Category Archives: golf

May 4, 2010 · 11:38 pm

Island Greens: Time to Drain the Moat?

The debate over island greens has raged for three decades. The argument started in 1982, when Alice Dye unveiled her bulkheads-in-the-swamp design for the par-3 17th at the Tournament Players Club of Sawgrass in Ponte Vedra, Fla. It grew in intensity when Alice’s husband Pete surrounded his own version of sod a l’leau with boulders at the PGA West Stadium Course in La Quinta, Calif. It reached a fever pitch when developer Duane Hagadone and architect Scott Miller planted the 14th green at Club Coeur d’Alene on a 7,500-ton barge and set it adrift on a glassy lake in Idaho.

But now that an oil slick the size of Donald Trump’s ego has hit the Louisiana shore, the debate should end. Island greens are a bad idea.

This will not be news to current or former PGA Tour players, who have suffered the most extreme humiliations trying to land their tee shots on the original island green at Sawgrass. “When I play that hole, I don’t know whether to genuflect or spit,” says Brandel Chamblee, analyzing this week’s Players Championship for the Golf Channel. Chamblee echoes the sentiments of 8-time major champion Tom Watson, who after his first exposure to the TPC of Sawgrass asked, “Is it against the rules to carry a bulldozer in your bag?”

Granted, island greens appeal to the eye. My all-time favorite is — or rather, was — the notorious “Jaws” par-3 7th at Stone Harbor Golf Club in Cape May Court House, New Jersey.* Jaws featured a boat-shaped green flanked by toothy island bunkers, separated from the putting surface by narrow moats. The designer, Desmond Muirhead, said he was inspired by the story of Jason and the Argonauts, with the boat-shaped green representing Jason’s boat and the jagged bunkers representing the blue rocks thrown down by the gods to crush the boat.

*I use the past tense because Stone Harbor’s members — stung, perhaps, by my droll critique of the hole in America’s Worst Golf Courses — destroyed Muirhead’s inspired design and replaced it with a conventional island green.

But aesthetics and playability issues aside, island greens suffer from erosion, mould, wharf rats and bad drainage, require Army-Corps-of-Engineers-scale infrastructure to ferry players and caddies to and from the putting surface, and raise the risk of involuntary baptism by forcing players to chip or putt while balanced on slippery timbers. It’s no coincidence, I think, that the current Top 50 recognizes only one course with an island green.

Downpatrick Head

The island-green 17th at Downpatrick Head, Ireland. (John Garrity)

I must add, however, that I have a soft spot for the island-green 17th on yet another Pete Dye track, the Pete Dye Challenge at Mission Hills Country Club, Rancho Mirage Calif. I registered my only hole-in-three there some years ago, holing out a re-teed range ball after drowning my 8-iron tee shot near the pilings. Fred Couples duplicated my feat during the 1999 Players Championship, gaining greater-than-deserved attention because he covered the same distance with a 9-iron.

I can also appreciate the need for water around the green on the par-5 18th at the adjoining Dinah Shore Tournament Course, No. 44. Without the moat, LPGA players celebrating victory by leaping headfirst off the final green would break their lovely necks.

Top 50 on TV: Nothing this week, but last Saturday was Demo Day at the New Richmond Golf Club, No. 29. A half-dozen equipment reps hawked their wares on New Richmond’s Top 10-quality driving range while I sat at a table and autographed copies of my latest book, Ancestral Links: A Golf Obsession Spanning Generations, in a three-club wind. Space does not permit a full report on “The Augusta National of Small-Town Courses,” but on the basis of my most recent round I will be very surprised if New Richmond doesn’t move up in the next Top 50 ranking. Watch your back, Pacific Dunes!

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April 29, 2010 · 10:19 pm

Top 50 Critic is All Wet

We get some unusual e-mails here at Top 50 headquarters, but this is the first one that’s dripped on the carpet:

From the desk of:  Aquaman.

