November 4, 2012 · 10:57 pm

Hillcrest Holes: As Remembered Or Not?

Bill Amick, as befits a recent winner of the American Society of Golf Course Architects’ Distinguished Service Award, wasted no time in responding to my post about 45th-ranked Hillcrest at Heartland GC.

You can’t know what a relief it is for me to read your latest blog with assuring evidence that the The Earlier Donald’s #9 green is being at least semi-restored at Hillcrest. I want to repeat what I’ve said to others about that course being truly outstanding. The way Ross utilized the rolling contours for great holes always made it a pleasure for me to visit. He seemed somewhat of a Picasso in that dirt.

Hillcrest's 14th green

The 14th at Kansas City’s Hillcrest: Who built the wall? (John Garrity)

But my closing question about Amick’s 1984 renovation work — How about it, Bill? Do you still have the blueprints? — left the Florida-based architect at a loss.

Certainly, I still have the plans for all the greens I redid there, just as I have all the course drawings I’ve ever prepared. They are safely in rolls in correctly-labeled slots. My only problem is that I have trouble remembering where the cabinets of those drawings are located. But that is no surprise, since after long flights from overseas I can hardly recall the city and house I live in.

I asked about Amick’s blueprints in the context of Hillcrest’s par-4 fifth hole, which I have come to admire for its understated difficulty and purity of form. But it was actually the par-3 fourteenth that made me want to rummage through his rolled-up construction drawings. That’s because my childhood memories of Hillcrest don’t include a water hazard.* Today’s Hillcrest, of course, has this very attractive water hole with reeds guarding the left side and a stone wall serving as a decorative bulkhead.

*My memories of some Hillcrest summers don’t even include water. Drought and a lack of fairway irrigation left some fairways as firm as sidewalks. I hit my first 300-yard drive when I was 12.

Amick didn’t need his drawings to confirm my memory of a waterless par 3.

Yes, I am to blame for the pond fronting and siding #14 green. But not the stone wall. I didn’t want to risk giving the great Ross indigestion, even in his grave.

Amick’s fourteenth, even with the mischievous masonry, is markedly superior to the original Ross par 3. Positioned as it was, well downhill from the clubhouse, Ross’s hole turned into a lake during downpours and was susceptible to erosion. Amick fixed that without changing the essential character of the hole. I’m sure Ross, after a hearty dinner in his grave, would approve.**

** “Within a couple of hours after fourteen was reopened from construction,” Amick recalled, “a member holed his tee shot there. Now that’s what I call proof of true reward over risk.”

Amick concluded with a plea to “please keep us sports fans informed about the new/old #9 green at Heartland GC. That should be another stone in the wall of progress for a great course.”

Top 50 on TV: Nothing this week, but Ian Poulter won the WGC HSBC Champions on the 51st-ranked Olazabal Course at Mission Hills Golf Club in Shenzhen, China. The course is actually a Schmidt-Curley design, but the developers named it for the Spanish golfer because it’s fun to hear the Chinese pronounce “Olazabal.”

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October 21, 2012 · 12:24 am

Donald Ross Green Taking Shape Again

It has been quiet on the ratings front. Catch Basin’s new concrete parking lot was sealed last week, and the Bomar Brain is down for maintenance. It being election season, we’ve rented out the big ratings board to the local TV station that sold it to us. (I fully expect to see an election-night victory call of incumbent Rep. Emanuel Cleaver over tenth-ranked Royal Portrush GC.) On the competitive front, our South-Atlantic ratings chief, David Henson, won the MGA Individual Match Play Championship at 51st-ranked Palmetto Hall Plantation for the second straight year, and last week I teamed up with my Tour Tempo co-author, John Novosel, to run away with the St. Francis Xavier Celebrity Two-Man Scramble at 45th-ranked Hillcrest at Heartland GC.

Ninth green at Hillcrest/Heartland

In September, Hillcrest’s old ninth green was re-graded and drain tiles were installed. (John Garrity).

Speaking of Hillcrest, the venerable Kansas City track is making great progress on the restoration of Donald Ross’s original ninth green. Located for most of the club’s history at the end of the ninth hole, the Ross green was abandoned a few years back at the urging of a since-departed club executive. A miniature green suitable for a putt-putt course was subsequently installed at a random point in the fairway, fronted by a stone wall that has caused Ross to spin so vigorously in his grave that he has drilled down through bedrock and struck oil.

