Do you see yourself spending more of your time designing golf
courses in the future?
Yes, very much so. I’m a rancher so I have an appreciation for
soil and for water on the conservation angle. My motto in golf architecture is
beauty. I like to add beauty to a piece of ground that I work on. If people work
all week, when they go out to play golf they want to be surround by birds and
nature and beauty.
My concept on golf design is a lot different than many of the golf
architects that are building long golf courses. I don’t believe you have to
build them long to make them great.
Anybody can make a par 3 tough if they make it 210 yards, but it
takes a lot of skill to build a 130-yard par-3 that’s really tough. I believe
that I can build a par 3 that’s 130 yards long that will make you choke as much
as any hole in the world. It takes skill to do that.
That’s why I like Harbour Town. Harbour Town is a very short golf
course and yet it is one of the great golf courses of the world. The greens are
not undulating. I am completely against undulating greens. All the architects
are building more undulating greens and the members cannot handle them. I want
to build golf courses that the members enjoy playing.
You have to build golf courses flatter, and you have to build them
smaller, because when you build them smaller, you don’t have such high
maintenance costs. It’s all very well for me to build a golf course and take my
money and go, but people are going to live there. They are going to carry on the
golf courses, and the maintenance costs on many of these courses are very high.
So I’m very conscious of maintenance.
I believe that when a member gets in a bunker, he should not have
to play a bunker shot into a big rolling green. It’s tough enough to play a
straightforward shot. I like to build my tees strategically and with different
shapes. I like to create different holes—all 18 holes must be completely
different. The holes should be built around nature. Bring nature right to the
holes. I like to have different kinds of grasses. I like contrasts of grasses
like they have in Scotland.
So you basically prefer the classical school of architecture?
I don’t like much of the modern day architecture at all. I prefer
the old type, like Donald Ross and Dick Wilson. Pine Valley. That’s my idea of
perfection too, where you drive to a fairway area—it’s placing golf. Bringing
skill and finesses into the game. If you bring in skill and finesses, the long
hitter still has the advantage if he hits is straight.
One also has to have respect for the amount of ground you use.
Most golf courses built today are in residential communities. I can
strategically place more homes around my golf courses by not using too much
ground for the course.
People are taking so long to play that it costs the club money and
it hurts family life. You should never take more than four hours for a round of
golf. That’s plenty. Today they’re taking up to six and seven hours to play
golf.
