When we hired him, Bambi knew nothing about golf.  Like a lot of child actors, he’d knocked around a bit after his adolescent success.  He’d been recommended to us as someone who could find his way through the woods, even if the forest was on fire.  We suspected that this ability would translate into a kind of instinctive grasp of what makes a good golf hole.   That suspicion proved correct.  Bambi was an incredibly quick learner.   The first site we visited, he went crashing into the underbrush, leaving broken branches and a trail of surprisingly small and delicate hoof prints for us to follow.   Within minutes, we realized that we had found the design equivalent to Hogan’s secret, an entirely new way to analyze a site.   Within that first hour, Bambi had discovered two incredible par fours and a par five we were sure would soon be featured in a Ron Whitten column.

But we also discovered that he was weak to the point of utter futility on par 3s.   Maybe it was the speed at which he attacked his work.   Maybe his overall grasp of the route plan concept itself was feeble.  The places for short holes would just pass underfoot for Bambi as transition zones between the par fours and par fives, which he loved.  

The idea of the dogleg had made him very nervous at first, too, until we explained that the expression was metaphorical.  Actual dogs were not part of the design process.  Dogs did not play golf, although we did admit that many canines lived on golf courses once they were built to help the green keepers chase ducks and geese away.  Bambi was horrified, frankly, and for a while we were afraid that we’d lost him.    But we convinced him to visit another site, along a secluded lake in northern Saskatchewan that Mike Keiser was looking into developing, shrewdly calculating the long-term impact of global warming on golf.  Once his feet hit the ground, Bambi was back to his old self.

We still struggled for a while over what to do about Bambi’s inability to comprehend not just the importance of the par 3, but the very idea of the short hole.  Over beers one night, tired but happy after tromping across sixty acres and finding more natural holes in an afternoon than exist in the entire portfolios of most members of the ASGCA, we had a heart-to-heart with him about this par 3 issue.  “Short,” we said, holding our hands about a trout apart.  “Not long,” we remonstrated. 

He just stared in his glass.  Around midnight, just before we poured single malt for a rather discouraging and gloomy nightcap, convinced that he would never understand how important the punctuation of short holes was to completing the exuberant collection of par 4s and 5s that was clearly his signature contribution, his eyes suddenly opened wide.   He lifted my shot glass and put it on the edge of the table.  He set his own below it on the arm rest of his chair, looking from one to the other, and then up at us with a hopeful expression.   “Yes!” we said, “Yes!”

Moments later, in a ecstasy of comprehension, he uttered the name that would make our team incomparable: Thumper.

Thumper had been retired for some years and living off residuals when we contacted him.  “Call my agent,” he said.   “Let me talk to him,” said Bambi.  He went over to a quiet spot and was on the phone for nearly an hour.  A smile crossed his lips as he pranced back toward us.  “He’s in.”

Thumper, like Bambi, was a natural.   His hopping technique worked the site in a kind of zig-zag pattern, which turned out to be the perfect mechanism for discovering par 3s hidden in, around and near nooks and crannies.   Thumper was always weary and looking for a place to bail in case he heard a hawk’s cry or the yodel of a coyote, so he was tremendously attuned to the fine print of a site.  His technique was simple and ingenious.    He would ease into a clearing, hop to the high point, lift himself to his full height on his hind legs and survey the surrounding terrain in every direction, his nose twitching with anticipation.  Then he was off, hopping with surprising vigor given his age, and we would wait quietly for as much as twenty minutes until he would reappear, thumping his long right foot into the ground.  We would rush over, plant a marker, and marvel at how precisely his instincts had taken him to a perfect green site.   And while that skill impressed us, what made Thumper unique among the creatures prospecting for golf holes hidden around the planet by Nature’s mysterious means, was how he knew to look for a short par 3, say, and then a long one, and then a medium one—this intuition had to be divine, it could not be random.  So that’s how we came to refer to him as Saint Thumper.

But something was still missing.  We were discovering individual holes without equal, interrogating the sites through the agency of our colleagues’ perfectly tuned natural intelligences, the genetic wisdom of the ages—but how could these discoveries be melded into a whole?  It wasn’t enough to establish the motifs with the brilliance of individual passages—we needed to segue through the site, to link the movements into a single symphonic whole. 

Bambi was drinking more, tired of all the travel and constant requests for interviews.  He also knew that his repertoire of skills had limits, and that he was starting to repeat himself.  That’s what instincts do—they run down the same paths over and over.  It was a troubling insight to such a proud deer. 

And while Bambi’s feet felt the contours of the land, absorbing the terrain with every foot fall, he was also starting to understand that the actual game, as opposed to the course, was played mostly through the air.  To understand golf’s Aeolian aspect, we needed an aerial specialist.   Thumper remembered another old pal, who he hadn’t seen in decades: Friend Owl.

“That guy could spot a mole diving underground at 400 yards,” said Bambi.   “We need him for sure.”

Sadly to say, Friend Owl had passed away some years before.  His eye-sight failing, he flew into the broad side of a barn.  But he left behind a large extended family, and Thumper knew a grandson, Stanley Owlsey, who’d had a difficult youth but had been going straight since getting out of prison.  ‘His vision was so acute he could see into the future,” said Thumper, “so he was always getting ahead of himself.   But he’s got the peepers we need, no question.”

We had Owlsey drug-tested, of course, and he passed with flying colors, so to speak.  From day one, he understood our mission to create only pure, natural, all-species approved courses, whose character was implicit in the attributes of the mother sites.  Our triumvirate revolutionized golf design, leading it back to the 18th century, where it so rightly belonged. 

We lost Thumper first, then Bambi, who never seemed to recover from the loss of his old friend.  (They all thought Flower, who of course had died during his famous humanitarian mission to Canada during the normality crisis of 1966, would have made fundamental contributions to golf design, elaborating on native landscape themes and devising a unique plant palette. But that sweet little skunk never got a chance.)  Owlsey is retired, but still cruises over a site for us now and then, reminding us of what we once had: the perfect, natural alliance of animal spirits devoted to discovering the inner golf hidden deep in Gaia’s soul.