Dear Landlubber: I read your latest missive about Aqua-ranges with much regret. The words, they were as jumbled and unintelligible as the thoughts of a Jolothian sea slug (as only I would know–see my Adventures of, #71). I told Aqualad about your piece (he’s not much on reading but boy, can he put down the shrimp scampi) and he agreed. You couldn’t be more wrong if you were King Neptune himself. (Whom I dethroned in a righteous coup, you may recall, in Adventures of, #52.)

A story about Aqua-ranges without a mention of the Atlantis Golf Range & Giant Squid Ranch, a state of the art facility, is worse than insulting. It’s like an hour without water. Unthinkable. (And incredibly painful — Adventures of, # 7, #12, #21-28, #42 — and dangerous — obviously Adventures of, #99 and #100 featuring the lecherous Scallopsface.) Once again, you have missed the submersible boat. The Atlantis Golf Range & Giant Squid Ranch (or AGRGSR, pronounced agger-gasser in dolphin — the official language of Atlantis, as you know) is not only a lock for the top three on any list of Aqua-ranges — any legitimate list — it is clearly the No. 1 Aqua-range of its kind.

You can ask Aqualad, who spends way too much time there, in my opinion. For one thing, he’s 31 and still living at home in the sea cave and borrowing the keys to the Torpedo Car and watching “Stargate: Atlantis” reruns. Plus, what’s with the Aqualad name? He’s grown up. It’s time to become a man. So I’m going to start calling him Ken.

Aqualad was just at AGRGSR last week to pound a whole conch shell of range balls (still only 4 starfish, the best bargain in Atlantis!) and commented again on the exquisite beauty of the undersea dome where it’s located and the quality of the floaters. (Hope you like that clever pun–that’s our nickname for you landlubbers when you go swimming in saltwater, although the mako sharks prefer to think of you as appetizers). Of course, AquaKen mostly pounded drivers to make himself feel like more of a man instead of working on his short game like I told him, the key to golf. He still can’t beat me on his best day because he’s crap around the greens. If only he spent some focused time on AGRGSR’s 54-hole Minerva Putting Course or the Patrick Duffy (he’s with us now) Short Game School, he might have a sea turtle’s chance in a kiln. But no.

It is a 360-degree range and yes, while that does make it a little toasty (but not as toasty as the attempt by the evil Gatorflame to invade my kingdom — Adventures of, #102, available soon), it provides plenty of room for all the minions of the sea to hit balls and work on their swings when they’re not busy doing exactly what I telepathically command them to do.

Your rankings aren’t misguided. They’re not guided at all. I can’t believe a couple of your landlubber gods like Jupiter and Zeus haven’t straightened you out, or at the very least turned you into a pillar of limestone. A tall pillar, in your case, which could be quite a windfall for a nimble mining outfit ready to pounce (like Aquaman Zirconium & Gravel Inc., est. 1994 — we’ve got T-shirts and our own golf outings and everything).

AquaKen was right. You’re about as useful as a titless mermaid with razor sharp fangs. The citizens of Atlantis ask — no, demand — that you revise your lame rankings to represent reality and immediately install AGRGSR as the No. 1 Aqua-range. Don’t make us aqua-kick your ass (check out what’s left of the Chum Master for details — Adventures of, #37). We’ve got a trident here with your name on it, landlubber. I hope we make ourselves clear.

Until such time as you correct your awful mistake, stay out of the water.

Your loving omnipotent undersea master,

Aquaman.

P.S. We love the photo on your website of the god called Van Sickle biting into a shiny moray eel. An amazing feat of power. Let’s hear more about his exploits. We may want to start worshipping a god as powerful as he. Tell him Ken says “howdy!” I am not sure what that means.

Nobody here at Catch Basin takes this note seriously, but in the interest of caution I have turned it over to the Harbor Police. The course rankings, of course, are what they are, and no form of intimidation — up to and including threats of violence — can influence one’s place in the Top 50. (“Bribery might work” our founder used to say with a chuckle. But he was almost surely joking.) If our snide correspondent wants to pursue this further, he can complain to our corporate sponsor, the Red Lobster restaurant chain.

