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
Gil Hanse explains the concept (embed below) of what hopefully joins the list of influential short courses inspiring more to be built.
Given the location of this one in front of the Pinehurst clubhouse, it's sure to be popular when completed.
Pinehurst breaks ground on Short Course. Photos: https://t.co/BhoNB1dTRY pic.twitter.com/M5mEOigekS
— Pinehurst Resort (@PinehurstResort) May 10, 2017
Bradley Klein and Martin Kaufmann with early impressions of Sand Valley, the Mike Keiser-led midwest development featuring a Coore-Crenshaw design, with more on the way.
They write:
Sand Valley’s grass-covered dunes, some of them 50-60 feet high, are the product of massive outwash from glaciation and an abrupt flood 15,000 years ago. Coore and Crenshaw’s routing meanders through broad valleys, climbs atop those dunes and at times circulates through flatter ground that had been planted for decades in the dead straight rows of a pine tree farm.
The scale of the place can be disorienting, given the wide berth of playing options available. The par-72 layout tips out at 6,909 yards (72.6 rating/128 slope). But those black-tee numbers are virtually meaningless in the midst of the prevailing wind and the intensity of ground-game roll. The vast bulk of rounds will be played from more comfortable yardages of 6,514 yards (orange), 6,087 (sand), 5,574 (green) and 4,586 (blue). Get it – no gender-biased red colors here. Just play it from where you think you can have fun.
Julie Bosman of the New York Times went to Chicago to check out the proposed public-private partnership with the Chicago Park District that would see Jackson Park Golf Course and South Shore merged into a Tiger Woods redesign capable of hosting the BMW Championship. The alliance headed by Mark Rolfing needs to raise around $30 million to fund the Woods redo and operation once completed.
As usual and as should be expected (and understandable), the debaters seem pro-redevelopment, but not at the cost to affordability for those currently enjoying the facilities now.
On a recent morning at the 18-hole Jackson Park Golf Course, two employees lingered in the building near the first tee, where golfers could buy a $1 cup of coffee and a $6 Polish sausage at the snack bar.
Keith McGrue, 60, a South Side resident, said he had heard chatter from regulars who wonder what a Tiger Woods-designed course could bring.
“A lot of people have been playing here for 25, 30 years,” Mr. McGrue said. “The question becomes, Who benefits from the change? Who loses out and who wins? Most people that play here, especially the black folks, live in the neighborhood. This is our golf course.”
Alan Brothers, 71, who was playing at the South Shore course, said that he was hoping for the sort of growth that a new facility could bring to the South Side.
“This neighborhood has been in need of economic development for a very long time,” he said, pointing to the south, where several blocks away, four people were shot dead in a restaurant in March in an apparent act of gang retribution.
The New York Times' Tom Redburn visited Sand Valley last fall and just when it sounded like he had visited too early, he makes clear he was taken with Mike Keiser's latest vision. To avid followers of the Keiser project, there won't be much new here. However, it's refreshing to read old style travel writing that takes you to a special place, gives you an idea what to expect, but doesn't give all of the surprises away.
He also gives this preview of what to expect from the resort going forward:
After the resort’s opening, the Coore/Crenshaw layout will be the only course fully available for play. But a second design, by David McLay Kidd, who created the first links at Bandon Dunes, is already well underway. A six-hole loop named Mammoth Dunes is expected to open for preview play this summer, and the full 18 holes might be ready as early as September.
Lisa and I walked the first hole and a couple others as the sun was setting, and the course looks like it will be as beautiful, and even more wide open, than Sand Valley. Mr. Coore and Mr. Crenshaw are also designing a short par-3 course, which should be ready in 2018.
“There’s already great golf in Wisconsin,” said Josh Lesnik, an executive at KemperSports, which will manage Sand Valley for the Keisers. “But soon golfers will look to Wisconsin as a place like Scotland or western Ireland, where they can go for a week and, within a short drive, play someplace special every day.”
You'll hear about the new 12th, revamped 6th and 7th, a new entrance drive and revitalized driving range at next week's Players Championship. 
But to get a good for feel for those changes and to see things presented in new, fun ways, check out this PGATour.com feature from Sean Martin and the photo/video team in Ponte Vedra.
After seeing all of this, the new grass lawn effect to the first tee struck me as the most interesting for players. The overall effort seems to be a simplication and toning down of some bombast, but obviously most of the attention will be given to the new risk-reward 12th replacing the old risk-risk 12th.
Jason Day and others also contribute thoughts to the package.
