Designing Men : Today’s Golf Architects Sculpt With Bulldozers

The first Los Angeles Country Club golf course was laid out with a butcher knife, nine tomato cans and a bucket of oily sand.

The site was “out on the outskirts of Los Angeles,” 16 acres near the intersection of Pico and Alvarado, which first had to be rented and cleared. When that was done, members used the knife to dig holes in the dusty field so the tomato cans could be placed in the ground. The oily sand was spread around the cup to serve as a putting surface.

Membership cost $5. Management apologized for the stiff fee, but said it was needed to buy shovels and more oil. Pieces of chicken wire were tacked to benches placed in strategic places as hazards and to catch errant shots that might be headed for Pico Boulevard.

The land had once been a garbage dump, which led to an item in the Los Angeles Examiner announcing the grand opening: “Nine holes for golf and nine hundred holes for gophers.”

The year was 1897.

Golf course architecture and construction have changed in the ensuing 90 years as much as has the membership and playing facilities at the Los Angeles Country Club, which moved to its present site straddling Wilshire Boulevard in Beverly Hills in 1911.

The famed North Course, completed in 1921 almost as it stands today, was designed by George Thomas, a prosperous rose fancier from Pennsylvania who also was the architect for the Bel-Air and Ojai Valley courses.

The North Course was designed, Thomas said at the time, “to humble the greatest of golfers if they didn’t give it great concentration.”

It still does. With a par of 71 and a rating of 74.3, it is considered one of the finest--and most difficult--courses in the country.

For more than 400 years after the Scots laid out St. Andrews in 1414, the direction and character of courses were dictated almost entirely by existing terrain. Most were on wind-swept sand dunes where the only grass grew in hollows between the dunes. If the grass needed clipping, it was done by grazing sheep.

The invention of the bulldozer in 1920 and other earth-moving equipment made great courses a possibility on sites never considered suitable: Swampland (Sawgrass, Hilton Head, Tournament Players Club), mountainsides (Banff, La Quinta Hotel, Eagle Vail), deserts (most Palm Springs area courses), dump sites (Industry Hills, Mountaingate, Brookside), reclaimed lakes (Firestone North) and even atop a lava flow (Mauna Lani in Hawaii).

The movement and shifting of earth and the planting of trees and shrubbery where the land was barren became part of the architect’s game.

“Building a golf course today is more like an exercise in sculpture,” says Robert Trent Jones Jr., architect of the new Cota de Caza course in southeast Orange County which is scheduled to open Saturday. “The bulldozers are the sculpting tools.”

When the late William F. Bell was commissioned to build the Industry Hills courses on a refuse disposal area in the City of Industry, he moved more than 6 million cubic yards of dirt, cutting away a mountain of debris-filled dirt to form a terraced hill.

When Jones Jr. was faced with beautifying a lackluster par-3 hole on the Sentry World course near Stevens Point, Wis., he planted 90,000 flowers around the bunkers protecting the green, making it one of the most beautiful hazards in golf.

Jones’ father, who is America’s best known, if not most controversial, golf architect, once wrote: “One has to the cut the cloth to suit the pattern, and since nature never repeats itself, any given piece of property is different from all others.”

The basic design, however, came from St. Andrews. The old Royal & Ancient Golf Club was originally 22 holes, 11 going away from the clubhouse and and 11 returning. In 1764, several holes were consolidated to make 18 holes, which became the standard from then on.

Many reasons have been advanced for why 18 holes, but around the clubhouse at St. Andrews, the favorite is that 18 was the number of swigs it took a drain a bottle of Scotch whisky and the recommendation was one per hole.

These days, Arnold Palmer, Jack Nicklaus and Tom Watson are heavily involved in course design. Nothing new about that. The earliest golf architects were the best players.

Allan Robertson, head professional at St. Andrews in the early 1800s, is generally considered the first golf architect, and Charles B. Macdonald, winner of the first United States Amateur at Newport, R.I., in 1895, is considered the first American golf architect.

Macdonald built the country’s first 18-hole course, the National Golf Links of America, in 1909 on Long Island, alongside Shinnecock Hills, site of last year’s United States Open.

Macdonald introduced new ideas into course design, such as undulating greens, absence of blind approach shots and protective bunkers around the putting areas.

Early American architects, even Macdonald, often created courses by designing each hole after a favorite one back in Scotland or England. When the Santa Anita county course was built in Arcadia by the WPA during the Great Depression, each hole was a copy of one from a famous course in the East.

Most great golfers, when they take up course architecture, design the 18 holes best suited for the type game with which they are most familiar--their own.

William Fownes, for instance, won the United States Amateur in 1910, but he was a notoriously short hitter who had a magical short game. When he designed the Oakmont course overlooking the Allegheny River near Pittsburgh, he set out to make it the toughest short course in the world.

“A shot poorly played should be a shot irrevocably lost,” he said. Over the years, he succeeded in making Oakmont so difficult that when the Open was played there in 1983 very few players used a driver.

“Oakmont takes the driver out of your hands,” said Seve Ballesteros, who drove with an iron throughout the tournament.

Walter Travis, a three-time U.S. Amateur and British Amateur champion, was a master at moving the ball around, from right to left or left to right. So, when he redesigned the Garden City course in New York, he created situations where players had to fade the ball on some holes and hook on others. He placed deep pot bunkers at strategic places for shots that didn’t bend the way he laid out the holes.