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April 24, 2010 · 5:05 pm

Florida Aqua-Range Gets Late Nod

Gary Van Sickle is fashionably late with his vote for best aqua-range, but the Top 50 never closes. So now … a man who needs no introduction … except, of course, to say that he’s a veteran senior writer at Sports Illustrated, the top print golf analyst east of the Rio Grande, and father of first-year tour pro Mike Van Sickle.

“Don’t recall the aqua-range question,” Gary writes. “Can’t be an age thing. What’s your name again, young feller? Only one I can recall is Imperial Lakewoods (formerly Imperial Lakes)* in Palmetto, Fla., just outside Bradenton.”

*Coincidentally, the scientists at Catch Basin are putting together a ranking of golf courses that have changed names, whether due to bankruptcy, renovation, change of ownership or an understandable lapse of memory, given the owner’s age. For example, A. W. Tillinghast’s Swope Memorial Golf Course, No. 45, is the golf course formerly known as Swope No. 1, while its cross-park 9-hole counterpart, currently called the Heart of America Golf Course (but billed as the Blue River Golf Course in my soon-to-be-revived classic, America’s Worst Golf Courses), was Swope No. 2. Other famous courses, although they try to hide the fact, have not always gone by their current names — e.g., Seminole Golf Club (formerly Barracuda Dunes Resort), Pebble Beach Golf Links (briefly known as Otter Play Golf Club) and The Country Club at Brookline (aka Boston Blackie’s Suburban Pitch ‘n’ Putt).

“Imperial Lakes was the first course Mike Van Sickle was on,” Gary continues. “He traversed the course as a baby in a snuggy, carried by Betsy, while I played with my folks. Mike actually has a photo of himself as a 3- or 4-year old hitting balls into the water on the Imperial Lakes range. I’m suitably attired in pink shirt, light blue shorts and a St. Andrews Hogan-style cap.”*

*The Top 50 is making every effort to obtain this photograph.

“So I’d rate Imperial Lakes No. 1,” Gary concludes. “I can’t think of any others I’ve played.”

(Mike’s father adds this gratuitous post script: “Your website needs traffic. I make wisecracks, and nothing. No replies. It’s deader than a thing that’s not alive.”)

Chantilly Aqua Range

Dolce Chantilly is still No. 1 (John Garrity)

Van Sickle’s endorsement is no threat to the current No. 1 aqua-range, the tree-lined stunner at the Dolce Chantilly Golf Club and Hotel in Chantilly, France. But I’m slipping Imperial Woodlakes Golf Club (or whatever it’s called) into the third spot, behind Chung Shan Hot Spring Golf Club of Guangdong Province, China.

Addendum: Some readers have detected a certain volatility in our recent rankings, which — along with a handful of minor errors, which we have promptly corrected and apologized for — have led some to question the scientific underpinnings of the the Top 50. “You no longer mention Professor Eppes and the Cal Sci algorithm,” writes one worried technophile. “Are you flying solo?”

Answer: No! The Top 50 is still the leader in empirically-derived golf course evaluation, and nothing that happens in some musty California classroom is going to change that. But in the spirit of full disclosure, I am more or less obliged to report that Professor Charles Eppes recently eloped with some raven-haired bimbo and fled to England. Charlie is currently teaching at Foxent College, Oxford, not far from Wentworth Golf Club, No. 84. In his absence, the Cal Sci algorithm is being steered by a total math geek who knows absolutely nothing about golf.

This is, I am told, a temporary situation. But until the Cal Sci Board of Regents can find a qualified replacement, we at Catch Basin will have to soldier on with our nimble minds, flexible fingers and one very overworked Bomar Brain. In the meantime, we sincerely regret any inconvenience.

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April 17, 2010 · 10:59 pm

Post-Lottery Bounce for Augusta National

I fully intended to provide final-round coverage of the Course Designers Championship in Augusta, Ga., won by Phil Mickelson of Dallas-based Phil Mickelson Design. Unfortunately, I learned on Sunday that I was one of 28 winners of the Masters media lottery, my prize being a Monday round at seventh-ranked Augusta National Golf Club. With only 24 hours to prepare for my 11:40 tee time, I had no choice but to race through a column for Golf.com, rearrange my travel schedule, and then scarf down a few calories at T-Bonz with Jim “Bones” Mackay, Mickelson’s caddie.*

*The joint was so crowded that Bones and I had to communicate across several tables using hand signals, but I could tell from the way he mimicked my thumbs-up gesture that he had learned of my good fortune.

