Can’t They Build Classics Anymore?

Jack Nicklaus was asked to explain the differences between the golf courses on the Monterey Peninsula’s Seventeen Mile Drive. Nicklaus replied, “Pebble Beach and Cypress Point make you want to play. Spyglass Hill--that’s different; that makes you want to go fishing.”

His sentiments sum up the feelings of many golfers when it comes to trying to make a distinction between recent designs such as Robert Trent Jones’ relentless Spyglass Hill, and gentler, thought-provoking classics like Pebble Beach and Cypress Point. The latter designs find a way to bring out the best in us because of their beauty and their design features. All too many modern courses usually provide a pleasant setting for the game, but rarely inspire us.

How distinct is the gap between modern and classic designs? In Golf magazine’s most recent ranking of the top 100 courses in America, only two of the first 20 layouts, and only 11 of the top 50, were built after 1940.

Golf Digest’s list reveals a similar imbalance. Trade publication Golfweek has found such a difference between eras that it has split its course ranking into two lists: the top 100 layouts built before 1960 and another list of 100 since that date.

The situation is even more astonishing when you consider that renowned early 20th century designers such as Alister Mackenzie and George Thomas predicted that the art of golf course design would ascend to levels no one in their era could imagine. They believed that new thought-provoking layouts would eventually overshadow the great courses of their day and bring even more new players to the game.

Instead, golf has grown in peculiar spurts since the days of Mackenzie and Thomas, with exciting players such as Arnold Palmer and Tiger Woods creating great short-term interest, while the lack of fun, affordable and interesting courses has seemingly prevented those euphoric spurts from having a lasting impact.

If you ask modern architects why they can’t design the way Mackenzie did, few will acknowledge much of a discrepancy. They will point out how conditioning is superior today thanks to better construction techniques. Some will suggest they have built prettier courses and more fair ones. Other architects say the popularity of old courses is pure nostalgia and believe that after their designs host a few majors and have time to mature, their work will be considered as good as the Shinnecocks and Pinehursts of the world. The architects also point out that early designers such as Donald Ross and A.W. Tillinghast were afforded special sites and were unrestricted by various bureaucracies and environmental restrictions.

However, a small but growing number of traditionalists is spreading the word and proving why such courses as Riviera--or even local public gems such as Rancho Park and Brookside--retain an enduring playing quality. These traditionalists, who preach a “minimalist” design and construction philosophy, emphasize two traits that most modern courses lack: naturalness and strategy.

“Some guys would like to do some things and they’re harnessed in a lot of ways, particularly with time constraints,” says Ben Crenshaw, who along with Bill Coore co-designed the only modern design on Golf magazine’s list of the top 10 courses in America, Sand Hills Golf Club in Mullen, Neb. “Sometimes the piece of ground doesn’t allow you to do things without completely rearranging the landscape. It’s not always the architect’s fault. But I can’t say that in every case.”

Golf architects from the 1920s and early ‘30s often preached subtle and natural design features. They placed artistically sculptured bunkers in well-chosen locations to require decision-making on every shot. Their sensitivity to the existing terrain was genuine. Few of the master architects like Mackenzie or Ross fought the land, even if it meant including an occasional blind shot. The result for the golfer is a comfortable feeling of playing in natural settings. Not land reconfigured and contrived for the convenience of man.

Architect Tom Doak, one of the select group of younger architects preaching a return to less costly, natural designs, has also devoted much time to inject strategy in his courses. The idea being to interest all levels of golfer, not merely above-average players.

“In recent years,” Doak says, “our architects spend millions to enclose and define every shot with mounds while smoothing down every bump in the fairways, attempting to eliminate blind shots and bad bounces from the game. The whole point of golf architecture is to discover and then present to the player challenging shots inherent in the landscape. But today anything remotely challenging is quickly criticized as ‘unfair.’ A green which tilts slightly away from the line of play is a natural challenge unto itself, but many golfers are so accustomed to having all the greens tilted back toward them to “receive a shot” that they believe a fallaway green is a gimmick.”

The millions of dollars frequently spent to create “bowl” settings or to eliminate natural hazards and plant wall-to-wall grass is justified by modern architects because those features are meant to speed up play and make golf more pleasurable. But the end result has been no increase in pace of play, even with the help of golf carts. Worse, golfers are not being asked to make the grueling decisions or being given the chance to create “feel” shots that great holes such as the 13th at Augusta National call upon.

Besides spending his time restoring classic designs such as four-time U.S. Open host Merion, architect Gil Hanse is another of the younger designers trying to return older values to his designs. He believes architects are unable to inject the subtle touches that the “master” designers could because they are not spending time on site during construction, fine-tuning their work in the field.

“The master architects felt the site in their hearts, and they studied it with a keen eye,” says Hanse. “They got their hands on it, observed it in different lights, in different moods. They related to the site. To the modern, sterile architect who is content looking at the site from the front seat of a Range Rover, this seems like an odd concept. However, it’s at the heart of what the masters believed and what they practiced.”

Besides being more enjoyable to play, natural and strategic designs also bring relief to golfers’ pocketbooks. With course construction costs frequently pushing the $20-million mark largely because of poor site selection and expensive theatrics, the green-fee paying customer is having to compensate for architects’ desire to rearrange land unsuited for golf. Further, a National Golf Foundation study found that 41 million Americans would like to play the game but do not for three primary reasons: high green fees, excessive difficulty and pace of play. To entice those golfers to return, building courses the old-fashioned way seems the wisest direction for golf to head.

Many modern architects will declare that golfers have demanded and received the type of courses they are getting these days. Maybe they are, but most golfers do not realize that architects such as Mackenzie and Ross were special. Those architects knew how to balance the needs of all levels of player without compromising their artistic beliefs. Today, it’s tough to find architects who know how to balance all of the requirements necessary to build a classic course.

However, there are talented designers out there who respect nature. There are golf architects who will spend extra time in the field to make the most of the land at the lowest cost possible. There are designers who can build courses that inspire people to want to play instead of fish. They can build them like they used to.

Geoff Shackelford is the author of four books relating to golf course design. His most recent, “The Golden Age of Golf Design,” has just been published by Sleeping Bear Press.