature?(4) A golf hole should have a lasting

impression upon the player. I think thisone will. (5) Sometimes you need toseek divine guidance. The golfer is askingfor help to get over this and the super-intendent is asking for help to maintainit. (6) Design like this has to make usask, "Is it good, is it fair, is it fun?"

I heard it said at a meeting not longago that it seemed golf architecturetoday was taking the route of A Designof Six. You take six men, with six weedeaters, six hours a day, six days a week.Is this your design? If it is, plan toincrease your budget. Be aware of thecosts to maintain difficult, lavish designs.They dictate maintenance problems andincrease your budget. (7) Minimal main-tenance. This, to me, is what golf is allabout - a game that we enjoy playing, agame we enjoy watching. To me it is notmuch trouble looking out over closelymowed, manicured turf. That, to me, isthe epitome of good golf design.

I quote the Green Section's BillBengeyfield at a recent National GolfFoundation dinner: "Golf is to beplayed on grass." If we are to play golfon grass, recognize that golf coursearchitecture directly affects turfgrassmaintenance costs. And if we are todevelop minimal maintenance turfgrassesfor golf, I would leave you with justone additional thought. Support USGA/GCSAA research to find grasses that willprovide us with at least the same or evenbetter playing surfaces in the future butwill require less water, less fertilizer, andless mowing. Then we will have trulyachieved minimal maintenance.

Figure 3.

Figure 4.

Gene Baston

20 USGA GREEN SECTION RECORD

Figure 5 (rap). Figure 6 (above).

FRANK HANNIGAN: In the Americantheater the Barrymores were known asthe Royal Family. In golf course archi-tecture, the Royal Family is that ofthe Joneses. Robert Trent Jones, thepatriarch, is still going strong in his70s. He completely changed the face ofgolf course architecture in the periodbeginning after the Second World War.He had extraordinary energy, a differentvision, and determination. Trent Jonesknew how to market both himself andhis products. Every architect who ismaking a decent living today owes some-thing to Robert Trent Jones. His oldestson is Bobby Jones, whose base is inPalo Alto, California. Bobby Jones'swork is imaginative and includes suchcourses as SentryWorld, in Wisconsin,the one with all the flowers, and Prince-ville, a lovely course in Hawaii. Bobbyis now at work on two projects in thePebble Beach area. One is Poppy Hills,to be owned and operated by the North-ern California Golf Association, begin-ning this summer. The other is Spanish

Bay. It will open next year. His partnersin the latter design are Tom Watson andSandy Tatum.

The younger of the Jones sons, andthe latest of this Royal Family, is Rees.Rees Jones grew up in New Jersey. Afterhigh school he was shipped off to a golffactory in Connecticut - Yale Univer-sity - and after that he worked for hisdad. Rees has been in business for him-self for many years. His most esteemedearly work was Arcadian Shores, atMyrtle Beach, South Carolina. I thinkof Rees Jones as something of a tradi-tionalist. Incidentally, Rees seems onthe verge of a new and deserved repute.He is doing a new course in Augusta,and any new course in Augusta, becauseof where it is and the crowd that comesthere, gets a great deal of attention. Hehas also just opened a new course atPinehurst called Pinehurst No. 7 andthat inevitably puts him in the sameleague with Donald Ross, whose No.2course at Pinehurst is certainly one ofthe game's masterpieces. Finally, Rees

Jones is now overhauling one of thegame's beloved antiques - The CountryClub, in Brookline, Massachusetts, whereso much golf history has been made andwhere the 1988 U.S. Open Championshipwill be played. Nothing does more for agolf course architect's reputation thanan association with a U.S. Open Cham-pionship. He's a good golfer who breaks80. He does it at his home course, theMontclair Golf Club, in New Jersey, andwill do it occasionally at his secondcourse, Pine Valley.

REES JONES: The question we areasked to answer today is, "Will themodern golf course stand the test oftime?" This is the type of question Ialways hoped for when I was being testedin college, because it has so manyanswers.