When I first brought up the Hillcrest project in a recent post, I unintentionally gave the impression that the bogus green was the work of GCSAA Hall of Famer Bill Amick, who oversaw a 1984 renovation of Hillcrest. “That was certainly not the case,” Amick informed me in a recent phone call, “and I don’t know why anyone would impose stone walls on a Donald Ross green. That’s anything but subtle.”

I heard from Amick again in response to my column celebrating Hillcrest’s par-4 fifth as my favorite hole of the summer. “You hit me in my professional pride, right where it hurts most,” he wrote.

For I don’t much recall Hillcrest’s fifth hole — and I spent a good bit of quality time on that course. The picture you included didn’t help, even though, as my wife says, I pay attention to golf holes, if little else. So I viewed Hillcrest using Google Maps, and that wasn’t a whole lotta help, either. I must confess that I recall more about Green Lawn Cemetery [across the road from and paralleling Hillcrest’s first hole] than the fairway of number five sloping to the left. Could I really be wrong in thinking that the “Carolina pasture-plower” concentrated more on getting players from the green of #4 to the tee of #6 than he did in making that a special hole? But there it all is in your September 7 blog, and you’ve likely messed up that hole enough times to know.

Perhaps Herbert Warren Wind was wrong when he wrote something like “One mark of a great course is that after a single round you can distinctly remember each of its holes.” I can still clearly visualize Hillcrest’s opening hole and several others, but not the fifth.

My purpose in this message, if I really have any, is this. I believe you might be misleading “a neighbor,” who just happens to be your grandson Jack, about your current favorite golf hole. I do agree with many of your other conclusions on courses and holes around the world, but on this particular selection, maybe you’d better stick to playing catch with Jack after dinner.

Yours, Bill (known to some of his friends as The Overbunkerer)

Hillcrest's new/old ninth green

October saw the first green shoots sprouting on Donald Ross’s original green site. (John Garrity)

I chuckled knowingly when I read Amick’s e-mail. Twenty-eight years have passed since he performed his miracles at Hillcrest; his memory will understandably be cloudy concerning a hole that was unremarkable back when Ronald Reagan was seeking a second term. But Hillcrest’s fifth, like a fine wine, has improved with age. It is one of those rare holes that, having long been bad, ripens into something sublime.

It’s possible, of course, that Amick doctored the hole in a way that led to its ultimate improvement, and he’s forgotten that. How about it, Bill? Do you still have the blueprints?

Top 50 on TV: Nothing this week, but a tennis injury has forced Ernie Els to pull out of next week’s PGA Grand Slam of Golf at 51st-ranked Port Royal Golf Club in Bermuda. I only mention it so I can remind everyone of my own first-place finish in the 2006 PGA Grand Slam Pro-Am at 15th-ranked Poipu Bay Golf Course on the island of Kauai. That’s the year, if you’ve forgotten, that three scramble partners and I carried Tiger Woods to victory. My trophy, a slightly smaller version of the crystal-spire-upon-a-walnut-base prize that Tiger has won seven times, greets visitors as they enter Catch Basin from our new and very expensive parking lot.

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September 27, 2012 · 4:35 pm

Haig Point Regains High Ranking

Talk about coincidences. Ten days ago I played the 50th-ranked Haig Point Signature Course with the Top 50’s southern correspondent, Dave Henson, and just now I ran into the course’s designer, Rees Jones, at the Ryder Cup. Rees was surrounded by his usual security detail (Knights Templar with USGA handicaps of 3 or lower), but he always seems to have time for me. Anyway, I told him that Haig Point had recently jumped to No. 50 after languishing for some years in the lower 200s.

Rees Jones at 2012 Ryder Cup

Rees Jones and his bodyguards posed with a fan this afternoon at the Ryder Cup in Medinah, Ill. (John Garrity)

“So low?” he asked.

“Well,” I replied, “I had to deduct a hundred points for the hazards.”

He frowned. Rees apparently takes great pride in his sprawling bunkers, meandering marshes and laconic lagoons.

“No,” I said, “I mean the hazards to health. The last time I played Haig Point, I tore a rotator cuff.”

