The golfer attacks, the designer defends. Such is the adversarial relationship that defines the creation of a golf course. At one extreme, it is easy to create a course where few would ever break a hundred. At the other, a course too easily defended quickly results in a loss of interest. The overriding objective of good course design is a balance between these extremes, creating an effective and rewarding experience for golfers at all levels of play.
In order to accomplish this objective, our design philosophy centers upon three major elements:
Flexibility,
Memorability,
Natural Beauty.
Flexibility...
In order for a golf course to challenge golfers of widely ranging ability, each hole must provide an intrinsic capability to vary its level of difficulty. Multiple tees, strategically placed hazards, and pin settings of various rigors are three of the ways of varying the challenge each day. Just as importantly, each hole should provide a more subtle capability of rewarding a good shot and progressively penalizing a bad one. As the skill of the player increases, the course should narrow the definition of a good shot, thus demanding greater skill and accuracy by the golfer in order to be rewarded. Several holes should also provide a heroic opportunity – that is an alternative to the safe way of playing the hole is offered which allows the golfer to gamble his skill against the chance of saving a stroke. All of these goals are used to integrate the course into a single ever-changing entity that can be fun, exciting, challenging, rewarding, and frustrating to golfers of widely divergent skills all at the same time.
Memorability...
A mark of a good golf course design is where each and every hole is distinctly memorable, not only in aesthetics but in play-ability as well. Eighteen discrete challenges must be presented that require the golfer to use a variety of shots to score effectively. One hole may reward a long fade to the left. Another might demand a short shot with an ability to stop the ball quickly. The penalty for an errant shot on one hole might provide an opportunity for recovery out of a sand trap. On another hole, the same error may invoke the finality of water. Our goal is to provide the golfer with sufficient variety to allow the recall of each and every hole and how it was played long after the round is over.
Natural Beauty...
Good golf courses improve with age. Designs that integrate the strategic elements of the game within their natural surroundings provide for an experience far greater than the challenge of the course itself. The maintenance and strategic use of existing natural elements such as streams, wetlands, trees and shrubbery within the design of the course is a primary objective. The basic contours of the land are also preserved whenever possible. When the new features are added, they are designed and constructed in such a way as to blend naturally with those that already exist. With time, the course should develop a fine patina, almost as if it were carved by nature rather than by the hand of man. And playing it should invoke the same exhilaration as a walk through a park on a glorious spring day.
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Deserts...
Flat as a mountain lake on a windless day; most desert sites always seem to start out this way. In some respects, a blank featureless canvas is an advantage, allowing the architect to mold and sculpt at will. Without the natural variation that nature provides, however, creating diversity and movement over eighteen holes can be a challenge. One solution is to undulate the contours creating high and low points that may vary as much as ten or twenty feet on a single hole. We are also well known for pioneering the integration of waterscapes into the design. One of the most rewarding comments we often hear about courses such as the Marriot Desert Springs pictured here is “I can’t believe I’m really in the desert.” On the seventeenth, a pin setting on right shrinks the landing area from an island to a postage stamp. |
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Tropics and Forests...
One of the main challenges of designing in lush natural setting is the preservation of what nature has already provided in abundance. Melding the course into the natural topography and existing vegetation is very high priority. Understanding the man made features allows them to blend unobtrusively, thus allowing the location itself to dominate the senses. In more recent years, increasing environmental awareness and a desire to preserve and protect areas of high ecological value have made this integration ever more important. Carved from a dense forest of Cedar and Douglas Fir in the 1960's, Sahalee Country Club has been consistently rated among the top 100 courses in America. |
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Mountains...
Perhaps the greatest challenge in design is posed by sites of extreme terrain. The trick is to mute the elevation changes to the extent of making the course a joy to play while making it appear as if the natural topography has not been changed at all. While playing upslope, quality design seeks to absorb most of the climb between the holes - downhill, the full elevation change can be absorbed within the hole itself, often with spectacular results. At the Experience at Koele, pictured here, the eighth hole drops 160 feet from the tee to the fairway before it tucks back into a natural ravine. A single tree stands as a sentinel to the green. |
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