Elevated Greens

Each year, as I return home with these remarkable courses front of mind, I’m filled with a sense of wonder at the depth of quality golf design in the US. A collision of brilliant golfing minds in the early 1900s, the likes of Donald Ross, AW Tillinghast, William Flynn, CB Macdonald and Walter Travis, has left the country with an abundance of interesting courses that display the immense diversity of what great strategic golf design can look and play like.

It also leaves me reflecting on golf in Australia. Whilst known as a country of esteemed course design, Australian golf course architecture can mostly be traced back to the influence of one man: Dr Alister MacKenzie. With a background in in trench warfare and camouflage, MacKenzie’s preference in building features that are “indistinguishable from nature” and blend in with the existing landforms is evident in Australia’s most renowned courses. MacKenzie’s Royal Melbourne West course exemplifies his delicate touch when compared to the heavy hands of some of his contemporaries (Travis, Tillinghast, Raynor or Langford and Moreau come to mind).

Soon after his visit down under in 1926, Australian golfers identified MacKenzie’s knack for design in the courses he left his fingerprints on. In the years that followed, clubs along Australia’s east coast sought to capture the brilliance of MacKenzie’s design philosophies, with many undertaking work in the image of his Royal Melbourne masterpiece. The result is a collection of fantastic courses in Melbourne’s southeast, including Commonwealth and Woodlands, and others further afield like Kooyonga, which have no direct link to MacKenzie, yet bear striking resemblance to the good doctor’s work.

This influence of MacKenzie has clearly been a positive one on the state of golf design in Australia. It’s important to recognise the calibre (or lack-thereof) of courses in places like South Africa, where MacKenzie and his contemporaries bypassed, to understand what might have been without a working tour from one of the all-time greats. However, whilst many of Australia’s courses are truly excellent, the more I’ve travelled the more I wonder if there’s something deficient in the Australian golfing offering.

Architects of the golden age often used the phrase “Infinite Variety” to describe the goal of the golf course architect – and one of my bosses and mentors, Frank Pont, even named his business after these two words. At the extreme end of the spectrum, a golf course with no variety would have golfers play the same hole repeatedly 18 times. On the other end, the best courses have tremendous hole to hole variety in orientation, length, bunker placement, green shaping, amongst other traits – which is clearly the most engaging and interesting approach to design

What about variety across golf courses, not just within them? National Golf Links of America (NGLA), Maidstone, and Friars Head are all within a half hour drive of one another and three courses I played consecutively on my recent trip to the US. All three are considered within the World’s Top 50 or so courses. NGLA, a CB MacDonald design, plays over a beautifully rolling site on Peconic bay and displays some of the most creative and wild design work I’ve ever seen. Maidstone, a Willie Park Jr. course on the Atlantic ocean, weaves its way through human scaled dunes and tidal lakes with more modestly sculpted greens and bunkers. Friars Head, overlooking Long Island sound, is a 2004 Coore and Crenshaw curated masterpiece, with large diverse putting surfaces, and artistic bunkers tied perfectly into their surroundings.

As a combination, the three offer immense diversity in length, challenge and character which made playing them one after another such a fascinating and enjoyable experience. To me, this experience crystallised that great strategic golf design comes in all shapes and sizes.

Returning to the Sandbelt and suburban Australian golf more broadly, there are dozens of fantastic golf holes, yet they tend to be variations of a theme. Steep faced bunkers cut right against the putting surfaces, defending the preferred line to an appropriately contoured green. Classically strategic golf, but perhaps a little formulaic? Truly great holes that break these rules are few and far between, and I can only think of a couple – Woodland’s iconic 4th hole, Royal Adelaide’s blind and quirky 3rd, and PK North’s hogsback/knoll 12th. 

Friars Head – a rolling diverse landscape complemented by considered and natural looking golf features