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.

Do you think maintenance costs are the real key to this problem?

Maintenance costs are a big factor in building golf courses today. With large undulating greens, enormous bunkers and long golf courses, your maintenance costs go sky high . And I’ll tell you what, they are going to go up much more in the future. People building golf courses better start thinking about that. I have a man in my company who goes to country clubs and advises them on how to run the club and make money. That’s important.

What do you think of PGA West?

I don’t like it—and I am an admirer of Peter Dye. The best job Pete Dye ever did is right here [Harbour Town]. Why he didn’t continue his golf courses like this I don’t know, because this is the best. But he’s gotten away from this. I’m very disappointed in the way he’s gone. He’s done some absolutely tremendous work right down the road at Long Cove—a beautiful golf course. But he’s getting away from that now. He’s going to big undulating, severe greens, and I don’t know why he’s doing that, because he’s such a talented man. I’m disappointed.

It seems like some of the people with money in the country want to build monuments to themselves and are asking architects to build the toughest courses in the country,

They’re creating monsters.

Do you think that down the road, 10 or 15 years from now, we’ll have some white elephants that will have to be remodeled?

I do. I think they’ll have to be re-done. When members see how long it’s taking them to play, and they have to make five-foot putts all day, they’re not going to enjoy it. That is why I want to start a new trend—building courses that people will enjoy. If people enjoy the course, and they can get around in a decent amount of time, the club will generate more revenue; because people will spend more time and money in the clubhouse instead of on the golf course. At a lot of golf courses, people just want to get the heck out of there.

What do you think of Jack Nicklaus’ golf courses?

Jack is very talented. There are many talented architects, but I really think they’re building golf courses that are too undulating and too tough. That’s just my opinion.