There's a lot to savor in the lengthy piece by the Wisconsin State Journal's Barry Adams on hopes for Sand Valley. It's the Wisconsin foray into "retail golfer" territory by Mike Keiser. Besides all of the great information on what the development could mean for players, residents, the environment and the economy, it's encouraging to see a story this long and detail-rich.
Obviously there is the headline-grabbing news that Keiser may be planning as many five courses at the resort around 4 hours from Chicago and Minneapolis. But there is also this element to the project worth noting:
In addition, he plans to restore an adjacent 7,200 acres for public use and bring it back to its natural state with jack pine, hill oak and prickly pear cactus that would improve the habitat for the endangered Karner blue butterfly and Kirtland’s warbler.
The first course, dubbed Sand Valley, designed by two-time Masters winner Ben Crenshaw and Bill Coore, will open its first full year of play next week. The second course, Mammoth Dunes, designed by David McLay Kidd, will open in June for what is called preview play, and a par-3 course is set to open in 2018.
The property includes two 12-room lodges; four cottages, each with four rooms; a $6 million, 30,000-square-foot clubhouse and lounge with 17 guest rooms; and one of the largest private wastewater treatment facilities in the state.
Visit Scotland polled over 3,000 UK golfers to "find Scotland's best golf holes and hidden golfing gems," and maybe because I liked the findings so much, wish they had asked and shared even more questions. 
Hard to argue with the winning Best View, especially with Kevin Markham's image from Cruden Bay's 9th tee.
The poll asked golfers to vote for the best opening and closing holes, a best Par 3, 4 and 5, as well as the best view and a best overall hole from a selection of shortlisted holes across the country. The poll highlighted both what makes Scotland’s famous courses so iconic and invited entrants to support local heroes and suggest their favourite golf holes.
Here is our list of the best golf holes in Scotland as voted for by golfers across the UK.
This BBC version lists how many votes the winners received.
Erik Matuszewski of Forbes fills us in on the long anticipated return of City Park, destroyed by Hurricane Katrina twelve years ago and reopened after a $24 million renovation.
He writes:
The championship-caliber course about 10 minutes from downtown is the centerpiece of a $24 million project in New Orleans City Park, with aspirations it will be on par with prominent public venues such as Bethpage State Park’s Black Course in New York or Torrey Pines outside San Diego. They picked the right man for the job, as Bayou Oaks architect Rees Jones also overhauled both of those U.S. Open sites.
“Torrey Pines plays 65,000 rounds on the South Course a year. With Bethpage Black, you basically have to wait in line to get on it,” says Jones. “I think that’s going to be the same situation here at City Park because it’s going to be the premier golf course in the region.”
Don Ames's story includes a mention of the championship course as a possible Zurich Classic host some day and this on the fees:
"If you're a Louisiana resident, the fees are between $59 and $99, depending on the day, time of year, twilight...all that good stuff," Hopper says. "And, it includes the cart and a bucket of balls. You can still play the park's north course for about 25 dollars."
He says out-of-state golfers will pay as much as $179 to play the new course.
There is also this drone flyover:
Ralph K.M. Haurwitz of the Austin American-Statesman on news that the Texas state Senate voted 21-10 to transfer Lions Municipal Golf Course ownership from the University of Texas to the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department. The bill now goes to the House.
This part made me chuckle given university plans for years to develop the course. What beacons of the community!
UT-Austin President Gregory L. Fenves offered in January to extend the city of Austin’s lease for Muny after it expires in May 2019 — provided that the city is willing to pony up lease payments that are closer to market value. Fenves testified before a Senate panel that the market value would be around $6 million a year, about 12 times the current rate paid by the city, which has operated the course for decades.
The Save Muny folks are understandably pleased:
A post shared by Save Muny - Austin, Texas (@savemuny) on
The Masters press conferences always seem to make players up their game in architectural and course setup assessments. 
Three favorites from today's 2017 pre-tournament pressers, starting with Adam Scott on how he gets reacquainted with the course.
ADAM SCOTT: Yeah, the couple things that really come to mind as I think about that quickly is the severity of the slope on the fairway and standing on uneven lies. Sunday here, my second shot into 2, I had a perfect tee shot and I had a 3‑iron into the green, and as I walked into the bowl, I was shocked at how severe the downslope was and had to back off and completely readjust to how I was going to hit the shot. It's very severe, even though it doesn't look it, because there's so much slope everywhere else, I think you can sometimes be fooled. That's one of the big things.