We are supposed to be comparingsome of the courses of today to thecourses of the 1920s and earlier. Whatwe must first understand, however, isthat many of the sites we have today

MARCH/APRIL 1986 21

are so much less suitable than the sitesavailable back in the early part of thecentury. The early architects had theopportunity to build golf courses onideal sites.

Our design styles today are a throw-back, to some degree, to design stylesof the early 1900s. I think we are improv-ing designs, but in some cases a fewarchitects are trying too many tricks.Also, today we are building courses for adifferent type of client. We are buildingprimarily for real estate developers,whose main interest is selling the adjacentreal estate. He often then transfersownership of the golf course to themembers after the real estate has beensold. We are also building golf coursesfor major resorts for daily fee play andfor tournament viewing. Fewer and fewertruly private golf courses are being builttoday.

The expectations of today's players(because they see so many golf courseson TV) are far greater than they wereback in the '20s. The demand for qualitymaintenance is much higher in the U.S.than in Britain. Score is of great impor-tance to every golfer in America, whereasin Britain, it is whether or not you beatyour buddy. Here, whether or not youscore the number you always intend tois much more important.

We are building dramatic resort golfcourses to draw people to new, some-times mammoth hotels, and the golfcourses are sometimes of secondaryinterest to the client. The client wantsyou to build something dramatic to bringguests to the resort to fill up the rooms.Pinehurst No. 7 is dramatic and willhelp that resort. The Spanish Bay GolfCourse that my brother is doing on thePacific Ocean, in Monterey, California,will help fill the hotel they are buildingthere.

DEVELOPMENT golf courses thatwill become private someday and

daily fee golf courses definitely shouldbe designed to be enjoyed. Form shouldfollow function. This is not often thecase. Several architects today aredesigning courses where function followsform. Money is being spent on dramaticvisual features that hurt the higher-handicap players and really have noeffect on the pro or the low-handicapper.High mounds, deep cavities, tee-to-greenwaste areas, hard-to-maintain bumps,inordinately deep bunkers, steep slopes,deep cuts in the middle of fairways. Thesefeatures create the drama and many areeffective and well thought out. Themajor mistake, in my opinion, is that

22 USGA GREEN SECTION RECORD

these features serve no purpose. Whenthey are repeated hole after hole need-lessly, they lose their effectiveness. Ibelieve every hole should have its owntheme, using different combinations offeatures. Each hole should be a newexperience. The mark of an interestinggolf course is that every hole can beremembered after a first round.

The routing of the holes, in myopinion, is the most important aspectof design. If this is done properly, thegolf course will unfold and be enjoyableto play. We must not forget to havealternate routes of attack, essential forso many golfers to finish a round. Ibelieve that it is wrong to design a golfcourse where so many of the higher-handicap players are really defeatedbefore they strike the first ball. Forexample, we are building a golf courseat Haig Point, on Daufuskie Island, onemile from Hilton Head. We had twoopportunities to build spectacular golfholes from the bluff, across the marshto a spit of land on Calibogue Sound.You can almost see the ocean. We didnot want to miss this chance for twotruly dramatic holes on this site. Wecame to the conclusion that these twoholes might be too hard for the majorityof players, because the carries were solong. So we are building a 20-hole golfcourse at Haig Point. We have two back-up holes for the eighth and 17th, so youcan play the inland holes or the Soundholes, depending on ability or weatherconditions. This is how we have createdwhat we think is a great golf coursewhile at the same time a viable recre-ational facility for all golfers.

While several golf course architectsare adding all the dramatic aspects totheir designs, they have often neglectedgreen design. This is probably the secondmost essential aspect of golf coursedesign, i.e., properly designed greensfor the shot required. We are findingon contemporary golf courses, those thatreceive so much publicity today, thatgreens must often be rebuilt soon afterthe course opens. Some of these greenswere originally built with too manyplateaus and too much contour for thesize of the surface. Some architects aredesigning fall-away greens or greensthat reject shots on holes that requireforced carries to reach them. Greensare being built that are too small forthe amount of actual play and often toosmall for the shot required.