It is customary, I know, for writers playing Augusta National for the first time to file self-deprecating accounts of the experience. (If that’s your cup of tea, I highly recommend the breezy, self-flagellating reportage of Chicago Tribune golf writer Teddy Greenstein, who was a member of my foursome.) I, however — mindful of how little space a blog affords the writer — must confine myself to a few highlights. My booming drive on No. 1, for example, which produced whistles of awe from the starters and caddies, carrying far up on the flat. (See my privately-published monograph, “Conquering First Tee Jitters.”) Or my 7-iron on the watery par-3 16th, a tightly-drawn flier that hit the spot I had picked out on the green and funneled down toward the flagstick, stopping two feet from the hole.

Augusta National No. 12

The par-3 12th at Augusta National. (John Garrity)

I was at my best, however, on the par-5 15th, one of the most famous risk-reward holes in golf. Drawing upon my inner Gary Van Sickle, I pounded a long drive up the right side. When I got to my ball, which rested on a relatively flat patch of fairway looking down on Rae’s Creek and a flagstick planted back-right on a wide-but-shallow green, I paused, feigning indecision. Then, with a tight-lipped smile, I turned to my caddie. “Bruce,” I said, “I didn’t come 5,000 miles to lay up.”

Heartened by this display of bravado, Bruce told me I had “195 to the front and 205 to the flag.” Nodding, I pulled the headcover off my hybrid-4 Rescue club, brushed the grass a couple of times with nonchalant practice swings, and then made a Tour Tempo-perfect pass at the ball. The feel at impact was sublime. I watched the shot trace across the distant pines with a feeling of deep contentment — similar, I imagine, to what Mickelson felt on Sunday, when he hit his instantly-legendary 6-iron off the pine straw and twixt the tree trunks on No. 13. My shot was probably struck a little better than Phil’s; it flew precisely 205 yards and landed by the flagstick. Unfortunately, the hole was cut pointlessly close to the back fringe, allowing my ball to skip off the back and run down the tightly-mowed bank. I had to settle for a par.

Was I upset? Not at all. I have studied Alister MacKenzie’s work long enough to know that he labored long and hard to achieve a certain capriciousness in his designs. Sometimes the perfectly struck shot will be punished. That’s how it should be. That’s how you want it to be if you’re a Scotsman fed up with Highlands winters, scratchy kilts and dour neighbors.

Anyway, I found Augusta National to be immaculately groomed and eminently fair from the members‘ tees. I was so impressed, in fact, that I filled out my Top 50 rating sheet in the Champions Locker Room and faxed it off to the Cal Sci number crunchers. A few hours later, they sent me their reply by text: “Augusta National climbs 5 rungs to second! Pebble slides to 7th!”

The Tom Fazio-designed Augusta National Practice Range, meanwhile, holds on to the 47th spot, permanently displacing Oakmont Country Club.

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April 10, 2010 · 1:49 pm

Tiger, Phil Lead Designers’ Flight

The Course Designers’ flight at the Masters may not get as much attention as it used to, but what a leader board! Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson share the lead at 6-under par heading into the weekend, and Tom Watson is three back after a second-round 74. Ernie Els survived the 36-hole cut despite a Friday afternoon run-in with Augusta National’s 15th hole; he’s at even-par and T21.

The twist at the Masters, of course, is that the designers are ranked according to their golfing ability, not their design proficiency. That leads to amusing results. Top-ranked designer Ben Crenshaw (Sand Hills Golf Club, No. 19, Kapalua Plantation Course, No. 34) shot rounds of 77-78 and missed the cut by eight strokes. But Woods, who has yet to complete a golf course after three years in the design business, gets to play on the weekend. It may not be fair, but that’s what makes it fun.