CCTV's Underpants, a Beijng Landmark

China Daily reported in 2010 that Beijing’s population had reached twenty-two million people. (Eight to nine million of these are “non-permanent residents.”) City planners hope to cap Beijing’s size at eighteen million, but that seems implausible—how do you shrink a city that’s already a magnet for every ambitious person in a country of 1.3 billion?

Beijing sprawls across 6,489.5 sq miles, which means, according to Wikipedia, that its land area is slightly larger than the country of Montenegro. The Beijing Visitors Bureau says the city has more than 60,000 official taxis and 130,000 drivers, and that doesn’t count the thousands of black taxis, which I avoid.

Yesterday, two colleagues and I visited a potential golf course site northwest of Beijing, just off the Jingping Expressway near Beijing’s main airport. We hailed a taxi on the street in front of our hotel at mid-day, in the Sanlitun district—what locals call the diplomatic quarter, where the foreign embassies are clustered. We drove 70 kilometers to an area called Pinggu, and the driver—who by coincidence was from Pinggu– waited for us while we spent an hour and a half touring the site. The area was typical of rural Beijing–lots of greenhouses dotting the landscape, all constructed in a simple style: brick walls oriented east and west, with a solid wall on the north and pipes arcing from north to south as scaffolding for sheets of plastic facing into the southern sun. Reed mats are rolled onto the roofs when the greenhouses need to catch the sun, and unrolled at night over the plastic to hold the heat in. It’s a simple but efficient system that helps feed the colossus.

The site we visited was bounded on two sides by a small river or drainage way, with dikes on either side to handle the occasional spring flood. Our guides told us that over the last twenty years stormwater had never crested even to the base of the dikes.  There was a plant nursery in the center of the site, and crews were planting trees along a berm on the main highway running north along the east side of the property.

We rolled back into Beijing on the cusp of rush hour, and the driver managed the ebb and flow of cars, trucks and buses with calm confidence. Being a passenger in the front seat of a Beijing taxi requires some practice, so you’re not in a constant state of panic when the driver turns directly into oncoming traffic to make a left turn, or bears down on a bike or pedestrian caught in the crosswalk.   Somehow it all works out….most of the time.

Traffic was thickening as we passed the underpants, the famous CCTV tower designed by Rem Koolhaas. A pink Ferrari blew past us on the shoulder, its high growl audible over the traffic noise. We were about a block from our hotel when it was clear that we could save twenty minutes and a few RBM (the Yuan, or the people’s money) if we just got out on a side street and hoofed the final few hundred meters.

As we walked to the hotel, we discussed the follow-up letters we needed to write to the potential client we’d just met, planning the rest of our day. Then I discovered that my phone was not in any of the abundance of pockets in my jacket or pants. I was slapping my chest and thighs hoping to feel the blunt rectangle of my I-phone when the sinking feeling hit me—that phone was gone. I had a receipt from the taxi—a 150 kilometer round trip and a 90 minute wait had cost us 530 RMB, or about 85 dollars. (Beijing taxi drivers don’t expect a tip.)

Our Chinese colleague, Vivian Zhou, dialed the phone number on the receipt and managed to get the taxi driver’s mobile number. She called him, and he not only confirmed that the next passenger he picked up, who he described to Vivian as a middle-aged lady, had taken the phone when she got out, but that he was parked in front of the building where he had dropped her. Kirk Miles, my business partner, suggested we call the phone number, but Vivian didn’t think that was a good idea. “That phone’s worth 5,000 RMB in China,” she said. “Let’s go meet the cab driver and try to find her.”  Besides, Vivian’s China Mobile phone wasn’t set up for calls to the USA.  Besides, Vivian said, she was sure the lady was taking the phone.

So with a certain urgency we hailed another cab, and within ten minutes were pulling up in front of an office tower near the Kerry Center, one of Beijing’s premier hotel and shopping areas. Our taxi driver was parked in front of the building.  He went to park his taxi so he could come and help us identify the lady. Then Vivian’s phone rang—and it was the lady with my phone, trying to find me! She had already called the other numbers in the recent calls queue—my wife and my sister-in-law back in Oregon, both of whom were sleeping and ignored the calls. As I was pointing to a dark-haired middle aged lady coming out of the building, mouthing “is that her?”, Vivian was shushing me. “It’s the lady,” she said sotto voce.

Just then the taxi driver came up, and Vivian explained what had happened. With a stuttering of “xie xies” I handed him 300 RMB, which Vivian said was too much for his help, but I would have felt ashamed after what he did had it been any less.

I was going to get my phone back! I was astonished that it had been so easy. We went into the office tower, rode the elevator to the 11th floor, and met Ms. Ma, the honorable lady who had found the phone. She was the CEO of a talent agency and television production company whose clients performed on CCTV, where she had previously worked as an executive producer for a “Chinese Idol” program called “Star Avenue.” Vivian knew this program and a number of the actors and actresses whose pictures were on display. We tried to offer Ms. Ma some reward but she refused.

After we took some pictures and exchanged name cards, we took our leave. But I wanted to give Ms. Ma something, so we went to the shopping center and got a little gift package of scented candles and incense, and I found a card and had Vivian translate a flowery thank-you note, expressing my gratitude and telling Ms. Ma that I hoped every time she smelled the fragrance she would remember the good deed she had done. Vivian kept confessing that she felt bad that she thought the lady was going to steal the phone.  “I feel guilty,” she said.  When we gave Ms. Ma her gift she looked pleased but was not sentimental.  She served us tea at her desk, and was clearly keeping long hours.  “Look at that cot,” Kirk said, pointing to an alcove adjacent to her office.  “She probably sleeps here when she’s working late.”

Despite appearances, Beijing works. The chaos hides a deeper order, built on the honesty of the people and deep cultural layers stressing honor. We’re going to send the taxi company a fancy letter telling its bosses how much we appreciated what the driver did. Vivian said maybe he will get a gold star for his taxi. He deserves it.  And I will now ride Beijing taxis with a greater faith than ever in the skills of the huge fleet’s legions of drivers.

How to Spend Millions Building a Golf Course

Four guests joined the Warriors, which allowed us to test the new “Live Event Leaderboard” scoring technology developed by Grow the Game Golf.  GTGG’s website describes it as “the world’s first cross-platform web and smartphone golf app to put up-to-the-second scoring, a live-event leaderboard and effortless event-management tools all in one place.”   I am sure there are people who know what that means.