True story. A decade ago, while playing the Daufuskie Island gem with some other Sports Illustrated staffers, I shrieked and fell to my knees beside the fifteenth green. The other members of my foursome dove for cover, thinking that I had caught sniper fire. The truth was only a little less dramatic. I had started walking toward the green while pulling my putter out of a bag strapped to the cart, when — rippppp! — the putter grip caught between other clubs, practically yanking my arm out of its socket. The pain was so intense that I flopped around like a fish before missing a practically-gimmee thirty-footer for par. I managed to finish the round, but I didn’t play again until I had completed two months of rehab with wands, pulleys, and colorful elastic bands. To this day, I can’t reach for a restaurant check with my left arm.

“To add insult to injury,” I told Rees, “my boss, Jim Herre, promptly aced your seventeenth hole, the long par-3 over the marsh.”

“That’s quite a hole-in-one,” he said. “Jim can be proud of that one.”

Haig Point

The Haig Point Signature Course is still dangerous — but only to your score. (John Garrity)

Anyway, Henson and I found the current version of Haig Point to be far less dangerous than I remembered. The entire back nine, in fact, is about as memorable as any non-links course in the Top 50. The take-as-much-as-you-dare drive over water on the par-4 tenth sets the tone, and Jones keeps topping himself. The closing holes take full advantage of the marshes and narrow beach, making me think of 41st-ranked Whispering Pines — not because of inherent similarities, but simply because the holes are so charismatic.

So, by the authority vested in me by me, I rescind my hundred-point deduction and restore Haig Point to the Top 50. Congratulations, Rees, and thank you, Haig Point and former USGA exec Craig Smith, for the kind invite.

Top 50 on TV: Nothing this week, but the Ryder Cup will be pursued on the 51st-ranked Course 3 at Medinah Country Club, Medinah, Ill. It’s a Tom Bendelow design, updated in 2003 by — who else? — Rees Jones.

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September 7, 2012 · 8:07 pm

Summer’s Best Hole Used to be a Dud

“What’s your favorite golf hole?” asks a reader from my immediate neighborhood. A child, actually. My grandson, if you’re going to get all fact-checky on me.

Well, Jack, I have many favorites. Readers of my golf memoir, Ancestral Links, know about my obsession with the par-4 seventeenth at second-ranked Carne. But they may not know that my favorite hole at Carne is either the par-4 third, with its rumpled fairway and two-tiered green, or the par-4 ninth, where you drive into a box canyon before playing blind up to a pinnacle green. Wait no, my favorite is probably the quirky twelfth, which requires an approach shot from a switchback fairway to a dunetop green best reached with ropes and crampons. Or if not the twelfth, how about the imposing fifteenth, a par-4 so rugged and natural that I tend to credit meteor impacts, and not Eddie Hackett, for its strong features.

Get my drift? It’s hard to pick my favorite hole on any one course, never mind the thousands of courses that we visit every year to compile the Top 50 ranking. Like most sentient golfers, I love the Road Hole at the Old Course, the lighthouse hole at Turnberry, the eighth and eighteenth holes at Pebble Beach, the par-3 sixteenth at Cypress Point, the majestic tenth at Augusta National, the drive-over-the-beach first at Machrihanish, and the baffling ninth at Ft. Meade’s City Mobile Home Park Golf Course. I’ve currently got a crush on the closing hole at 51st-ranked Caledonia Golf and Fish Club, which calls for two precise shots over scenic marshland to the accompaniment of turtles splashing in an adjoining canal.

Hillcrest No. 5

Hillcrest’s fifth hole, like good chili, has improved with age. (John Garrity)

That said, my favorite hole of the Summer of ’12 is the par-4 fifth at 45th-ranked Hillcrest in Kansas City, Mo. It’s a surprising favorite, because the No. 5 was maybe my least favorite hole when I caddied and played at Hillcrest as a boy in the late fifties.    Tree-lined and level from tee to green, it rides a ridge that drops off on either side, most sharply on the left, with the slope starting in the center of the fairway.

This was a serious defect, a half century ago, because Hillcrest had not yet installed fairway sprinklers. The summer fairways were bone-hard and brown. That made the tee shot on No. 5 impossibly difficult. Drives hit straight down the middle kicked left off the ridge and bounded through the trees and down the hill toward the tenth green, forcing a blind recovery shot from a steep lie. A slicing drive, on the other hand, would either wind up in the tree line or fly over the trees into the sixth fairway.

Hillcrest’s fifth hole was so bad, in fact, that I remember members cursing the nincompoop who had designed it: a Carolina pasture-plower by the name of Donald Ross.