Anyway, here are the two-round cumulative results:

Position Player Total Cumulative
T-1 Tiger Woods -6 138
T-1 Phil Mickelson -6 138
3 Tom Watson -3 141
4 Ernie Els E 144
T-5 Bernhard Langer +5 149*
T-5 Mark O’Meara +5 149*
7 Vijay Singh +10 154*
8 Ben Crenshaw +11 155*
9 Ian Woosnam +20 164*
*Missed Cut

Top 50 on TV: The Course Designers’ Tournament is being played at Augusta National, No. 7, but the CBS cameras can’t get enough of the new Tom Fazio-designed Augusta National Practice Facility. The new range, which replaces a foreshortened lawn that ended in a 200-foot vertical net, is more than 400 yards long and lined with azaleas (reminiscent of my back yard). The short-game area, on the golf course side of the range, is roped for spectators and features white-sand bunkers and tournament-ready greens. I’ll review Fazio’s work in more detail in a subsequent post, but for this week only his Augusta National range cracks the Top 50 at No. 47, replacing Oakmont Country Club.

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April 8, 2010 · 2:18 pm

Are Artificial Trees in Augusta’s Future?

Every year at the Masters, an old folk song plays in my head: “In the pines, in the pines, where the sun never shines ….” There are better tree songs, I suppose — Hoagy Carmichael’s “A Dogwood Died in Dallas” comes to mind — but Augusta National’s famous 18 meanders through a pine forest. In fact, when founder Bobby Jones gave course designer Alister MacKenzie his first tour of the Fruitland Nursery property, it was to point out that skinny Georgia pines, unlike Britain’s massive hardwoods, could be felled with a few strokes of a hatchet. And if for some reason you wanted more trees, pines were easy to transplant, having root balls about the size of a duffle bag.*

*The portability of pines is demonstrated annually on the National’s eleventh hole, where trees come and go with the nonchalance of guests at a high-end resort hotel.

The downside of the pine is its propensity for shedding pollen in the spring. A single loblolly pine, according an Audubon-knock-off pamphlet I can’t put my hand on, can produce two to three kilograms of yellow powder overnight — enough to cover a fleet of rental cars. Bees carry some of this pollen to flowers, but the rest drifts up against curbs and doorsills or is inhaled by guileless visitors from the north.

“The official Masters color might have to be changed from green to yellow,” Ron Green Jr. wrote in Monday’s Charlotte Observer. “There’s a soft yellow haze in the air and a heavy coating on most static surfaces around the golf course.”

Relief is promised in the form of thunderstorms, which are expected to rumble through Augusta in the next hour or so. Until then, the  Augusta National Golf Club’s No. 7 ranking is suspended (subject to review by the executive committee).

Golf Cart at 2010 Masters

Georgia farmers hail record harvest of sneezables. (John Garrity)

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April 3, 2010 · 9:14 pm

Masters Field Too Strong for Tiger?

With Masters week looming, people keep asking what question I’ll spring on Tiger Woods at his Monday press conference. They assume, based upon my background as an investigative, that I will throw him hardballs such as, “Who is Janine, and how did she get your signature on a golf flag?”

Their assumptions are wrong. I’m going to throw the spitter. I’m going to ask Tiger the question that my weak-kneed, pusillanimous colleagues won’t touch with a two-foot pole: “Who is the best course designer in this year’s field?”

I expect Tiger to blush and stammer, because nothing embarrasses him more than his oh-for-three record as a golf architect. Three years after he opened Tiger Woods Design in a blind mail drop outside a mall in Windermere, Fla., Woods has yet to cut a ribbon at a course opening. His Al Ruwaya course in Dubai is stalled, his Cliffs at High Carolina course remains hypothetical, and his Mexican clients have put off construction of their Punta Brava seaside course until they get assurances that they can build it with American labor.