TEN YEARS AGO, golf coursearchitects were being told by people

responsible for maintaining golf courses

that we had to build lifeless, low-mainte-nance, long-slope golf courses in orderfor golf to be viable. We were in themiddle of a terrible recession. In fact,we were not even designing many golfcourses at the time. We had an energycrisis and it looked as if we really shouldconcentrate more on lower-maintenancecourses. However, it would have beenwrong to design courses for low-mainte-nance only. I think architects made anattempt then to design for lower mainte-nance, but today there has been a greatdeparture from this line of thinkingbecause the economy is so good.

I don't believe we should take thecharacter out of the golf course. I thinkwe should have the same character indesign with slopes, etc., as we did in the'20s. We should use our major featuresand the steep slopes judiciously in theareas where they affect play and shotvalues. That's the proper way to do it.We can build pot bunkers so long as theycan be maintained. Bold mounds shouldbe incorporated into the design of golfholes if they can be mowed. Largebunkers or waste areas should be used inareas that are in play and not necessarilyfrom tee to green. Grass bunkers are aneffective hazard for good and averagegolfers. In fact, they are really a betterhazard for the average golfer. Coursesshould be built with diversity of stylethat can be maintained at a reasonablecost after the developer leaves thecourse to the members.

I feel we are in a renaissance periodof golf course design. A golf course,however, should not be designed as anego trip for the architect, but ratheras a recreational facility to be enjoyedrepeatedly. If a golf course is designedto make the top 100 list or to make abreathtaking photograph, it might notbe viable when repeat play is requiredfor success. I think one really mustdesign a golf course with definition tobe viewed from the tee and the fairwayitself. Too many golf courses today havefeatures that are not as visible from theground as they are from helicopters.

The greatness of the game of golf,unlike many other sports, stems fromthe fact that every playing field isdifferent. Every architect has his ownconcepts, and each course is a uniquecreation. But we must design interesting,fair, enjoyable, dramatic, beautifulcourses that will attract new golfers.They must maintain the golfer's interestand allow him to play the game ataffordable cost. We can use old conceptsor devise new ones, but the features weuse should be fair.

Rees Jones

Photograph by MARK BROWN

(Top, left) The 18th hole, Country Club ofHilton Head. This is a par-five punch-bowlgreen utilizing diverse features such as a potbunker, sculptured bunkers and mounds onthe approach. (Above) The 8th hole, HaigPoint Golf Club. This hole would be too dif-

ficult for the higher-handicap player. There-fore, an alternate, shorter hole was builton the bluff (Above, right) The 7th hole,Loxahatchee Golf Club, Jupiter, Florida.This is a good example of low-maintenancedesigned mounds which ultimately have tobe maintained so that players can find theirballs. Mowing is being done withfour peopleusing af/y mow and raking the mowed grass.(Right) The 4th hole, Jones Creek GolfCourse. This course utilizes bermudagrass

fairways, bentgrass greens and centipederoughs. The centipede grass is a lower-main-tenance variety and provides a contrastbetween fairway and rough.

FRANK HANNIGAN: Our final panelistis also, shockingly, the youngest. He isJerry Tarde, who is perhaps the mostinfluential golf journalist in the world.As Executive Editor, he decides whatgoes into Golf Digest magazine, thebiggest publication in its field.

Actually, it was the Golf Digestproject of naming the so-called 100Greatest Golf Courses that launchedthe current and general interest in golfcourse architecture. That list is revisedevery two years and its influence simplycannot be overstated. Architects will killto get on the Golf Digest list, and sowill the owners of profit-oriented golfcourses.