Warriors Jeff Wallach and Jay Stuller were in the first group, joined by veteran Desert Sun golf writer Larry Bohannan and a GTGG partner.   Jeff kept that foursome’s score with the GTGG’s app on his I-phone.   I was in the second group with Warrior Peter Kessler, who was riding with Classic Club Director of Golf Brady Wilson.  I was assigned to enter our scores on the GTGG app.

I rode shotgun with Dr. Barry Lotz, a Coachella valley real estate salesman, author, and sports coach who describes himself as “a vertically integrated conglomerate in a very small space.”   Born in South Africa but a US resident for many years, Lotz is the director of the Professional Golf Teaching Association of America, and a “coach,” in his words, “to many touring pros.”

Wallach modestly entered his name on the GTGG scorecard as “El Jefe,” suggesting that he might be expecting tribute.  In my case, alas, he was correct, as he would be for the entire week.  Kessler kept asking me how Wallach was doing, although he never actually called him “Wallach.” Kessler possesses an impressively wide and creative range of pejoratives.

Peter hit the ball well on every hole but putted so poorly on the front nine that we started calling the score for a hole played with a green hit in regulation followed by a three putt a “Kessler.”   You can also use it as a verb.  “Man, you really Kesslered that hole!”  Or, “you need to get off the Kessler train.”   Peter had seven three putts on the front before a brilliant lag on the 9th from above the hole finally yielded a tap-in par.  Kessler hit the ball like Mo Norman but putted like Don Knotts.

Brady Wilson said that he doesn’t get to play much, but confessed to spending a fair amount of time on the putting green.   He was using a Scotty Cameron putter custom-fitted by the master himself for Brady’s stroke.  Every putt tracked on line with flawless pace.  Brady was also the perfect guide for a first encounter with the Classic.  He’d show us how to play the hole by hitting his drive in exactly the right place.  Brady also pointed out where the touring pros found trouble during the Hope, although I was perfectly capable of discovering where you should not hit it without any professional assistance.   My new Callaway RAZR Fit driver continued to provide the best service of any driver I have ever swung, and any successfully played holes on my card were attributable to good drives.   Never loved a club so much.

We played the Classic on a windless, warm day, but when the PGA Tour played the course the wind typically blew pretty hard, creating a condition the pros don’t like: firm fairways combined with tricky winds which made it tough to control trajectory.   At a tournament like the Hope, with its history of very low scores, when players suddenly started posting high numbers it was a shock.   The Classic was the kind of test they were using to facing later in the season, on courses whose reputations as championship venues made them immune from criticism.  Oakmont kills everybody, but no one would have the nerve to complain about it.  That’s what courses like Pete Dye’s TPC at Sawgrass or the Stadium Course at PGA West were for: places the pros felt free to complain about all they wanted because the weight of history and tradition didn’t seal their lips.   There was no reverence or respect to counterbalance their grousing at the Classic, so they indulged in uninhibited whining.   The Classic Club’s reputation fell victim to this dilemma.

The Classic Club was a fair test for the Road Warriors, although we played at just over 6,700 yards as opposed to the 7,500 the pros confronted.   The setting was spectacular: panoramic views of the mountains from most tees, unobstructed by buildings, the near horizon backlit by clear skies as temperatures bumped up into the 80s—a perfect day for winter golf in the desert.   Brady shared some background on the course, which was built by Landscapes Unlimited, the premier course builder in the US, with an essentially unlimited budget.   There are reports that the course alone cost around fifty million dollars, and that was before the clubhouse was built.  No stand-alone course costing that much could possible operate profitably.

The basic cost to build a golf course doesn’t vary much, because you need 18 holes with greens and tees and hazards, with an irrigation system to keep 70 acres or so green, no matter what.   The two big variables affecting cost are how much earth you move and how fancy you get with landscaping and other amenities.   At the Classic Club, according to architect Vicki Martz from Palmer Design, they moved three million cubic yards, which is a big number, and then constructed some elaborate water features before planting thousands of trees, in keeping with the trend started by Steve Wynn with Shadow Creek in Las Vegas to make desert courses look and feel as if they were imported wholesale from North Carolina.   In addition to its elaborate landscaping, the course was fitted with underground cables and other high-tech communications gear to make televising the event easier.   This infrastructure investment is now in every sense of the word a sunken cost that cannot be recovered.

The design also provided plenty of room for galleries to circulate, which is part of why the Classic has such an open, accommodating feel.  The huge clubhouse, too, was built to accommodate the tournament, so it’s much larger than a daily fee course built as a would ever need or could justify.

When Hope Was Alive at the Classic Club

The funds to build the Classic Club were provided by the H.N. & Frances C. Berger Foundation.   The completed course was formally gifted to the Bob Hope Chrysler Classic in January 2005.   Since the Hope, too, was dedicated to charity work in the Coachella Valley, providing it with a world-class venue seemed a good fit for the Berger Foundation.   Then the wind kicked up, desiccating the players’ egos, and the course lost its luster.  Golf.com referred to the course as “the hated, ultra-windy Classic Club,” and noted that after Phil Mickelson shot “a wind-blown final-round 78 there in 2007,” he stopped coming.  The final round scoring average of 74.763 in 2007 was the highest in tournament history.  Not one player had a bogey-free round.

When Mickelson stopped playing the Hope, the Hope—now called the Humana, and hosted by President Bill Clinton—stopped playing at the Classic Club.  In 2008, the tournament re-gifted the Classic Club back to the Berger Foundation, so the players could resume their painless, low-scoring annual paid holiday in the desert.

The Classic Club still honors its charitable purposes, with 7,000 of the annual 37,000 rounds played there contributed to local non-profits for fundraising events.  The course was in wonderful condition, the staff was welcoming, and the lakes yielded seven ProV1s, earning my coveted BallHawker Five Star rating.   I thought the course, the setting, the ambience and the conditioning were all first rate, and recommend the Classic Club as an exceptional daily fee experience.