Well, that was then. Hillcrest has been irrigated for decades now, and the fairways no longer bake in the summer sun. The fifth hole is now what Ross hoped it would be — a challenging par 4 of classic simplicity. The drive still causes your heart to flutter, but the fairway is much more receptive. If you miss left, bluegrass rough keeps most balls from plunging down the hill. “Tough, but fair” is the consensus of local golfers. That and, “Maybe that Ross guy wasn’t such a slug, after all.”

Having played Hillcrest often this summer, I’ve come to love the fifth. There’s nothing fancy about the hole — no gaudy bunker complexes or faux mounding — but the view from the tee (or from the green back to the tee) is classic. It’s an archetypal hole, a Ross variation that echoes holes from Pine Needles (T51), Mid-Pines (T51), Oak Hill (T51) and Aronimink (T51).

So yeah, Jack, I’d say my current favorite is the fifth at Hillcrest. Now if you limit it to the approach shot, I’d maybe choose the eighth hole at Askernish or the par-5 seventeenth at Royal Birkdale, where Paddy Harrington made his eagle ….

But that’s enough for now. Thanks for asking. And yes, we can play catch after dinner.

Top 50 on TV: Nothing this week, but the pros have taken their season-ending cash grab to 145th-ranked Crooked Stick Golf Club in Carmel, Ind., site of the BMW Championship. That brings back memories of John Daly at the 1991 PGA Championship, which I covered for Sports Illustrated. I recommend Cameron Morfit’s oral history here on Golf.com, or you can check out my contemporaneous coverage from the SI Vault. Either way, you can ignore Henry Ford’s dictum that “history is bunk.”

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August 22, 2012 · 5:37 pm

Maldives Floats Course Proposal (and Course)

Good news, Aquaman! The Daily Mail reports that a doomed island chain is spending roughly half a billion dollars on a floating golf course.

The Maldives has revealed plans for a radical £320 floating course, which players access by an undersea tunnel. The course is part of a massive plan to replace the sinking islands with a network of man made floating islands. With an average elevation of just five feet above sea level, the Maldives, with its 1,192 islands in the Indian Ocean, is the lowest country in the world.

Being five feet above sea level is a fine thing, particularly if you’re asked to carry a bucket of ice and fresh fish into town. On the other hand, if the sea rises a few feet — well, you do the math. The Maldivian government addressed the Atlantis scenario by hiring a Dutch company to build a series of floating islands onto which the populace can step as their homes disappear under the waves.

The islands will also be designed for swimmers, divers and even private submarines to enter them from below, and the Dutch firm designing the scheme has said visitors will be able to rent private submarines that can surface right in the middle of their living rooms.

Image

The new Maldives course promises ocean views from under every hole.

The golf course, very sensibly, will be the first phase of the project. The islands will be constructed off-site and then floated into position, with grass and landscaping to follow. The underwater tunnels will be wide enough to accommodate beverage carts and long enough, one hopes, to reach another island.

According to the developers, the floating course “should be ready for play by the end of 2013 ahead of the full launch in 2015.”

Did they really say “launch”?”

Anyway, keep your eyes on our sidebar list of top Aqua-ranges. Dolce Chantilly’s long reign as No. 1 may soon be over.

Top 50 on TV: Nothing this week, but sixth-ranked Augusta National announced that a prominent business executive and a former U.S. secretary of state will become members this fall. (Same old, same old.) Meanwhile, the FedEx Cup playoffs get under way with The Barclays at 51st-ranked Bethpage Black, a terrestrial course.

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August 3, 2012 · 3:47 pm

Top 50 Transparency Praised by Founder

A reader from Stone Harbor, N.J., asks if we conduct our course ratings in secrecy. “Do you travel under aliases? Do you inform a course’s staff that you are evaluating their facility and plan to publish an assessment that could be damaging to their reputations and bottom line? Do you go about your business whistling with a smile* while actually twisting your knife in the backs of honest businessmen who are merely trying to provide fun and recreation?”

* This is anatomically impossible, unless you whistle through your teeth; but we do try to project a certain cheeriness.

The e-mail is signed “Diogenes,” so I assume the writer is Greek. And before I address the substance of his letter, I’d just like to say how sorry I am about his country’s sovereign debt crisis and for the shocking deterioration of the 7th-ranked Parthenon and other public buildings. Things look bleak, I know, but a century or so of austerity should square the Greeks’ accounts and get them back out on the golf course.