Photo of Cassique Golf Club

The 15th at Tom Watson's Cassique Golf Club, Kiawah Island, S.C. (Tom Watson Design)

Should Tiger dare to answer my question, he’ll have to weigh the design credentials of a couple of dozen tournament players — many of whom have actually visited the courses they are credited with designing. He’ll have to give consideration to two-time Masters champion Bernhard Langer, who has put his stamp on some 17 courses on three continents. But Langer might not prevail in a design playoff with former Masters champs Raymond Floyd (Turnberry Isle Resort and Club, Aventura, Fla.) and Vijay Singh (The Water at Jumeirah Golf Estates, Dubai). And those two worthies would certainly meet their match in three-time Masters champion Tom Watson, whose Independence course at the Reunion Resort in Orlando, Fla., has drawn categorical praise from GOLF Magazine, Golf Digest and Golfweek. Watson showed what he’s made of when he agreed to renovate the marvelous Ballybunion Old in County Kerry, Ireland — a judicious tweaking that saw Ballybunion fall only three places, to No. 5, in the Top 50.

The best designer to tee it up on Thursday, however, will be yet another two-time Masters champion: Ben Crenshaw. With his acclaimed design partner, Bill Coore, Crenshaw is the only active player with two courses in the Top 50: Sand Hills Golf Club, No. 19, and The Plantation Course, No. 34. And that’s not counting the duo’s renovation work on Prairie Dunes Country Club, No. 6.*

*Is there a correlation between Masters titles and design potential? I think there is. Phil Mickelson, a two-time Masters winner, successfully partnered with Gary Stephens on the Lower Course at Whisper Rock Golf Club in Scottsdale, Ariz. The salient fact is that Mickelson finished Whisper Rock in 2001, three years before he donned his first green jacket. (That augurs well for non-Masters winner Ernie Els. The Big Easy has co-designed roughly a dozen courses to date, including the Anahita Golf Course on the isle of Mauritius, chosen “Best Golf Development for Europe and Africa” by CNBC International Property Awards.)

Tiger may not see it my way, but what’s he going to do? Change the subject to his marriage?

Top 50 on TV: The Nabisco Championship, the first major of the LPGA season, returns to the Mission Hills Tournament Course, No. 44. I’m very fond of this course, having sharpened my game on its eucalyptus-lined fairways during countless playing lessons with my West Coast swing guru, Rob Stanger. It lacks, I admit, the symbolic depth of Desmond Muirhead’s later work — such as his par-4 “Guernica” hole at the Segovia Golf Club in Chiyoda, Japan, which commemorates Picasso’s famous painting of a town savagely bombed during the Spanish Civil War. (“A dismembered foot and hand surround the green,” Muirhead wrote in his program notes, “a solitary eye glares at you from behind it. The teeing ground is elevated as a symbol of power for the golfer and to help to see clearly the horse’s head around the lake.”) I also think that Mission Hills, situated as it is in the desert, could use a few more water fountains.

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March 25, 2010 · 2:13 pm

The Top 50 Hits the Road

It has been a long winter in Kansas City. Last weekend’s ten-inch snow mocked the arrival of “spring” and prevented me from tuning up on the silky fairways of the Heart of America Golf Academy Par-3 (No. 55). “You need a vacation” said my wife, watching in admiration as I practiced full swings in the TV room, leaving perfect, dollar-bill sized scuff marks on the Persian rug. “I bought you a discount ticket on Southwest Airlines. I packed your suitcase. The car service will be here in ten minutes.”

My vacations, of course, are of the working variety. I am typing this in the media center of the La Costa Resort & Spa in Carlsbad, Calif., site of this week’s LPGA Tour event, the KIA Classic.* If I can find time between my course-rating activities and my sideline as a free-lance dowser, I will file a game story to Sports Illustrated Golf Plus on Monday morning.

*La Costa’s theater-style press room, with its digital video screens, multi-media work stations and ergonomically-correct executive chairs, is No. 5 in the most recent World Press Facility Ranking Presented by Frito-Lay.