Rating the Classic Club

Pro Shop and Staff        A

Range                                A

Conditioning                  A

Course Layout               A

Ball Hawking                 Five Stars–clear water, gently sloping lake edges, ideal retrieving conditions.

Classic Club

Indian Wells.

Indian Wells Golf Resort

Anthony Holder is the Head Golf Professional at the Indian Wells Golf Resort, where the Golf Road Warriors played on Saturday, February 25, the penultimate day of the Warriors’ 2012 Palm Springs swing.  Anthony joined the Warriors for our round at Indian Wells’ Players Course, and it was my good fortune to share a cart with him.   Not only did I get to witness some exceptionally fine golf, with booming tee shots and tap-in birdies, I also got a tip on putting after I missed a four foot birdie putt with a flinched, shoulders-flailing, head-waving bunt of a failed stroke that was so unnerving to Anthony’s sense of professional pride that he could not have in good conscience declined to give me some help.  It would have been like a physician refusing to perform the Heimlich on a choking diner in a restaurant. 

Facing me on the green, Anthony told me to set up as if to putt, then reached out with both hands to hold my head still.   As I initiated the stroke, I could feel my head pushing against his right hand like a frisky puppy on a short leash.  “Keep your head still,” he said, kindly.  “Just pick out a dimple on the ball and keep all your attention there while the putter head strokes the ball.” 

It worked, of course.   Every putting tip works the first time you try it, just like a new putter, but this was an order of magnitude level of improvement over my previous “technique.”  Deep down I think I knew that if you swayed and jabbed at the ball with the blade open while looking at the tree tops you were probably not going to make a lot of putts, but Anthony’s tip confirmed that there was in fact an alternative approach.   Feeling confident on the greens provided a perfect complement to what turned out to be another ideal day for golf in the Coachella Valley.    

We checked out of the Hyatt Grand Champions at Indian Wells around 8:00, and then managed to make the thirty second drive to the IW Club in our rental van without incident or recourse to the GPS.    

The IW Club is the same impressive facility where I was filmed getting fitted for Callaway clubs earlier in the week, but this morning was all about actually playing golf on what the resort’s website describes as “the only facility in California with two courses ranked in the Top 20 ‘Best Courses You Can Play’ in California by Golfweek Magazine.”    The Players Course is a re-design by John Fought that opened in 2007.

Joe Williams, Indian Wells’ Director of Golf, greeted us when we arrived, and made sure all eight players in our group—the four Warriors, three staff members from the organizers of our Palm Springs escapades, the Palm Springs Convention and Visitors Authority, and Holder—had everything we needed to enjoy a round of golf.  Joe set the tone that would prevail throughout the day.   Every employee we met—the starters, the rangers, the beverage folks, the cart staff—was friendly, eager to assist and expressed the hope that we were having a good time.  We were.

Anthony and I had time between shots to discuss the state of the golf industry, which he, as a 29 year old professional, sees from a vantage point quite unlike my own.   Throughout most of my career in golf, the game was growing, but for nearly half of Anthony’s career, dating from the late fall of 2007, the industry has been contracting.    Indian Wells does very well—82,000 rounds per year on 36 holes—but it has consistently invested in its facilities and thought long and hard about how to provide its customers with an experience that will make them want to come back for more.

The course itself was terrific, and had at times almost a Northwest feel, which should not come as a surprise given that course architect John Fought grew up in Portland and cut his designer’s teeth on two clubs, Pumpkin Ridge and The Reserve, which emphasize a strategic approach.  There are optional ways to play most holes at the Players, and great variety in the length and difficulty overall.  Of the Resort’s two courses, the Players is considered a bit more challenging that the Celebrity.

Anthony and I agreed that golf is expensive and time-consuming, which inhibits the growth of the game.   Indian Wells has come up with a splendid program to address these challenges, which I hope the industry will adopt, called “Walk the Wells.”   After 3:30 every day, Anthony told me, the course is open to anyone who wants to walk and play as many holes as he or she can get in before dark for $25.00.   It’s especially attractive to kids and to older golfers, who can get in a bit of exercise, too, as they work on their games.  There’s a smart phone pedometer app as well.  This is also a great program for working people, who can get in at least some holes after clocking out from the shop or office.   Finding a way to keep the courses full later in the day takes real imagination.

We also discussed my pet peeve, slow play.   How can we find ways to incentivize players to keep up the pace of play?   Again, Anthony had a great idea: for every minute players finish faster than the course’s stated ideal time, they can get a 1% discount off of their next green fee, or on merchandise in the pro shop.  The real problem with any golf incentive system, of course, is that you can only control your own pace of play, and not that of those slow knuckleheads in front of you.   But if we build strong enough incentives into the system, the other members of the foursome should be able to persuade their tardy members to pick it up.   If you’re going to keep me from getting my 20% discount, I am going to say something.

The golf industry is lucky to have people such as Anthony Holder ready to take leadership roles in creating the golf experience for the 21^st century.   Golf is a delightful game, with intrinsic rewards: friendship, exercise, the pleasure of accomplishing something difficult, like sinking an eight foot putt to win your match.   Anthony seems to have some good luck riding with him, too.   Last April, playing in a fund-raiser for Cal State San Bernardino at Tom Doak’s Stone Eagle Golf Club in Palm Desert, Anthony made a hole-in-one on the 7^th hole, a 218 yard downhill par three—and won a Mercedes-Benz C300.    

If we’re going to keep golf relevant in the recreational lives of future generations, we’re going to need the creative thinking of people such as Anthony Holder and Joe Williams at Indian Wells, of Brady Wilson at the Classic Club, and of Brett Meabon and Colin Gooch at Marriott’s Shadow Ridge.  The talented array of golf professionals leading the industry in the Coachella Valley, one of the most influential and important golf destinations in the world, instinctively understand that the game will not survive and grow on its own.   Ideas incubated in the heat of the desert may show the way forward to an industry that is struggling to find its future.