Anyway, Di asked about “secrecy.” My answer is a flat “No.” We don’t sneak onto golf courses in Zorro masks and capes, and we don’t hide our clipboards and cameras in gym bags. To the contrary, the arrival of a Top 50 rater tends to be a civic happening replete with bunting, ceremony and intemperate drinking. It’s the democratic nature of the Top 50, in fact, that makes it so much fun. What other course-rating system has gallery members draw lots for a chance to evaluate the par-3s? Who but the Top 50 would let the head pro appeal for a better score in return for logoed caps and golf balls?

Besides, if we snuck in and out of venues, would we get so much publicity? Not to be immodest, but my recent rating trip to England got almost as much media attention as the Open Championship at 186th-ranked Royal Lytham & St. Annes. First it was Sports Illustrated’s Alan Shipnuck, who took participatory journalism to a new level by following me around 17th-ranked Royal Birkdale dressed in my clothes. (“If you can learn about someone by walking in their shoes,” he said afterwards, “it has to be even better to walk around in their baggy polo shirts and Dockers.”) Shipnuck’s reverential report can be seen here.

Michael Bamberger

SI’s Michael Bamberger followed our Top 50 rater at St. Annes Old Links. (John Garrity)

Also following me at Birkdale was Michael Bamberger, author of To the Linksland and inventor of the E-Club. In appreciation, I let him rate the 200-yard fourth hole, where each of us missed an ace by a matter of inches. (“Challenging to the extreme,” he concluded, “but brilliant!”) Bamberger then popped up a couple of evenings later as I rated St. Annes Old Links (49). He wrote about it for Golf.com, as did Golf Digest’s Cameron Morfit, whose astute critique of St. Annes can be read here.

To sum up, the Top 50 — far from being secretive — is the most transparent of all the leading course-rating systems. Diogenes may not accept that, but I infer that he’s bitter about some perceived slight or life-destroying tort that he associates with golf course critics. That’s unfortunate, but it has nothing to do with us.

Unless, that is, he is referring to our sister company, America’s Worst Golf Courses (LLC).  Our AWGC raters do conceal their identities, and they usually prevaricate when asked why they are dipping test strips into the ball washers or taking core samples from the greens. “When things get hairy,” I tell them, “it’s best to lie.”

Different company, of course.

Glen Echo's 14th hole

Would Glen Echo’s “Dewdrop” par 3 present a challenge to modern Olympians? (John Garrity)

Top 50 on TV: Nothing this week, but the London Olympics reminds us that golf returns to the Games in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in the summer of 2016. That should focus attention on 51st-ranked Glen Echo Country Club of St. Louis, Mo., which was an Olympic venue in conjunction with the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair. I played Glen Echo some weeks ago and found it to be in tip-top shape and fully capable of hosting the Olympics again, should the Gil Hanse-designed Rio course be thwarted by local politicians. (Glen Echo still has a commuter line running alongside its first hole, so transportation will be a snap.)

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July 22, 2012 · 9:31 am

A Open Letter to Trump (from Duke)

“John,” writes our chief Asian correspondent, Duke Ishikawa, “could you give this note to Donald if you have any chance to reach him, please?”

I don’t expect to see “Donald” in the next couple of weeks, so I decided to post Duke’s letter here on the theory that Donald is following the site closely to see if his 51st-ranked Trump International Golf Links can break into the Top 50.

Mr.Donald Trump

Chairman, Trump International

From Duke Ishikawa (Tokyo International News)

Sir, I have two things to explain to you, please?

1. It will be a year and half, this coming September, since the March 11 disaster in Northern Japan. More than two hundred orphans were born from the earthquake and tsunami. They are still having a tough time. So we plan to have a charity skins game with Jumbo Ozaki, Isao Aoki and Tommy Nakajima. They are considered The Big 3 in Japan with more than 200 combined wins. They’ll play at the end of summer because kids’ school starts on Sept. 1

The first 16 holes will be for $500 or $1,000 each, then double for the last two holes. The three pros will donate 30% to 50% of their skins to the orphans for their schooling. We’ll be talking to leading TV stations to dover it, and I’m sure the AP, Reuters, Bloomberg, the New York Times and many U.S. media will cover it to. So my question is, is there a possibility of your sponsorship, please?

