When you come to think of it that is the secret of most of the great holes all over the world. They all have some kind of a twist. C.B. MACDONALD
Bill Nichols files an update on the Trinity River project ouside Dallas where Coore and Crenshaw have been hired to build a course for AT&T excecutives with the hope of one day hosting the Byron Nelson.
Trinity Forest will be cut in the mold of, say, Chicago Golf Club or Tulsa’s Southern Hills: No water, no trees; but lots of gnarly grasses swaying over a wind-blown landscape surrounded by forest and lowlands.
“The fairways will be expansive with meandering hills,” Coore said. “It will be a natural look with smooth contours that ripple and roll, ever cascading.”
From the highest point of the course, the No. 5 fairway, you can see downtown during winter months. That view will be blocked by trees the rest of the year.
Although there are no dramatic highs and lows, the elevation changes about 35 feet.
The layout promises to reward creativity. Three holes will cross a deep ravine. The most dramatic could be the par-3 No. 8, which goes downhill over the ravine with forest to the right.
Richard Gillis files an interesting WSJ piece (thanks reader John) about distance where Nike's Cindy Davis preaches the joys of pursuing longer drives and selling the next great driver.
Thankfully, my colleague Gil Hanse brought some sanity to the discussion.
"We're at a point where something has to be done," Hanse said. "We're talking about a tiny proportion of golfers where distance is an issue, a small handful of tour players and accomplished amateurs. Whether its bifurcation or rolling the ball back I don't know what the answer is, but the environmental question is really the one that is difficult for the manufacturers to refute."
The new normal in golf course design is the 8,000-yard layout.
"Two hundred acres is the new standard for a golf course compared to 150 acres a few years ago," Hanse said. "And 120 of those acres have to be maintained and watered as opposed to 80. You really are going down an unsustainable path. From a manufacturers standpoint, how can you argue against that? They can talk a lot about marketing, about player endorsements and how there's always been the same set of rules, etc., but the environmental argument is the winning one."
Electronic Arts announced a special edition of Tiger Woods PGA Tour 14 and for those of us fascinated by Alister MacKenzie and Bobby Jones' original Augusta National design, the attention to detail looks amazing.
For Immediate Release:
Electronic Arts Inc., announced today that fans will be able to step back in time with Tiger Woods PGA TOUR 14: The Masters Historic Edition. For the first time ever, users will experience Augusta National Golf Club as it was when the course played host to the very first Masters Tournament - what was known in 1934 as the Inaugural Augusta National Invitation Tournament.
The development of this exclusive feature was researched with meticulous detail in an effort to re-create the original 1931 design of world-renowned golf course architect Dr. Alister MacKenzie and legendary golfer Bobby Jones.
"From the very beginning, our relationship with the Masters Tournament has been built around our ability to bring a unique and authentic experience to a new and younger demographic of potential golfers," Mike Taramykin, Vice President of Tiger Woods PGA TOUR said. "From unprecedented access to the Augusta National archives, to in-depth discussions with golf historians - and even our own internal research into the sport in the 1930s - The Masters Historic Edition is the next step in bringing gamers an exciting and distinctive glimpse into the game of golf."
Game play will place players in a 1934 environment, which takes into account everything from the clothing to the equipment. On the golf course, users will discover a new way to enjoy the timeless layout, and as it would have played when the first Tournament field competed in the Club's inaugural invitational. This includes everything from the golf course's nines being reversed to its original green contours and speeds.
In addition to this unique feature, Tiger Woods PGA TOUR 14: The Masters Historic Edition will also include:
• A complete copy of Tiger Woods PGA TOUR 14
• A walk through of the original 1934 layout of Augusta National
• The present-day Augusta National Golf Club course
• Augusta National's world-class Tournament Practice Facility
• Augusta National's Par 3 course
• Green Jacket ceremony
• Augusta, the Song, as heard during the Masters Tournament television broadcast
In total, Tiger Woods PGA TOUR 14: The Masters Historic Edition will include all 20 courses available in the standard edition and the four additional championship courses: Royal County Down, Royal Melbourne, Sheshan and TPC Blue Monster at Doral.
Besides getting to play legends using swings and physiques with which we are unfamiliar, the EA press info says they allow you to "tweak" courses on this edition.
Players, fill us in. Maybe there's a way to de-Fazio Augusta and Riviera? Reesnovate Torrey South? De-Dawson the Old Course?
Here's the preview for the March release of EA Sports' Tiger Woods '14:
...with capsules and photo(s) for each course.
John Dell files a super story on Bill Coore and team restoring Old Town Club, a private Perry Maxwell-designed club course he played while at Wake Forest.
There is also an accompanying video by Dell who interviews superintendent O'Neil Crouch and showing some of the construction process.
In his restoration, Coore used old aerial photos found by club members to get an idea of what the course looked like in 1939. The photos showed the original design, but the course had lost some of its character because of time and change.
This was also encouraging to read:
“He’s so busy and has so many projects that if we would have waited, he wouldn’t have been available until 2016,” said head pro Jim Holt, who has been at Old Town since 1979.
AT&T Senior Vice President Ron Spears, heading up the Trinity Forest project in South Dallas that hopes to get some government breaks and host the Byron Nelson someday, is insisting that architects and the project manager of the new semi-private club in south Dallas work on a non-profit basis.
Why?
Because they've lumped a First Tee onto the project and the club is a non-profit.
Rudolph Bush in the Dallas Morning News reports the remarks from Spears.
“No one gets to make a profit out of this. That’s been our intent from the beginning in the way we thought about putting it all together.” Spears said. “This is a not-for-profit in every way.”
So sweet hearing a corporate officer preach the gospel of non-profiteering! And...
Senior officials at AT&T and SMU have not yet selected an architect or project manager. But Spears said he is making it clear to anyone who wants to be involved that they can cover their time and costs and nothing else.
“If you don’t buy into the mission of the club, then it may not be the club for you,” he said. “This is not something for a bunch of rich people. We’re trying to do something good for the city of Dallas, for the kids of South Dallas and to help SMU bring a national championship to Dallas.”
And the First Tee of course is at the heart of this plan...
Spears, though, indicated that the club is intended to operate in a more open and inclusive way than many of the exclusive private courses that host professional golf’s most prestigious tournaments.
The inclusion of First Tee of Dallas will help ensure that, he said.
And that’s going to be attractive to architects and project managers who Spears has already spoken to, he said.
“People are looking at it and saying, ‘I really want to get involved in something for a change that is not just a bunch of guys with lots of money building a toy for themselves,’” he said.
And how, with $150,000 memberships for the "semi-private" club, is this not a bunch of guys with money building a toy for themselves?
Thankfully, Spears and friends will pay and pay dearly for this approach.
They won't get an architect who works on the Coore/Crenshaw model of a modest fee while paying for their shaping team which works in lieu of a primary contractor.
Instead, AT&T will get an architect who puts together big pretty plans, announces he'll work for free because his life is devoted to charity as said architect then creates an arrangement with a contractor or requires the use of his preferred contractor, making his money through a side deal. Sadly, this arrangement was all too common in the Roaring 90s and led to costly change orders that only enriched the architects further.
Ultimately, assuming the quality architects demand their very reasonable fee, Trinity Forest will go the way of so many others and leave Dallas with an overbuilt, over-budget, underwhelming mess.
Geoff Shackelford is a Senior Writer for Golfweek magazine, a weekly contributor to Golf Channel's Morning
Copyright © 2022, Geoff Shackelford. All rights reserved.