Golf's Midcentury Modern. Ted Robinson's Palms Course at the Desert Springs Resort

The Clean Uncluttered Lines of Midcentury Modern

The Palm Springs Golf Road Warriors bivouacked at the JW Marriott Desert Springs Resort & Spa tonight, resting before they launch their assault on the Coachella Valley’s golf courses tomorrow.   Jeff Wallach and I did some early reconnaissance today at the Desert Springs Resort’s Palms Course, designed by the late Ted Robinson in the mid-1980s.   The course has all of the characteristics of Robinson’s style, most notably the hard serrated-edged lakes (in abundance, but rarely strategically placed) and side-walled fairways that invite the use of the driver by shaping slightly mishit drives back toward the center.  The course was in wonderful condition, reflecting Robinson’s preference for minimal rough and long, elegant shapes to the fairways.   The over-seeded ryegrass glowed in the afternoon sun.

Wallach and I were joined by John Faulk, Desert Springs’ Director of Golf, who oversaw a refurbishing of the Palms course last year by Ted Robinson, Jr., for a 9-hole tune-up before our comrades arrived.   John is a crafty lefty with a tidy game who amiably declined to offer Jeff or me any advice on our swings.  A long-time Marriott Golf pro, John worked for a time at Marriott’s Camelback Resort in Scottsdale, which I believe was Marriott’s first golf resort.   Many top club and resort golf professionals throughout the United States honed their craft at Camelback.  Scott Mallory, who is Director of Golf at the Hills & Forrest-designed course in Temecula at the Pechanga Resort and Casino, worked with John in the 80s at Camelback.

Jeff didn’t need any help.   We had five bucks riding on our match.  I lost 5-4, and it wasn’t that close.  Wallach hit every fairway with that new Callaway RAZR Fit driver, and while my tee shots were nothing to sneer at, I couldn’t seem to finish a swing with my irons and flared every shot off to the right, a kind of weak pseudo-fade.  It’s never a good idea to get in a back bunker on a Robinson course, either, because there is more than likely a lake lurking on the other side of the green, just waiting to welcome any thin bunker shot.  

This week, Palm Springs is celebrating Midcentury Modern architecture in addition to the official visit of the Golf Road Warriors.   This architectural style “was known for its clean lines and blending of indoor and outdoor spaces,” according to local writer Monica Hodge.  Palm Springs has one of the largest concentrations of Midcentury Modern homes and buildings in the US.   It struck me in looking at examples of Midcentury Modern buildings that the term could equally well apply to Ted Robinson’s course designs, which share its aesthetic tenets.   Robinson’s lines, too, are clean and easy to read, and the courses blend well with their settings.  There is an admirable restraint in their ambitions.   Just as the accomplishments of the Midcentury Modern architects appeal to an appreciative public worn out by the excesses of the past couple of decades, so too does the pure uncomplicated style of Ted Robinson’s golf courses satisfy the needs of the vacationing golfer.

Geoffrey Cornish. A Great Gentleman and an Influential Presence for Seventy Years in Golf Course Design

Geoff’s curiosity about the history of golf course design led to a long collaboration with Ron Whitten, the architecture editor of Golf Digest, which resulted in their 1981 encyclopedic treatise on golf architecture, “The Golf Course,” which would be updated in an edition published by HarperCollins in 1993 and re-titled “The Architects of Golf.”  About a third of the book consists of mini-bios of almost anyone who had a hand in designing a golf course in the 20^th century.    Geoff always treated everyone in the profession with great respect, in keeping with his graceful personality and generous spirit, and these profiles illuminate his magnanimous character.

With his close friend Robert Muir Graves, Geoff taught a seminar every year at the Harvard Graduate School of Design for aspiring golf course architects and land planners.   I took the course in 1988 and have the certificate hanging on the wall behind me as I write this.   (Jan Beljan, a long-time associate of Tom Fazio and one of the few prominent women in golf course design, was one of my classmates.)   Geoff and Bob did a fabulous job with the course, and summoned all of the wisdom from their many years of designing courses and teaching when they collaborated on a textbook called “Golf Course Design.”   Along with Mike Hurdzan’s “Golf Course Architecture,” it’s the classic treatment of an arcane subject.

Geoff had a professorial air, but he was also witty and tough.   He had landed on the beaches of Normandy as an officer in the Canadian Army Overseas, which he joined, as I recall, in 1939, when war first broke out in Europe.   He was then already 25 years old.    Born in Manitoba, he had started his career in golf in British Columbia, working both in agronomy and design.   His professional training was in agronomy, and he learned golf design on the job.   He revered Trent Jones, and regarded him as the fountainhead of modern design, but he also had an irreverent streak, and enjoyed remembering how difficult it was for Jones, a city boy, to learn how to move dirt behind a mule and a shaping pan when they were building courses together for Thompson.  Hard work was easy for a boy from Canada’s western plains.

Geoff was a kind of Johnny Appleseed of golf in New England, and his influence spread to the west through his colleague, Bill Robinson, who moved to Oregon in the 1970s and continued the Cornish tradition of designing solid, easy to maintain, uncomplicated golf courses that the average golfer enjoyed playing.   Another Cornish protégé, Brian Silva, has also gone on to have a distinguished career.   Geoff continued to work with Mark Mungeam in Cornish Mungeam Design, staying active well into his 90s.

During the go-go years in golf architecture of the 1990s and beyond, when Trumped up golf courses with waterfalls and ostentatious “design features” seemed to push golf into unsustainable realms, the modest approach of Geoff Cornish seemed quaint and outmoded.  But in the melt-down of the post-recession era, Geoff’s approach suddenly  seemed sensible and responsible again, just like the man.

1. When did your company start to focus on the Chinese golf industry?   Did you focus especially on golf course management and operations?   What kind of problems have you discovered?

JOHN STRAWN:  Hills & Forrest is a golf course architectural firm, so our focus is on designing courses.   We have also formed a joint venture with two Chinese partners, one of which, Cheng Jun Golf, does own and operate courses.    The courses they operate are private membership courses, and have been popular because they have good teaching academies as well as good restaurants in the clubhouse.   The Tianan Club in Beijing, not far from the main airport, is a Cheng Jun course.