Jerry Tarde, this power broker, grewup playing public golf courses aroundPhiladelphia. He escaped to Northwest-ern University, and immediately aftergrad uation joined the Golf Digest staff,where his rise to eminence has beenmeteoric. Jerry is a member at WingedFoot, the U.S. Open site near New YorkCity, where he is what I think of as astrong six-handicap player. He is also amember of Royal Dornoch, in Scotland,but that is simply to show off.

JERRY TARDE: Now that you haveheard from the Forces of Good, asFrank Hannigan explained it to me, Iam supposed to represent the Princes ofDarkness - Pete Dye and Jack Nicklaus.If you believe Crenshaw and Hannigan,they would say that anything new isn'tgood. They are the kind of people whothink, as some music critics do, thatanything written after the BaroquePeriod of Handel and Bach isn't worthlistening to. I was reminded of that kindof people when I saw this month's issueof American Heritage Magazine, whichis a very good historical periodical. Thismonth it lists the 10 best automobilesever made in the U.S. Nine of the tenwere built prior to 1938. The one modernone was built in 1955.

I think we have to get rid of thisnotion that anything new can't be good.In modern architecture, that is animportant thing to realize. The modernarchitecture period really came intofocus in March, 1982, during the weekof the Tournament Players Champion-ship. If it can be pinpointed to a moment,it was when Jerry Pate threw Pete Dyeand Deane Beman into the water besidethe 18th green. Why did he throw themin? The reason is that something excitingwas happening that week. A brand-newkind of golf course was introduced to thepublic on television. Something visually

24 USGA GREEN SECTION RECORD

exciting and different from anything theAmerican people had ever seen before.It involved touring pros, and they havetraditionally been influential in guidingthe trends and thoughts of golfers. Itwas controversial. People had opinionson whether they liked the TPC or not. Itgot us talking about golf, about golfcourses and about architecture.

For years, people inside the business,golf industry leaders, have been clamor-ing for changes in design to meet thechanging conditions of the game. Theywanted courses that required less carein an age of escalating maintenancecosts and water shortages. They wantedcourses that had more challenge withless yardage, due to escalating land costs.And they wanted more pleasure forrecreational players while at the sametime still keeping the challenge for thetop player.

Pete Dye's TPC at Sawgrass attemptedto answer these three desires in someinnovative ways. I am not going to saythat he answered them adequately, buthe got us all thinking in a direction thathas been good for the game. And hecertainly was not the first to do it. TheTPC wasn't even his first attempt at it.He had been doing that kind of coursefor the last 10 to 15 years, but the TPCembodied all that was new about modernarchitecture, and it probably will havethe kind of influence on the game thatthe National Golf Links and AugustaNational had in the first part of thiscentury.

Twenty years ago Herbert WarrenWind wrote in Golf Digest that the idealmeasure for a golf course was 7,400yards "in order to make par for thepros the examination that par is supposedto be." Pete Dye's TPC, at 6,800 yards,was a departure from that thinking.Twenty years ago Golf Digest beganranking courses. The first ranking wascalled the 200 Toughest Courses inAmerica. We used the USGA system ofcourse rating, which is based mostly onyardage. The No.1 course in the countrywas Runaway Brook, in Massachusetts,now called the International. It measured8,000 yards. We quickly saw that wasnot the direction we should be going,and in succeeding years, we modifiedour criteria and changed the name ofour ranking.

In 1969 it was called the 100 MostTesting Golf Courses. I think we werestill preoccupied, if not with yardage,then with difficulty at that time. Resis-tance to Scoring is what we called it.

In 1971 we renamed it America's 100Greatest Tests of Golf, and in 1975 it

was called, as it is today, America's 100Greatest Golf Courses. The emphasishas been shifting away from length anddifficulty toward interesting design.