The other thing for me is when I look at my aim points off tees, I think of 10 especially, there's been a branch up in the top of a tree that I look at every year to get that line. That's an important tee shot to kind of have to move one, and so I just check that that same branch is there and if it's not, I don't know what I'll do. But it was there again this year, a little U‑shape up in the top of the trees there through the fairway.
Those kind of eye lines and comfort things that have obviously been in the last five or six years really comfortable for me here, I check those. I've felt very comfortable getting back on the greens this year, probably more so than ever. I feel like now I'm really getting a good understanding of the fall lines and the few little nuances they have here, because obviously they are very tricky at times. So I feel very comfortable with that.
And they are the kind of things ‑‑ but my level of comfort here the last five years has grown so much, and now it's far less daunting coming here than in the past.
Q. And 13th tee shot?
ADAM SCOTT: It's really condition‑dependent. If there's a little help, I like to hit the driver and aim it at the kind of corner of the trees through the fairway, and if it draws, then it's perfect. And if it doesn't, it's 50/50 it might get a bounce to the left in the grass and it might go in the pine straw. But I think if there's a bit of help, I can hit it long enough. I know I can carry the corner of the trees, not the highest point like Dustin Johnson hits it over, but I can get across the corner and it's worth trying to get a 7‑ or an 8‑iron in on a helping wind. And if it's not helping, I'm very comfortable just hitting a 3‑wood pretty straight. It's now 200‑maybe‑yard run‑out up there, if you just hit a nice 3‑wood, it shouldn't run out. So it's not a real priority for me to turn it around the corner.
Phil Mickelson on the delicate art of lengthening and how a golf course should properly ebb-and-flow.
Q. You've designed some great golf courses like Whisper Rock, and now that the Club has room to move the tee back on No. 5, No. 2 and possibly No. 13 one day, would you be in favor of that?
PHIL MICKELSON: Well, longer is longer. Longer isn't always better. Sometimes it is; sometimes it isn't. I think that you want to make the hard holes harder, but you don't want to make the ‑‑ you want to actually make the easier holes easier.
So when you start looking at the birdie holes, which are the par 5s, the last thing you really want to do is continue to lengthen them to where they are not reachable and they become just a wedge game for everybody. Loses a lot of excitement and it loses a lot of greatness.
But to move a hole back like No. 5 or No. 11 that are designed to be the tougher holes out there and sandwiched in the middle of a round in between birdie holes, like 2 and 3, I don't think ‑‑ I think that's a good thing. So you want to make the hard holes harder, but you've got to be strategic on what holes those are.
I think when you make an easy hole, like 7, one of the toughest pars on the golf course, it changes the entire dynamic of how the golf course plays.
And Jordan Spieth with general thoughts on why excites him about the place.
Q. I'm just curious, what is it about Augusta, Jordan, that appeals to you, that suits your eye and that allows you to elevate your game in such a way?
JORDAN SPIETH: Well, I like the golf course specifically. I like the elevation changes, the sidehill lies, the pull to Rae's Creek, the way it affects putts. It's imaginative golf. It's feel golf and I really enjoy that; when I can go away from technicality and towards feel, it's an advantage for me personally, compared to how I play other places.
I really love the tournament. It's pure golf. When we get to the driving range, it's just us. It's myself, my caddie, my coach. No offense; there's nobody else on the range, and that's actually kind of nice for a change to be able to feel like you're not pulled in any direction. You can just get out there and get done what you want to get done.
And then obviously, just the feel, the crowds, leading into the tournament is second to none. I really like that and am able to feed off that. Rounds like today, just played the back nine, and just had a great time out there. It was just a lot of fun. You don't come away from a lot of Tuesdays saying that. It was just a neat experience in itself.
Kirk Bohls reports that Jordan Spieth has entered the design world as a consultant to Roy Bechtol on a par-3 course for UT Golf Club in Austin.
The course will be called The Spieth Lower 40.
“I’m excited about it,” Spieth said. “It’s going to be a cool little par-3 golf course that will be demanding visually but still fair for really solid wedge and short game work. I was definitely very hands on. I looked at the blueprints, the mapping, the scale. It’s cool being part of the design process with Roy because I’m interested in doing that later in life.”
The 4.5 acre course is under construction with a goal to open in September according to coach John Fields.
In the coming months I'm going to start rolling out "Eye On Design" videos focusing on various design elements in golf that either interest me or need to be reconsidered. While it's not sexy to kick off with the "variable distance" ball topic, we might as well try to wrap our heads around what I anticipate will be a lively debate centered around golf course design.
To set this complicated topic up, here are my thoughts presented in digital video form. I flesh a few more thoughts out to (hopefully) better inform your votes...