“I wanted a thinking man’s course,” he said. “Pot bunkers never hurt players, so long as they stayed out of them.”

Nicklaus denies it, but Jones Jr. claims the Golden Bear’s courses are designed around his own game.

“Look at Muirfield Village, where he holds the Memorial,” Jones said. “You have to hit long tee shots up a hill on most holes, then play down to a small green well-guarded. If you’re not a long hitter, and can’t carry over the hill, it’s extremely difficult to reach the green.”

Despite the number of quality players who have designed courses since golf came to this country, many of the great ones have been created by men who were only average golfers. Their work has fallen loosely into three categories--strategic, penal and heroic.

Donald Ross, who studied under old Tom Morris at St. Andrews, came to Boston in 1898, where his work caught the eye of James Tufts, a wealthy industrialist who was planning a resort in Pinehurst, N.C. Ross’ famous Pinehurst No. 2, with its straight forward fairways and its easy-to-see greens, became the pattern for strategic courses.

Its trademark was elevated greens, surrounded by undulating surfaces so that if a shot missed the green, it set up a difficult chipping situation. There were few bunkers, but the greens were small and the putting surfaces so subtle that it was not easy to get a ball to stop close to the hole.

Other classic strategic courses are Augusta National, home of the Masters, and Cypress Point, one of the Crosby originals. Both were built by Alistair MacKenzie, who also designed Royal Melbourne in Australia, generally rated among the top five courses in the world.

Augusta National has wide fairways, no rough and is not extremely long, but the holes laid out by MacKenzie and Bobby Jones--the golfer, not the architect--can frustrate the best of players if they take the course for granted. Nearly each hole offers a birdie opportunity, but if missed, it can quickly become a bogey--or worse.

Augusta National was also the first course to be designed to allow vantage points for spectators. It was years ahead of the current trend toward what PGA Commissioner Deane Beman calls stadium courses, such as the Tournament Players Club in Ponte Vedra, Fla.

Cypress Point, the Monterey Peninsula course that MacKenzie considered his jewel, has one of the most difficult holes in the world, the 220-yard ocean-carry No. 16 that is almost unreachable for the average player. But, in keeping with MacKenzie’s strategic plan, it has a lay-up area to the left where the timid, or short hitting, player can put his shot.

The penal courses, such as Pine Valley, Oakmont, TPC and PGA West, offer few such accommodations. They are prime examples of what is called target golf, where each shot must be spotted precisely to set up the following shot.

Pine Valley, in New Jersey, was considered the most difficult in the country until Pete Dye began building courses like the TPC and PGA West, which combine target golf with exceptional length. Oakmont, with its tight fairways and nearly 200 bunkers--that’s more than 10 for each hole--was the first true penal course.

Dye’s trademark is his use of railroad ties. He used more than 8,000 of them at the Oak Tree course in Edmund, Okla., and another 5,000 at PGA West. One touring pro once said that Dye built the only golf courses that could go up in flames.

Dye’s courses are also characterized by severely contoured greens, deep pot bunkers, 200-yard wasteland bunkers and elevated tees and greens bulwarked by his railroad ties.

“True players don’t like playing Pete Dye’s courses because there is no way out,” Jones Jr. said. “Pete’s a good friend of mine but sometimes I think he grew up in a penal colony.”

Jones’ father is the proponent of heroic courses, a term he uses to describe his own handiwork.

“I look on my courses as a compromise between the strategic and penal schools,” said the elder Jones, who was the architect of 21 courses selected by Golf Digest among the 100 best in the country. “Each hole should be a hard par and an easy bogey.”

Jones’ trademarks are huge greens, long teeing areas and diagonal hazards.

He gained his reputation as an innovative architect when he designed the Peachtree course in Atlanta for Bobby Jones.

The greens averaged 8,000 feet--more than double the area of a normal putting surface--and one, No. 10, was 10,000 feet. Three putts are commonplace, four putts not uncommon since the greens also are contoured so that it often appears as if they were an elephant’s burial ground.

By using long tee boxes, Jones could create a difference of as much as 100 yards on a hole. This also had an accordion effect on the course that enabled players to test their skills on a course from 5,500 yards to as much as 7,400.

The diagonal hazards, often a pond or a stream, created the situations that led to Jones’ use of the word heroic.

“A player can be as heroic as he wants,” he once said as he looked across a lake that was cut alongside the fairway like a crescent. “A timid player can hit his shot to the right, a less timid player can cut off some of the lake and the really heroic player can try to go straight across. You can be as heroic as you want. It’s up to the player.”

Jones Jr. worked with his father until 1971, when he went out on his own because he thought the elder Jones was making courses too difficult for the average player.

“My father was obsessed with making courses hard, while it was my belief that courses should be a fair test for everyone, not just the professionals,” young Jones said.

Cota de Caza, however, looks more like an elder Trent Jones course. At 7,086 yards, it is the longest in Orange County, and from its championship length, would appear to be one of the most difficult. From the forward tees--no one calls them women’s tees anymore--it plays a modest 5,632 yards.

Johnny Miller, former U.S. Open winner who played a preview round, calls the 410-yard 17th, where a large oak sits in the middle of the fairway, and 420-yard 18th, where an arm of a meandering stream parallels the green, “the most demanding driving holes I’ve ever seen.”

Sounds like something that might be said for one of Pete Dye’s courses.