Tianan Golf, Beijing

We focused on China because we believe the Chinese golf industry will grow substantially in the years ahead.   But to do so successfully, the China golf industry needs to focus on how it can stimulate demand and attract more players.    Right now, all of China’s golf courses are private membership clubs, with the exception of a few resort courses open for green fee play.   But the concept that is most popular in the USA, the so-called daily fee course, has not made any inroads into China yet.  Most towns and cities in the US own and operate golf courses for their citizens, not expecting them to make a profit but simply to cover operating expenses.  Sometimes they are even subsidized, just as a recreation center or swimming pool would be, but that is rarer these days.    Still, most golf courses in the US manage an operating profit, but the real value of golf courses over the last four decades to developers has been their contribution to real estate values.   Houses on golf courses sell for higher prices than houses without access to golf.  This is partly just because golf provides a beautiful landscape—a kind of garden, with grass and trees and clean air.   The recreational aspect is a bonus.   Golf is also good for a player’s health.  Walking especially is good exercise.   I see many Chinese courses using golf carts, and I don’t think this is a good tendency.   The best courses are walkable, and walking should be encouraged, especially given the availability of caddies in China.

2. According to research institutions, 80% of the golf courses in China don’t make money. Does this research match what you know about China? What is the reason for this situation?

JOHN STRAWN:  To understand this situation, you have to think through what a golf course has to sell.   A golf course owns tee times.  Every day, it has so many available times for people to play golf.   Let’s assume that we want to put groups out at ten minute intervals.  That is six groups of four players every hour, or 24 players per hour.  (This is an optimal spacing—eight minute starts are more common in the US.)   If an average round takes four and one half hours, and the first round goes off at 7 a.m. and the last at 4 p.m., that means the course has 216 tee times to sell that day. (9 hours of starting times X 24 players per hour.)    The maximum revenue yield would be based on “selling” all of those tee times.   That is what well-managed daily fee golf courses do in the US.   They can discount last minute rounds, for example, or offer specials via the internet.   In China, because the courses are not based on daily fees, the operations have to be supported by collecting monthly dues from members.   Fundamental Rule: It costs the same to maintain a course at a proper standard whether anyone plays it or not.  If you are not filling up the tee times, the cost per round to maintain the course goes way up.  At some point, this is not sustainable.

3. What are the attributes for a successful golf course? What kind of business pattern would make a course to be successful?

JOHN STRAWN:  We must first define what our expectations are.   For a members’ course, the measure of success is different from a course based on daily fee play which must make a profit.  Members’ or private courses may measure their success on the prestige of their membership, or on tournament play.  But a daily fee course is strictly a profit-making entity whose success is measured just as any other business measures success—return on investment.   If developers de-couple the golf course from the real estate returns, then the golf course functions more like infrastructure.   It is like having roads and power and water service—it is necessary for the overall success of the project—that is, for selling real estate at good prices—but doesn’t bring in a direct return.   We don’t expect roads and power lines to “make money,” and if we divorce the real estate from the golf operations, and don’t put the golf course on a business basis, it makes no sense to expect the golf course to somehow succeed as a business.

China's Grandiose Approach to Golf: Luxury as the Highest Value

4. Golf courses in China depend too much on combining with real estate.   Is this healthy?  What’s the difference between China and other countries in regard to golf and real estate?

JOHN STRAWN:  As we have noted already, golf courses need to attract more play to succeed as stand-alone businesses.   If the only model is the private membership club, this won’t happen.   Some clubs in Europe and the US are what are called “semi-private”—that is, the course has members but also allows outside play.   This is done in some cases in China, also, but the highest status golf courses are still private members’ courses.   This does not have to be the case.   In the US, there are many famous private clubs, but there are also resorts which are prestigious to play and earn substantial profits.  Examples of this would be Pebble Beach, Pinehurst, and perhaps the most important and creative golf development of the last twenty years, Bandon Dunes Resort in Oregon.   It has no real estate to sell, only lodging in hotel rooms and villas, and its four courses earn millions each year for its developer.

5. To get out of this dilemma, what should Chinese golf courses do for a positive future?

JOHN STRAWN:  I believe the Chinese golf industry needs to focus on developing a platform for popular golf—that is, inexpensive, accessible public courses.  These can be 9 holes, for example, with a driving range.   Many, many smaller US cities feature 9 hole courses.  Developers and members’ courses should contribute to the development of daily fee, muni-type courses to develop the next generation of golfers.   Cities and towns should look to developing golf courses as public amenities, like parks.  This will also create jobs, and inspire a new generation of Chinese golfers, who can take their place on the world golf stage.

Never too Early to Start

China is already arguably the most important contributor to the world golf economy.  Why?  Because most of the clubs, balls, bags, shirts, hats and shoes are made in China and sold to golfers all over the world.   I don’t know what the dollar volume of the China golf manufacturing is, but surely it is in the billions.   If China wants to encourage domestic consumption of articles made in China, the golf industry is a good place to focus.   There is a potential demand for golf in China that would make it the number one golf country in the world within thirty years.

6. Do you know the details about profits, quantity and the potential developing space of golf courses in China?

JOHN STRAWN:  China has some of the most beautiful landscapes in the world, but clearly not all of it is available or appropriate for golf.  Worldwide, we know from surveys that golfers prefer to play on seaside courses.  Pebble Beach, Bandon Dunes, St Andrews and the great Scottish links, such as Aberdeen and Turnberry, and  the great Irish courses, such as Ballybunion or Lahinch, are along the sea.  China has an immense coastline, where golf could be developed.   Lake-side courses are also popular.    Core courses must be a key component of China’s long-term golf strategy, along with a focus on public golf.   China must find ways to stimulate demand.   In so-called “developed golf countries,” such as the UK, the USA, and Sweden, about 7% of the people play golf.   That’s roughly 27 million people in the USA, which has about 18,000 golf courses (on only a slightly larger land mass than China.)   China has 1.3 billion people.   If 7% of Chinese people played golf, that would be 91,000,000 golfers—more than twice the total number of golfers in the world today!  Even if only 1% of Chinese people played golf, that would be 13,000,000 golfers.   The rule of thumb is that you need roughly one golf course per 1,500 golfers.   If China reaches a golf participation rate even of 1%, according to this formula it would “need” more than 8,000 golf courses.   So the potential for growth in China is enormous.  What China must do to encourage golf development is to support public golf, and develop and operate golf courses using only the very best sustainable designs and management practices, to assure that the water supply is clean and preserved, and that the environment will benefit from a healthy landscape.   The knowledge of how to do this exists–it just needs to be applied with conviction.