2. Tokyo is a candidate for the 2020 Summer Games, and surely golf will be continued as an Olympic event. But we don’t have good-enough courses in the Tokyo area. There are about 2,400 courses in Japan, but more than 90% of them are in mountain areas.That means far from where people live. Gas is a few times higher than US. We then have to pay more yen to the toll road. One bad example is the DIamond Cup, the men’s tournament held in June. They only  had 6,839 admission for all four days. Because the course was too far. No business at all.

So we need a new golf course near Tokyo. But it must be Japan’s first Stadium-Type Course. The new course should be near Tokyo Disneyland, which is not far from Narita Airport. The name should be California Golf Park (CGP).We pick up all eighteen holes from famous ones in California. They should be the 16th of Cypress Point, the 18th and 8th from Pebble Beach. The tenth of Riviera CC. (I took this idea from the Bear’s Best in Las Vegas.) The main entrance should be named Goldrush Road instead of Magnolia Lane. The clubhouse will look like the capitol building in Sacramento, and one of our honorable members will be the former CA governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger.

I’d like the architect to be one from Crenshaw-Coore, Nicklaus himself (not with his sons), Nick Faldo and Jumbo Ozaki.

The first stadium-type course in Japan has a good future of business. We have more than thirty-million populations in the Tokyo metropolitan area, so it should be quite easy to collect 100,000 spectators for a tournament if we can provide enough facility. (The biggest number for a US Open gallery was 387,045 in 2005 at Pinhurst CC. )There are about fifty professional golf tournaments, both men and women, in Japan. Two or three of them could be held at the California Golf Park. Each one would collect more than one hundred thousand people. I would expect quite similar results as the Wentworth Club in London.

The Eisenhower Trophy will be in Japan in 2014. Then, possibly, the 2020 Olympic Game. The Presidents Cup in 2015 will be in Korea, but we have another chance to invite it to Japan, because it is a home and away game.Then not only Japan but also Mr. Finchem will be pleased to see his Presidents Cup return to Asia. That will provide big opportunities for the golf business in Japan and also the CGP itself.

We used spent more than $200 million to $250 million to build one course in Japan. But the costs now are much less. Japan is no longer Number One in costs. So if you build Japan’s first stadium-type course, you will be able to make a giant step for your real estate business in a new territory.

Respectfully, Duke Ishikawa

On second thought, I’m going to try to get Duke’s letter to The Donald. The first part, anyway; the part soliciting a donation for the Japanese orphans. The Tokyo stadium-course proposal I may hold back to show to my accountants at Catch Basin. It would be great to have a Top 50 course that was actually owned by the Top 50.

Morfit and Bamberger

Cameron Morfit (left) and Michael Bamberger were among the notables playing St. Annes Old Links on Friday evening. (John Garrity)

Top 50 on TV: Still nothing this week, but Friday evening I slipped away from the Open Championship at Royal Lytham & St. Annes to inspect the St. Annes Old Links of Lancashire, England. (Joining me were Sports Illustrated senior writer Michael Bamberger and GOLF Magazine senior writer Cameron Morfit.) Situated between the Pleasure Beach roller coaster and the more dignified neighborhoods of St. Annes, the Old Links is a modestly-duned and immaculately-maintained layout. There are bands of deep rough, but the playing corridors are wide enough to minimize ball searching and tame enough to encourage recovery shots. “These conditions are the sine qua non of links golf,” said Bamberger, who is wont to speak Latin or Greek when he’s on his game. “The English probably think of it as a working-man’s links, but if it were in America I’d rate St. Annes in the top one or two hundred.” I’d go even farther. I’d rate it No. 50 in the world.

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July 20, 2012 · 8:09 am

Clearing Up ‘Dwarf Course’ Comment

A reader from Daytona Beach, Fla., gets right to the point: “You don’t know what a ‘dwarf course’ is? What a fool some folks are!”

The reader refers to golf architect Bill Amick’s remark, in my last post, that he was off to West Africa to build a dwarf course at an eco lodge. Or maybe it was an eco course at a dwarf lodge. But the reader, now that I look more closely, is Bill Amick. So I’ll let him explain the term.

I coined that label, dwarf course, because of my mother. She was a wonderful woman and I loved her very much, but she was short. For some reason, she was never fond of me calling her a dwarf. Hey, she should have known that life, like golf, is not always fair. For instance, she could not have become a member of the Augusta National Golf Club. Though that was not because of her limited vertical stature.

