When I set out to look at the land at Seven Mile Beach over ten years ago, it was my first serious attempt to actually go and see if the land was suitable for golf.
As a junior golfer, my friends and I would wonder why Royal Hobart (RHGC) was built on the flat land away from the beach versus the rumpled beach frontage outside of the Oasis Takeaway shop. We didn’t even walk that far in to see, but we knew It had to be better than the RHGC site. Sure I remembered the larger dunes from messing around out there when I was a kid, but I never had golf on my mind back then.
That day I came away convinced that someone could build a golf course out there. I got in contact with Michael Clayton (Clayts), sent him a few pictures and asked if he could come down and take a look.
I didn’t pretend to have any idea what a “good” raw site for golf is. I was a Pro Golfer-usually the worst person to ask about the quality of a course. If your score started with a six, course is good. A seven? Average. An 8, the course sucked or the USGA had ruined it.
Pros tend to look at courses through the lens of “fairness” (which is a euphemism for “I cant believe I hit a perfect shot and it ended up in that ridiculous bunker. He pull hooked it up on the hill and it came all the way back and made birdie”). They think all offline shots should be punished equally and all good shots rewarded equally. The concept of a good shot getting punished because a great shot is required or that a poor shot can be erased by a great recovery isn’t held in high regard.
After Clayts had visited, he not only said it was a great site, he said it was the best raw site he had ever seen.
You can imagine I was A: excited and B: considered myself the foremost expert in raw golf sites in the world, as I had found this one.
When the first routing plan was sent from OC (Ogilvy Clayton) I was a little surprised to discover that all the exciting land I had predicted holes to be on wasn’t used. Those areas were too choppy, too extreme. “Why would you build in areas that required dramatic earth moving when you have perfect land a little to the west?” I am paraphrasing here but that was a quick compilation of the responses I got to my probing questions.
My number one ranking was unceremoniously revoked. On the walk in to find the best land I had walked straight past it.
Undeterred, I did what any apprentice (self-appointed) would do. I started to read all the books, seek the best courses and spend more time focusing on what the architect may have been thinking, asking what strategies are implied and how the routing felt (I say felt as – just like US Supreme Court said about porn “I know it when I see it”. Or in this case feel it.) I even spent most days checking in and reading current and archived threads on Golf Club Atlas .com (I know right!)
There are many courses I haven’t seen. I was lucky enough to spend the past few days playing Sand Hills Golf Club in Nebraska, regarded as the best golf course built in over fifty years. I am not going to give you a review beyond it’s a special place.
To put Sand Hills in it’s proper perspective, you have to teleport back to the mid nineties, put on your over sized polo, pleated khakis and head to the latest residential development in Arizona, Nevada or Florida. Golf course architecture was about amenities, emerald green expanses dotted with deep sapphire hazards and a guaranteed trip back to the pro shop for more balls at the turn.
I have heard various versions of the story behind Sand Hills but I am sure that Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw couldn’t have signed up quick enough to have the opportunity to build on that land. It must have been a treat to know that you were building golf where it was supposed to be and not where a developer wanted it to be. (Quick little side note I thought about using “Golf where it’s supposed to be…” as the tagline for 7MB but then realized Bandon Dunes uses “Golf as its meant to be…”)
To the average American golfer, Sand Hills must have felt like golf from another planet. It completely changed the direction of Golf Course Architecture, ushering in the era of “minimalism” to the point where it feels like most courses built since then are another (read: poorer – eek) version of Sand Hills.
It was during dinner that I posited the question: if Sand Hills was built today would it be as highly regarded ? would it be successful ?
I have played a lot of ‘great’ courses, so many that I can now say I am not sure what actually makes them great.
The response revealed they are not the same thing; “greatness” and “success” are two different metrics. Greatness being the opinion of raters and Tom Doak (lolz) and success being measured by how far you’ve had to discount your green fees since year one.
Cue sleepless nights over the question “Can a great course be unsuccessful ?”.
Clearly I am well aware of the risks involved in any business, having read Nassim Taleb’s “Fooled by Randomness.” I assume I am just an idiot that gets lucky every now and again and tries to pass it off as brilliance.
The main point of my question was: if the prettiest tree in a forest of pretty trees falls down, how do we know it was the prettiest ? And how many more trees do I need to cut down to get a Doak 9 ?
The whole time the main ethos behind Seven Mile Beach has been to build the best course possible.
I was lucky enough to be hosted by the Superintendent during my visit to Sand Hills. Apart from being a great guy with a perfect low cut well suited to navigate the winds, Kyle said something that really caught my attention. He said that when the course was being built there wasn’t any lofty ambition of being the greatest course ever built. From day one Dick Youngscap had a clear idea of what the club and course should be. The course was going to be low key, no frills and under budget. It had to have a Nebraska feel, Nebraskan values (the most important rule at the club is treating all the staff with absolute respect and courtesy) and showcase the Nebraskan Sand Hills. He nailed the first two and Coore Crenshaw took care of the rest.
Building the best course possible is a lofty goal but I think I will be adding a few more goals to the list for Clayton DeVries & Pont.
-Tasmanian Feel
-Tasmanian Values
-Showcase the Tasmanian Landscape
If we get that right, success is sure to follow.