For us technophobic, distance RIPer's, things have come a long way over the last decade. Just look at your reaction to the WGC Dell Match Play last week where we saw epic driving distances on fairways playing at a nice, normal firmness.
A consensus of serious golfers see that distance increases for elite players have altered the brilliance and safety of our best-designed courses. This combination of improved technology, blatant outsmarting by manufacturers and a host of other elements like Trackman and instruction, have forced the governing bodies to defend expensive and offensive alterations to works of art.
No other sport pats itself on the back more than golf for upholding its traditions and integrity. Yet no the other sport has sold its soul to protect a relationship between participation and the equipment professionals play. A relationship, which I might add, will continue even after a bifurcation of the rules.
Fast forward 22 years and the amazing synergy of athleticism, fitting, instruction and technology has produced super-human driving distances for decent golfers on up to the best. No other sport on the planet has tolerated such a dramatic change in short time, so should we see 10% taken off the modern driving distance average of an elite golfer--at certain courses and events--the sky will not fall. The players who use such a ball would restore the strategy and intrigue of most golf courses built before 1995. (That was the year, not coincidentally, when things started to change.)
Several solutions that do not fundamentally alter the sport have been offered endlessly. They've also been resisted even as the game has not grown during a technology boom that has seen golfers offered the best made and engineered equipment in the game's history. Solutions such as reducing the size of the driver head for professionals and tournament-specific golf balls have not been welcomed or even tried.
The growing sense that a first step solution is on the way arrived when the USGA’s Mike Davis suggested at the recent Innovation Symposium that a “variable distance” ball could be an alternative for select courses and select social situations.
From Mike Stachura’s Golf World report, quoting Davis:
“We don’t foresee any need to do a mandatory rollback of distance. We just don’t see it. But that’s different than saying if somebody comes to us and says I want an experience that doesn’t take as long or use as much land, can we allow for equipment to do that?”
As we know, the proposed rules of golf re-write emphasizes speeding up the game and everyone knows adding new back tees has never helped on this front. For the first time, elite golfers are suggesting they see the correlation between distance and new tees, but are also tired of walking back to such tees on golf courses where the flow of the round is fundamentally altered.
Beyond the pace and silliness of it all, all indications suggest the USGA and R&A have also developed ways for the handicap system to address a variable distance ball that could be used in select circumstances.
Perhaps it's a club championship and is employed in lieu of extra rough or greens Stimping 13 feet. Or it's an invitational tournament played from tees other than the back. Or maybe there are golf courses experiencing pace of safety issues that will require golfers use such a ball?
On the social side, I expect the case to be made for golfers of different levels playing the same tees thanks to the variable distance ball, Since Davis’s remarks, I have been surprised how many golfers have told me this would make their Saturday foursomes a more cohesive affair, with everyone playing the same tees and the short hitters not frightened by getting fewer shots from a scratch golfer using a shorter flying ball.
Most of all, such a ball on certain courses would return certain skills (hitting a long iron approach?) and end decades of pretending golf does not have an integrity problem.
I point all of this out because Davis’s remarks were no accident. Whether anyone likes it or not, this ball is coming. The variable ball will not be forced, just another way to play the game. The British ball did not break the sport and neither will this option. Because that's all it is, an option. Given that The Masters arrives next week featuring long fairway grain mown toward the tee to prevent roll, I believe the variable distance ball will again be on the minds of all watching.
With that in mind, your votes, please!
Question 1:
Even in the age of Google, I've recently gotten this question about a few courses--usually Torrey, Pebble and the Old Course--so it's nice to see Jason Scott Deegan put together a list of the tough tee time gets, and how to get them.
He writes about all of the above mentioned and others.
The only thing I'd add is this story on East Lothian golf for Golf Digest that includes some links to the courses in that region, including Muirfield.
Thanks to reader PG for catching photographer David Cannon's Tweeted first-look images of the new 7th and 8th holes at Royal Portrush.
The holes were created for The Open Championship's arrival in 2019, allowing for the use of the current 17th and 18th holes as staging.
First views of new 7th and 8th at @royalportrush ready for @TheOpen in 2019 great job by @golfarchitects #martinebert @GettySport #brilliant pic.twitter.com/jCYHH7oNiR
— David Cannon (@Cannonball63) March 1, 2017
Geoff Shackelford is a Senior Writer for Golfweek magazine, a weekly contributor to Golf Channel's Morning
Copyright © 2022, Geoff Shackelford. All rights reserved.