Having cleared that up, Bill comments on the rankings:

I was extremely pleased that Ridgewood Golf Club [formerly Chestuee Golf & Country Club] made it into your latest top 20. And I’m proud that, after looking it up, I know it by its current name. It has always been a rule of mine that a golf course architect should at least know the names of the courses he or she has designed. Not knowing would be almost as bad as the over-the-hill touring pro who, having put his signature on a course, had to be pointed in the direction of the first tee for the ceremonial opening round.

And I find Grand Reserve a welcome addition to your aqua-range list. I can’t think of a better use for treated sewer water.

Turning to the new, Bill drops a tidbit or two about his detour through Scotland:

As you know, I made it up to The Trump in Aberdeen [No. 51] to share the ceremonies with my friend Martin Hawtree. And here’s what really burned me. As my taxi was delivering me down the entrance road, The Donald was leaving in his long black limo. He did not wait for me at the clubhouse nor even wave as we passed on the road. I guess some Americans are just rude.

I did get a tour of His course by the Hawtree team, so my visit was not a complete bummer. I was impressed by it all, and in a later message I’ll attach what I write for ByDesign with my impressions of the course.

When I got to Ghana, I’m happy to say, there was no rude American passing me in his long black limo as I entered the property. But I did think of my dear, late mother. Have I ever mentioned that she was not a particularly tall person?

Shipnuck and Bamberger Putting

Shipnuck putts and Bamberger tends the flag on a course not unlike Royal Birkdale. (John Garrity)

Top 50 on TV: Nothing this week, but on Wednesday afternoon I joined my Sports Illustrated colleagues, Alan Shipnuck and Michael Bamberger, for a lovely round at 17th-ranked Royal Birkdale Golf Club. We were playing hooky from our British Open assignments, but Alan made it kosher by writing a broadly-comical yet deeply-moving GOLF.com column about our round. (Deeply moving when he describes me as a “premier ball striker”; broadly comical when he pegs Michael as a “crafty” links player.)

About which Amick, in a follow-up e-mail, complained, “All you golf writers ever seem to do is play great courses. And now we have to read about it?”

No, but I’m sure Bill will want to read this legend that was on the wall of the first Royal Birkdale clubhouse:

“As the earth is not meant to be carted away The divots you cut in the course of your play Should be neatly replaced by your caddie or you, With their roots to the earth and their blades to the blue”

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July 16, 2012 · 9:14 am

‘World’s Best Course’: Where Does It Rank?

“Save five or more spots on your next list for the new ‘Best Course in the World,’” writes golf architect Bill Amick, a Top 50 fixture. “That’s according to it’s developer, one of the world’s most humble persons.”

Filtering out the sarcasm, I infer that Amick wants us to take a look at the Trump International Golf Links of Aberdeen, Scotland, Donald Trump’s latest and most-ambitious golf project. But unbenownst to Amick, Trump-Aberdeen debuted last month at No. 51 on the strength of Travelin’ Joe Passov’s GOLF Magazine review, which was grudgingly favorable. “For all the hyperbole,” Joe wrote with gritted teeth, “Trump Scotland might turn out to be as good as advertised.”

No course cracks the Top 50 until it’s been rated by myself or by our ratings director, Gary Van Sickle. Neither of us, sad to say, has been able to get up to Aberdeen for a walkaround. In the meantime, we’re waiting to hear from Amick, who was invited to the grand opening by Trump Scotland’s designer, Martin Hawtree, who was celebrating the 100th anniversary of his firm.*

* Hawtree, known for his renovation of Royal Birkdale Golf Club and other Open Championship venues, has not been around that long. The firm, which describes itself as “The World’s Longest Continuous Golf Architectural Practice,” was founded in 1912 by Martin’s grandfather, Frederic George Hawtree, and carried on by his father, Frederic William Hawtree.

Judging solely from photographs, I’m inclined to put TIGL in the upper echelon of modern links courses, close behind sixth-ranked Castle Stuart, the eighth-ranked European Club, and 40th-ranked Kingsbarns. Had Trump not spent $155 million on it, I might even compare his Aberdeen track to the incomparable Askernish and Carne links, currently rated one-two. (Old Tom Morris designed the former for ten shillings per hole, while the great Eddie Hackett gave Carne seven years of his attention in return for a few expense checks, which he was loath to cash.)

“After Aberdeen I go to Ghana,” Amick concludes, “where I’m designing a dwarf course at a new eco lodge.”