NOWWHAT was so different aboutthe TPC? I think we can break

down the so-called innovations of theTPC into five categories. They are reallynot innovations, because they are thingswe have been seeing and have been inuse for a couple of hundred years. One,the TPC was a shorter championshipcourse. A year or two later, Pete builtLong Cove, at 6,700 yards, and this hasinfluenced other architects. I playedDan Maples's The Pit Golf Course lastyear, and I think from the back tees it isabout 6,300 or 6,400 yards.

Two, Dye re-introduced the penalshort hole. This is a hole that could bestbe described as a half par, a 21'2, a 31'2, a41'2 par. It is the equalizer, a challengefor the good player, yet the averageplayer can still reach it. The 17th hole,the Island Green at TPC, is probablythe most notorious example of a penalshort hole.

Three, he brought back blind shots,where you can't see where you aregoing. He calls it a test of character andintelligence. "There is no such thingas a blind hole, once you have played it,"he says.

Four, he brought to the TPC severelyundulating greens and, as we have seenthere and in others of his courses,undulating fairways. The pros don't likeeither of these very much because whenthey hit an A-type shot, they expect anA-type result. Too often at a Pete Dyecourse, an A shot gets a C result.

Five, the Natural Look. For better orfor worse, Pete has extensively usedwaste bunkers and unkempt areas offthe fairway. He has used differentgrasses, color contrasts with what hethinks are low maintenance. He sayscolor contrast in grasses is as importantas undulation.

Is this good? A friend of Pete's likesto say that Robert Trent Jones madegolf course architecture a business, PeteDye made it an art, and Jack Nicklausmade it expensive.

People ask us why we give so muchattention or coverage to Nicklaus andDye courses. The reason I think simplyis that they are building the most lavishlyexpensive, most dramatically photo-genic, most exciting, most controversialgolf courses today. They are news events,and we cover them as such. Some peoplealso contend that Golf Digest made themsuperstars, or that the media in general

made Pete Dye or Nicklaus a superstarand have given them an inordinateamount of power in the business. I thinkwe have helped popularize them andenhance them, but their own designand word of mouth have really madethem. Their own work has brought themattention.

Do they build the best golf coursestoday? Of the modern architects prac-ticing today, with the exception of TrentJones, they have more courses on the100 Greatest than any of the others. Itshould be added that they also havebeen given the largest budgets and, insome cases, the best facilities to workon. So it would be a crime if they werenot building today's best courses.

Are they too expensive? Pete Dyelikes to say he is Robin Hood. He stealsfrom the rich to give to the poor, thepoor being the laborers who build hiscourses. I guess I am bothered, asHannigan is, about the opulence ofsome. You go to the Vintage Club andthey have an underground waterfall inthe cart barn! But you can't really holdthat against Nicklaus, Dye, or Fazio.People with a lot of money have alwaysbuilt expensive golf courses. The YaleCourse was built 80 years ago and cost$1 million.

You have to look at what these expen-sive courses have yielded. The PGA WestCourse in Palm Springs, California, isgetting a lot of publicity these days.Some of it is negative, but Joe Walserwill tell you that they have sold out500 memberships before the course evenwas opened! Since opening on January4, every starting time every day sincethen has been filled. The course cost$5.4 million, which is a lot of money,but they are going to sell hundreds ofmillions of dollars of housing aroundit. Financially, it is a success.

DYEIS PERHAPS more concernedabout maintenance than Nicklaus,

but even Pete talks a better game thanhe plays sometimes. The TPC, for in-stance, is 412 acres, of which he claimsonly 60 have to be maintained. Two yearsago, the maintenance budget there was$900,000. On the other hand, where Dyedoes have more control at Long Cove,he says they used 30 percent less fuelthan the next most economical club onHilton Head.