Word of my presence has spread quickly, judging from the press-room buzz about La Costa’s Dick Wilson/Joe Lee-designed composite course. Rolex points leader Ai Miyazato took a bashful stab at course rating yesterday when she was asked to compare La Costa’s tournament track to the more famous South Course at nearby Torrey Pines. “Well, I would say the grass is different,” she said through an interpreter. “I think over here is more thick so that makes it a little less distance, but the greens are much softer over here, so it’s kind of half and half.”

I carry the Top 50 data base on 42 keychain flash drives, so I was able to compare the Japanese star’s impressions with the reports of my course raters. They were all in agreement: “half and half.”

“But Torrey Pines,” Miyazato continued, “was like almost no wind, and it seems like over here is more windy. So La Costa is more difficult.”

I would have to disagree with Ai on that point. The ocean cliffs of Torrey Pines are far more exposed than the condo canyons of La Costa, and the latter is lined with giant gum trees, to which the wind must inevitably stick. Conclusion: Torrey Pines is more difficult.

More difficult, I shouldn’t have to add, does not mean better.

Top 50 on TV: Dick Wilson’s highly-regarded eighteen at Florida’s Bay Hill Club & Lodge (No. 56) is the site of this week’s Arnold Palmer Invitational, a PGA Tour event. Palmer, a course designer himself, likes to tweak Wilson’s old track from time to time. Most of his changes are inconsequential, such as this year’s lengthening of the already-unplayable par-4 18th by ten yards. But Palmer has shown true genius by moving the tournament tee on the par-4 15th to the other side of heavily-trafficked Bay Hill Boulevard, forcing the pros to smack their drives over a pair of neatly-trimmed hedges. As one who has long argued for the inclusion of steeplechase elements in golf design, I can only say, “Well done, Arnie — and pay no attention to the neighsayers.”

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March 21, 2010 · 1:13 pm

Kansas Tops Northern Iowa in Poll that Matters

A wave of sadness has swept over our neighborhood upon hearing that the University of Kansas has lost to the University of Northern Iowa in the second round of the NCAA basketball championship.* We live roughly a block-and-a-half east of the state celebrated in What’s the Matter with Kansas?, so we know that our border partner is a full-out Technicolor state, not the drab, tornado-prone territory portrayed in The Wizard of Oz. Or it least it was until yesterday evening, when the No. 1 Jayhawks were swept off the board by UNI’s Fighting Warriors. Or Blue Devils. (We’ll Google that and get back to you.)

*The sadness may not be universal. The neighbor across the street  flies a University of Missouri flag over his portico.

Anyway, to lift the spirits of our depressed neighbors, I have issued a Top 50 press release pointing out that Jayhawk fans retain bragging rights in the area of great golf courses.

“Kansas is home to no fewer than three Top Fifty courses [I’m quoting from the release], which is more than any other state and a lot more than Northern Iowa, which has no courses in the Top Fifty. (Or the Top 500, for that matter.) Topping the list of Kansas gems is 6th-ranked Prairie Dunes Country Club of Hutchinson, the site of numerous national championships …” etc., etc. The release goes on to mention Mission Hills’s Kansas City Country Club (home of 5-time British Open champion Tom Watson) and Leawood’s Hallbrook Country Club (home of Tour Tempo tycoon, John Novosel), Nos. 50 and 42 respectively.

I could have added that Milburn Country Club of Overland Park, Ks., was in the Top Fifty as recently as February, but I don’t want Iowans to think I’m rubbing it in. I’ll just point out that a list of other Kansas courses that are better than anything northern Iowa has to offer would include Flint Hills National, Colbert Hills, Prairie Highlands, Mission Hills, Auburn Hills, Dub’s Dread, Buffalo Dunes, and Sand Creek Station (recently rated No. 2 public-access course in the state by Golfweek).

Feel better Kansans? I hope so.

Oops, have to go. The Mizzou-West Virginia game tips off in a few minutes.

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March 16, 2010 · 12:24 am

Fighting Words Over Brookline Ranking

“I have to disagree with Swope Memorial,” Dan B writes. “This is a decent local municipal course, but it does not belong in any national discussion, regardless of who designed it or what tournament it may have hosted.”