Oregon may seen an unlikely location for a golf destination.  Residing in Oregon is like living under one of those mist-ers that keep vegetables fresh in the super market.    Living under the constant trickle of the good rain, you feel crisp and vigorous and blessed with an extended shelf life.  We enjoy the soft polish of that eternal drip, and the endless grey makes the rare sunny day brighter.

As we golfing Oregonians bask in Bandon’s reflected glory, it’s fitting to recall that this not the first time Oregon has laid claim to preeminence as a golf destination.   In 1933, Portland was host to the “National Municipal Golf Tournament”–that is, the Public Links.   To celebrate that event, the Portland Chamber of Commerce put out a beautiful pamphlet called “Golf in Portland and in Oregon.”   It made the not immodest claim that Portland was “The Gold Capital of America,” and a banner across the top of every page insisted, with a booster’s dead certainty, that “GOLF IS PLAYED EVERY MONTH OF THE YEAR.”

“Golf has become America’s new national game,” the pamphleteers observe, “and no city in the United States…has made such provision for the enjoyment of this game for all classes of its residents as the city of Portland.”    And that was an honest claim.   Golf has come as close in Portland as it has anywhere in America to the Scottish ideal of golf as a game of the people.    What was true in 1932 is still evident in Portland’s popular, high-quality munis.

Two of the munis celebrated by Portland’s Chamber of Commerce—Eastmoreland and Rose City–still fill with golfers almost every day, and have been joined by the two wonderful layouts at Heron Lakes, built on the flood plain of the Columbia River not far from where a once-celebrated course called Peninsula, which no longer exists, hosted the very first Pacific Northwest Golf Association’s Public Links championship.

Golf was popular in Portland, according to the pamphlet, “because it was so inexpensive.”  Private club memberships ran from $300 to $650, which in fact was quite a bit of money in 1932, when the average per capita income in the USA was under $2,000.   Still the game was affordable, and the Chamber lists green fees and the munis and daily fee courses.   Eastmoreland’s green fee was thirty cents for 9 holes, the same fee charged not only by all of the munis but by the privately owned daily fees.   The private courses also charged green fees: two bucks on weekdays, three on the weekends.

In an appendix, the pamphlet lists all of the courses in the state including a 9 holer in Bandon I had never heard of, called “Westmost Golf Club,” on Beach Road.  It charged fifty cents to play 9 holes, and a buck and a half to play all day.   That’s how golfers still like to spend their time in Bandon–playing golf all day.

A recent article in China Daily USA reports that only the rich play golf in China.   Chinese golf is certainly elitist, keeping with the Chinese tradition of preserving luxury goods for the emperor and his circle.  That’s part of golf’s attraction to young people, who flood the annual golf shows in Guangzhou and Beijing—they aspire to a lifestyle that includes playing golf.  Membership fees at Chinese golf clubs—and there are no daily fee courses in China, both for economic and cultural reasons— range from 100,000 to 1.7 million Yuan, or in US dollars, between $15,685 and $266,650.  And this in a country with an average per capita income of $4,400, compared to the US’s $46,860.

One avid Chinese golfer, described in the China Daily story as a Beijing businessman who plays golf every day and spends $15,640 annually to support his habit, called golf “green opium,” linking it to another famous addiction introduced to China by the West.   Britain’s opium smuggling from India led to the world’s first drug wars, the 19^th century Opium Wars.   American merchants were also complicit in this trade.   These original narcotraficantes’ ruthless disregard for the Chinese peoples’ well-being was equal to the contempt any Mexican or Colombian drug lord holds for the gringos.

The Original Chinese Golfer? The Ming Emperor Xuande, 15th Century.

Now China’s emperor is called the Premier, and he’s no longer born into the job.  The premier’s courtiers–the inner circle of the ruling Communist party–play golf.  There is a tight link in China, despite its official adherence to communism, between wealth, privilege and political power.   The government’s policies since 2004 have officially circumscribed golf’s development, in order to preserve farm land and water.   But this official moratorium by the State Council was ignored until the summer of 2011, when, as the China Daily article puts it, “11 Chinese ministries collectively ordered new checks on all golf courses to prevent illegal land use and seizure and to ensure no loss of farmland in China.”

Enforcing the moratorium has had a powerful effect on the group of western golf course architects, project managers, course operators and others who have a stake in China’s golf industry.   The collapse of the US real estate market had already vitiated the demand for their services at home.   China is without question the most powerful developing market in golf, and the uncertainty over its future is very worrisome to industry insiders, among whom I include myself.

1493 helped me understand how China’s golf scene fits into larger patterns of Chinese politics and history.   I’ve wondered why, if there really was a moratorium in place since 2004, our clients in the provinces tended to pay it little heed.   It’s partly because China is a culturally complex country, where conflicts between the capital and the provinces are historically endemic.  Local leaders in Fujian province, or in Yunnan or Sichuan or Guangdong, have always tried to trick the big boys in Beijing.

Two years ago I was riding from the city center of Chengdu toward a site where our client intended to develop a large real estate project with 36 holes of golf.   Chengdu is the capital and most important city in Sichuan province, a region admired throughout China for its natural beauty and cuisine.   Giant pandas are native to the bamboo forests along the mountain slopes in western Sichuan.

As we were driving south, I noticed a complex of buildings that looked sort of like the Bird’s Nest stadium in Beijing, but on an even grander scale.  There were a number of linked buildings nestled within elaborately landscaped grounds, but no evidence of any activity going on in any of them.   I asked our client what these buildings were, and got a wan, wry smile in reply.

Sichuan province, you’ll recall, had a terrible earthquake in the spring of 2008.    The epicenter was about 80 kilometers northwest of Chengdu, but the quake was felt as far away as Beijing.   Schools collapsed, and thousands of children were killed, which led to charges of corruption against the officials in charge of building the classrooms.  More than 70,000 people were killed and millions left homeless.   Premier Wen Jiabao came down from Beijing to assess the damage and assist in guiding the rescue operations.  And here’s where the new building complex comes back into the picture.