Why are Jack's courses so expensive?I have put that to Bob Cupp, his chiefdesigner. Simply, he says that Jack buysthe best of everything - the best topsoil,the best putting surface mixes, the bestirrigation, the best construction com-

pany builds his courses - and thatdrives up the costs. I guess if you canafford Nicklaus and Dye, the cost isn'ttoo expensive. Part of the reason is theland these courses are built on. Itis notas well suited to course constructionas the land used in the early part of thiscentury, and that drives up those costs.The TPC was a swamp before Dye builtit. When these architects are given agood piece of land, as Dye says he wasat Firethorn, a new course he just builtin Lincoln, Nebraska, they can bring in a

Jerry Tarde

course under budget. Firethorn was builtfor $1.2 million, including the irrigationsystem. He says there are a lot of RayCharles holes there; the land was sogood, even a blind man could buildthem.

When Golf Digest started publishing35 years ago, it cost $250,000 to build agolf course. The borrowing rate was 5percent interest. The yearly debt youhad if you wanted to start a daily feecourse and. build your own was about$10,000 to $15,000. Today, it costs$2 to $3 million to build a golf course,and the interest is in the neighborhoodof 10 percent. So it costs you $300,000a year just to payoff a golf course. JoeJemsek said at the PGA Show in Orlandothat you just can't build and run a dailyfee course for profit anymore. He thinksthe future is in municipal courses thatare subsidized by cities and in resortcourses, where guest fees and buildinglots can pay for the course.

So what we are moving toward arethese superdome golf courses, the TPCand PGA West, that the big resorts canafford. I am not sure that's so bad.

The other knock that you hear is thatthe new courses are too difficult. Abetter way of putting it is that they take

too long to play. But people enjoy ahard test of golf. Pine Valley is the No.1course in the country, and people bragabout how many shots they take to playit. One of the solutions Nicklaus andDye have offered is the use of multipletees. Jack's new course in Loxahatchee,Florida, which certainly is difficult, wonour Best New Private Course Awardfor 1985. It is 7,043 yards from the backtees, but there are four sets of tees, andfrom the front tees it is only 5,380 yards.Perhaps there should be a greateremphasis on getting members to playthe tees they can enjoy. The USGA hastaken a step in the right direction ingetting rid of the term "ladies' tees" forthe front tee markers.

lAM ALSO supposed to explain howthe 100 Greatest Courses are chosen.

We have a panel of 244 national andregional selectors. Over them is a nationalpanel of 30 selectors. A course is nomi-nated by architects, a new system wehave started recently. (Before they werenominated by panel members, but archi-tects nominate them now.) Nationalpanel members then must renominatethem, and it takes three nominationsby a national panel member for a courseto be considered eligible for the list. Wealso have a rule that a course must beopened at least three years before it iseligible. That will give sufficient timeto our panelists to play the course andalso will diffuse the occasional over-enthusiasm that accompanies the open-ing of a spectacular new course.

After this list of nominated and eligiblecourses for the 100 Greatest is compiled,it is then circulated to our 244 regionalselectors. They evaluate each course ona seven-criteria scale of 1 to 10. Theseven criteria are shot values, difficulty,design balance, memorability, aesthetics,conditioning, and tradition. Seven cri-teria - 1 to 10 - 1 being poor and 10being the best. A perfect course wouldget a 70 rating. We went to this kind ofsubjective/ objective system to try todo a more accurate job of rating thecourses within the 100 Greatest.

We often hear charges of politics inthe ranking and I hope the new systemwill dispel some of that. PGA National,for instance, a Tom Fazio course, issomewhat controversial. It received morenominations last year than any othernew course to be added to the list. Thatpro bably is because so many PGAmembers are part of our panel. So youwould expect that if politics played arole in the decision, PGA Nationalwould be part of the 100 Greatest. As

MARCH/APRIL 1986 25

by C. GRANT SPAETHVice President, USGA, Menlo Park, California

Reflections onGolfs Future

it turned out, when the panelists, eventhe PGA members, came to filling outthe ballot for the PGA National, theydecided it wasn't good enough. I thinkwhen you have to put numbers down inseven criteria you sort of lose sight ofthe politics.