Dan’s spirited rebuke is music to my ears! The whole point of the Top 50 is to get students of great golf design to come out of their shells and start squabbling like litigants on Judge Judy. If you were to visit us here at Catch Basin, you’d find Top 50 staffers shouting in hallways, hurling logoed caps at each other and throwing the occasional punch over the most arcane disagreements. Tempers flare because most of these disputes are, at their core, matters of individual taste. Are the greens at North Dakota’s Medicine Hole, No. 38, better than the greens at Augusta National, No. 7? I would say no — particularly during Masters week. But my assistant with the frayed knuckles asks: Better for whom? The average Badlands golfer will take four or five putts on Augusta’s 9th green — which, Omar will argue, is proof of faulty design.

17th at Ballybunion

Ballybunion Old: Better than TPC Scottsdale? (John Garrity)

Similarly, there are those who, like Dan B, wonder how a midwestern muni like Swope Memorial, No. 45, can topple a legendary layout like The Country Club. We are all prey to this “we know who or what is best” attitude. It’s the same conventional wisdom that told us that a 20-year-old American street urchin named Francis Ouimet couldn’t possibly outplay the British golf titans Harry Vardon and Ted Ray for the 1913 U.S. Open title.

The Top 50 algorithm, I’m proud to say, does not look down its nose at underdogs. When you take a closer look at a mutt like Swope Memorial — give it a flea bath, say, and a good brushing — you may find that it has a pedigree to compare with that of any Brookline Pomeranian. Did you know, for instance, that the legendary newsman O.B. Keeler, Bobby Jones’s mentor and Boswell, was a regular at Swope Park during his brief tenure at  the Kansas City Star? Keeler wrote about the parkland gem in its 9-hole, pre-Tillinghast iteration, circa 1910, but you could easily apply his words to today’s 6,274-yard championship layout:

It was as simple and straightforward a golf course as nature could devise, uncomplicated by fancy architectural notions. An intermittent sort of stream with trees guarded the first green, and another stream in a steep-walled valley, with a spread of swamp to the right, had to be crossed on the one-shotter, No. 4. … The fairways were good enough, and the rough wasn’t particularly rough, though the putting surfaces never seemed adequate and we were forever complaining about them. Withal, they were not to be despised as excuses. ‘You know how those greens are,’ you could tell your friends.

That sounds a lot like the Swope Memorial I play on my senior-discount, weekdays-and-weekend-afternoons annual pass — particularly that passage about a “steep-walled valley with a spread of swamp,” a spot I seem to find with some regularity. The greens, of course, have improved greatly since Keeler’s time, though they may not be as “sophisticated” as those at The Country Club.

As I recall it [Keeler continues], the original public course at Swope Park ought to have been about as easy a nine holes as the most gingerly neophyte could have asked on which to start cutting down his medal average of 7 strokes to the hole. Yet the shameful confession may as well be made, that not only did I fail to achieve the average of 4 that originally was established as my Ultima Thule*, but also that I cannot recall ever playing a single round of nine holes at an average of 5 — certainly not the full round of 18 holes — in the three years I fought, bled and courted apoplexy about that course.**

*The Latin words Ultima Thule, in medieval geographies, denoted any distant place beyond the boundaries of the known world. The term was later appropriated by the Swedish Viking-rock band, Ultima Thule, which sold one certified platinum and three gold albums in the 1990s.

**From O.B. Keeler’s The Autobiography of an Average Golfer, Greenberg, 1925.

I could go on quoting Keeler to my advantage, but the proof is in the playing, so to speak. I happily invite any Country Club member out to Swope Memorial as my guest, on the understanding that I get a round at The Country Club in return. Who knows? If it impresses me, Brookline might find its way back to the Top 50.*

*Golfweek’s latest course ranking (3-12-10) has The Country Club at No. 20 on its list of so-called Classic Courses. That sounds impressive until you notice that Golfweek excludes all courses built since 1960 — they have a Top 100 of their own! — and totally ignores golf courses outside the U. S. If I were The Country Club, I’d find a second and challenge Golfweek to a duel.

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