The First Donald J. Trump Design

Yep, the Donald is calling Ocean Trails his. This Fairways and Greens review looks at the soon-to-open course, which Jim Fazio had been linked to.

It’s simply a new golf course, and that brings up a vital point: This is no longer the work of Pete Dye or even Tom Fazio, who laid out Trump’s three East Coast courses.

“Is it a Pete Dye design? No. Is it a Tom Fazio design? No. It’s a Trump Signature Design golf course,” Van der Goes says. The man himself concurs, then explains why he went from design apprentice to the project’s lead architect.

“I could have just fixed it up a little bit and opened it a year ago, but I decided not to do that,” Trump told Fairways & Greens in April. “It’s a Donald J. Trump design, you know. Frankly, no architect would tell you to do what I did, especially on the first hole. Like using Palos Verdes stone to put that No. 1 tee box 40 feet up the hill. It’s too expensive, but I did it anyway, I did the right thing. That tee used to be down in a well; now it’s almost 100 yards farther back and high up, above the ocean.”

And we can’t overlook the waterfalls. After all, they’ll be overlooking us: After hitting right into them from the No. 1 fairway or No. 17 tee, golfers will drive their carts under their upper reaches, á la Disneyland, and marvel at the manmade wizardry of it all — of pumping 8,000 gallons per minute into a pond below the green, and somehow making it look natural enough to fit in with the rest of the landscape. Some people will find it kitschy, but we call it cool.

I’d joke about this,but you’re already laughing.