A criticism we are vulnerable to is thatwe give too much attention to Dye andNicklaus. Part of that is because theyhave the big budgets and the big facilitiesbehind them, the ones that would mostlikely make the 100 Greatest list. So wehave created two other categories ofrecognition for architects - the BestNew Courses of the Year and the BestPublic Course. The Best Public is anevery-other-year ranking and Best Newis obviously every year. We have beenable to recognize new architects likeDennis Griffith and Brian Silva. Briandesigned, with Geoffrey Cornish, theCaptains Golf Course, on Cape Cod,which is our Best Public Course of 1985.Dennis Griffith worked with Ron Kirbyin doing Pole Creek, which was our BestPublic Course of 1984.

We like to think the 100 Greatest andthe other awards that Golf Digest bestowson architects and courses promote betterdesign the way the Academy Awardspromotes better picture making or thePulitzer Prizes promote better reporting.Awards drive people to excel. I wastalking with Bill Davis, the founder ofGolf Digest, the other day on the phone,and he quoted Napoleon as saying, "Ifyou give me enough medals I will winany war. " And that is what we are tryingto do with our course ranking. We aregiving medals to architects and owners,trying to get them to excel and to solvethe problems facing golf course archi-tecture today.

Closing Remarks byFRANK HANNIGAN:To put our discussions of ContemporaryGolf Course Architecture in perspective,I would make one point to you. Name ahandful of great golf courses that haveone thing or a couple of things in com-mon and the list will surely includeOakmont, Merion, Pebble Beach, theNational Golf Links of America, andPine Valley. What those golf courseshave in common is that everyone wasdesigned by an amateur. In all but onecase it was the amateur's first attemptat designing a golf course and, finally,he didn't take any money for doing thework.

Maybe golf course architects ought tothink about that!

26 USGA GREEN SECTION RECORD

(Editor's Note: Frank D. Tatum, Jr., wasunable to attend the Conference becausehe was playing in a tournament at PebbleBeach, California. C. Grant Spaethagreed to present Tatum's paper in fullwhile condensing his own scheduledremarks to a few brief comments.)

THE TOPIC "Reflections on GolfsFuture" is, I find, not an easyone. In my research for it, I came

across a quote from Sam Goldwyn;"Never make forecasts - especiallyabout the future." So I am simply goingto capsulize the material I do have whileeliminating statistics on numbers of golfcourses, numbers of golfers, etc.

If the past is any key to the future,we can look for the game to be relativelymature, relatively unchanging. In largemeasure, this will be true if the golfer -the amateur golfer that is - retains his

C. Grant Spaeth

control over the destiny of his game. Itseems to me that, regardless of whatoccurs during the course of the next 50years, if the organizations of amateurgolfers, i.e., city, regional, state, ornational, continue to have no commercialobjectives and are simply and solelyconcerned about preserving the game,then, whatever happens in those 50years can be dealt with effectively.

In the field of turfgrass management,we can safely forecast the absolute cer-tainty that less water will be availablefor our golf courses, particularly withinmetropolitan areas. With this forecastin mind, it is the amateur golfer who isinvesting heavily in research to developgrasses which, in fact, will not requirehigh maintenance and particularly thehigh watering requirements that nowseem necessary.

High technology clearly is going totry to change the game. Thus it is thatamateurs, and in recent years the USGA,have spent enormous sums resistingchanges, whether it is government orinnovators or new patents, in order toprotect the challenge and to preserve thegame. And there is no one else aroundbut the amateur golfer to resist theseinroads. I personally see the inroadscontinuing and the litigation continuing.The amateur golfer is simply having tostand up and resist those challenges.

I could go through other aspectsof the game, but you can do it just aswell. I hope you will take with you thenotion that ultimately the strength ofthe game depends upon amateur playersspending some time and money to pro-tect the game.

Sandy Tatum, as you all know,certainly exemplifies the sort of amateurgolfer who spends a large chunk of hislife on the mission I have just tried todescribe. His paper conveys his depth offeelings about these issues.