Unsure of what constitutes a dwarf course, I Googled the term and found a YouTube video called “Dwarf Course 1,” which shows British teenagers running a playground obstacle course. “Eco Lodge,” meanwhile, linked me to a number of “green hotels,” including a treehouse lodge in the Australian rain forest. I could speculate on what Amick has in mind for West Africa, but I think I’ll just wait for his next e-mail.

Castle Stuart

Castle Stuart was built for windy conditions. Note the whitecaps on the Moray Firth. (John Garrity)

Top 50 on TV: Nothing this week, but Castle Stuart just concluded its second hosting of the Scottish Open with Jeev Milkha Singh claiming the trophy. “After three opening rounds of very low scoring, Castle Stuart finally bared its teeth,” reports the Associated Press. “A fierce westerly wind and heavy rain at times proved too much for top-ranked Luke Donald (73) and Phil Mickelson (74), who both finished tied for 16th at 12-under.” The AP doesn’t quantify how “fierce” the wind was, but I’ve played Castle Stuart in gusts of up to 65 mph, which blew my bag over, shattered my umbrella, and caused my ball to roll of its own accord on the back of the 12th green. That aside, the course was both playable and enjoyable. Castle Stuart deserves its sixth ranking.

It’s on to Royal Lytham & St. Annes (No. 132) for the Open Championship. Wet and windy weather is forecast.

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June 29, 2012 · 5:49 pm

Florida Aqua-range Plunks in Top Five

E-mails that open with “I was extremely pleased to learn” are always welcome here at Catch Basin. So is correspondence from any of our Top 50 course designers, living or dead.* Both attributes attach to this nice note from Bill Amick, designer of 20th-ranked Ridgewood Golf Club and renovator of Donald Ross’s 45th-ranked Hillcrest Course at Kansas City’s Heartland Golf Club.

*Before you submit an error alert, please revisit my “Golf Ghost” series of interviews in SI Golf+, which included lively chats with Donald Ross and Alister MacKenzie. 

Hillcrest CC No. 5

The fifth at Heartland reflects the collaborative efforts of Donald Ross and Bill Amick.

Amick begins, “I was extremely pleased to learn that Casserly Par 3 Golf Course has finally broken into your Top 50. It has been neglected far too long in this regard.”

But I’m still disappointed to see that two highly-regarded aqua-ranges — the one at the Mike Beebe-designed Grand Reserve Golf Club in Bunnell, Fla., and mine at Meadow Oaks Golf and Country Club in Hudson, Fla. — are not on your Best Aqua-ranges list. [See right sidebar] The Grand’s range is filled with greywater, I think. (I can never remember if it’s greywater or graywater, although both seem to come out of a sewer pipe.) The Meadow’s is a plain old Florida sinkhole filled with stagnant water.

Treating Amick’s concerns with the proper sense of urgency, I immediately called Gary Van Sickle, our aqua-range ratings manager. Van Sickle listened to the Florida-based architect’s critique before issuing a decisive “Whatever.” So, as of this afternoon, Grand Reserve is No. 4 in the Aqua-range ranking, passing Imperial Lakewoods GC of Palmetto, Fla. Meanwhile, the aqua-range at Meadow Oaks remains unranked despite Amick’s puffing it up as “a plain old Florida sinkhole filled with stagnant water.” That’s because I never allow friendship, reputation or inadequate monetary considerations to influence our rankings.

Amick had more to say in his e-mail, including his role in celebrating the upcoming opening of the so-called “Best Course in the World” in Scotland. I’ll address that, as well as Amick’s plans for a “dwarf course” in Ghana, in my next post.

Royal Portrush Golf Club

Tenth-ranked Royal Portrush is a gold-medal track. (John Garrity)

Top 50 on TV: The Irish are holding their Irish Open on one of my personal favorites, the 10th-ranked Dunluce Course at Royal Portrush Golf Club. I played there last July on the finest afternoon County Antrim has ever seen, so my perceptions may be rose-colored. But I think not. While there, I got to see Darren Clarke’s Open Championship medal in a clubhouse display case previously devoted to 1947 Open champion Fred Daly. “For me this is the best golf course in the world,” Clarke had said earlier in the week. “I am very privileged to give Royal Portrush the gold medal.”

Others must rate Royal Portrush almost as highly. With roughly 27,000 spectators per day, Clarke’s home course is the first European Tour venue to completely sell out for every round.

 

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