This was the new administrative headquarters for the party and the municipal government.  Designed by the French architect Paul Andreu, who also designed the new opera house in Beijing, the complex reportedly cost $180 million.  A new “Technology and Science Enterprising Center” was also part of the complex.  In the context of millions of people left homeless by the earthquake, coupled with intense public criticism over shoddy construction practices having contributed to the loss of life, the big cheeses from Beijing ordered the Sichuanese to get rid of these new buildings.    Local officials announced that they would sell them.   That’s why they were sitting empty a year later.   But according to a BBC report in the spring of this year, the buildings have not been sold.    As Charles Mann demonstrates in 1493, that’s a typical narrative in China.  Orders come down from Beijing, local officials announce their capitulation, and then nothing more happens.

“In the feud- and faction-ridden Ming court,” Mann writes, referring to the period between 1368 and 1644, when China first encountered western traders arriving by sea, “government policies were often accidental by-products of ministerial intrigues, enacted with little regard for their actual effects.”   Echoes of these Ming policies reverberate off the walls today in Zhongnanhai, the Beijing neighborhood where the present government is headquartered.

Mann writes about the wonderfully convoluted trade practices that evolved among Chinese and European merchants, for example, especially the relationship between Fujianese and Spanish traders through the port of Manila in the Philippines.   The emperors wanted a monopoly on trade, just as the current government preserves its monopoly on land.   But the policies prohibiting trade didn’t work for the emperors, and the current land policies have created a giant headache for the central government.

Throughout it all, the qualities that have made China preeminent in so many arenas, whatever the shifts in regimes or policies, shine through.   Our tendency to think of Chinese manufacturers producing products for the global economy as something unique to the post-Mao era is misplaced, as Mann makes clear.   The Chinese in the Philippines were restricted to a ghetto adjacent to Manila called the Parián.  “Parián artisans and merchants…”—most from Fujian province, Mann notes—“sold the Spaniards everything from roof tiles to marble statues of baby Jesus—‘much prettier articles than are made in Spain,’” noted a Spanish clergyman in Manila, “and sometimes so cheap that I am ashamed to mention it.”

Chinese tailors were also making “perfect knockoffs of the latest European styles.”   The Europeans then tried to abolish trade in finished goods, wanting only the cloth—rehearsing disputes that would echo in modern trade agreements.

Mann also describes how the introduction of American crops—particularly the sweet potato, maize, and tobacco—radically transformed the Chinese countryside.  Vast new regions of Sichuan, for example, which is described prior to the end of the 18^th century as a “big, empty place,” were settled.  Just as the potato facilitated a population boom in Ireland, with tragic consequences, the American crops introduced to China instigated a series of transformations that ruptured the Emperor’s control over the provinces.  Forests cleared to grow tobacco, even though the crop was officially prohibited, resulted in shortages of rice and inflated food prices.   Hungry people will fight to survive, and rebellions against imperial authority punctuate China’s history.   China’s current rulers obsess over food security.   There is a direct link between the government’s commitment to low food prices and its complicated attitude toward golf development.

Tulou in Fujian

There isn’t space to review all of Mann’s analysis here, but I recommend that anyone with an interest in China’s economy—and especially people in the golf business—pick up a copy of 1493.   Pay close attention to “Part Two: Pacific Journeys.”   Among the episodes of Chinese history recounted in 1493 is the tale of the Hakka people after the introduction of American crops to China.    The Hakka historically practiced slash and burn agriculture on hilly, marginal land in southern China, occupying parts of Jiangxi, Fujian, Guangdong, and Hainan Provinces.  They lived collectively in large, round, well-defended structures called tulou.   They quickly adopted tobacco as a cash crop, contributing to the crisis described above.  The environmental effects of the deforestation practices following the introduction of tobacco are still in evidence in southern China.

The new Mission Hills golf resort on Hainan Island is one of China’s grandest golf developments, following on the success of the original Mission Hills in Shenzhen.   There are ten new courses designed by Schmidt-Curley, along with villas, hotels and spa.   It’s a grand complex, the equal or better of any golf resort in the world.   And one of the architectural themes at Mission Hills Haikou is a tribute to the tulou.   Guests with a view from the upper floors of the hotel toward the south will see the rounded walls of a large faux-tulou.   Merging an ancient Chinese architectural style with the grandiose amenities of a modern golf resort, Mission Hills’ version of the tulou expresses a typically contemporary Chinese affection for the ancient and enduring leavened with the allure of foreign luxuries.

Now, the reigning US Open champion owns a practice complex to rival Harrington’s.   And the link between these two great Irish golfers and their practice facilities is a Dublin company called Turfgrass Consultancy, which built and maintains these state-of-the-art practice grounds.

John Clarkin and Rory McIlroy on the Practice Ground That Helped Conquer Congressional

Harrington’s practice area was finished about eight years ago, though it’s been remodeled and added to since.   Harrington had a green built in imitation of the 13^th at Carnoustie, with a severe slope running off the back.  “The harder the shot, the happier Padraig is,” says John Clarkin, founder of Turfgrass Consultancy (“TC”) and the first Irish graduate of Penn State University’s Turfgrass Management Program.   Perhaps Harrington had a premonition, or perhaps playing thousands of shots around that practice green gave him a psychological edge, but whatever the reason it’s perhaps not surprising that Harrington’s breakthrough major championship came in the 2007 Open—at Carnoustie.

The main green at Harrington’s is used only for chipping and putting.  No full shot carrying the vicious spin imparted by a top professional’s swing ever gouges a lesion onto Harrington’s green.   It’s kept smooth and flawless, and can be maintained at Stimp speeds up to 14.  “When Padraig does hit a shot toward that green,” Clarkin notes, “he always lands it on the fringe.  Always.”

A fairway for practice with longer clubs complements the short game area.  Harrington can hone in his distance at precisely calibrated targets.  A teeing ground built at an angle across the edge of his house allows him to pound drives into an adjacent field.  Harrington has never nicked the house, Clarkin says, although a mortal golfer surely would.

McIlroy moved into his new house in August of 2009 and commissioned Turfgrass Consultancy to commence construction of his practice grounds in March of 2010.  They were ready for use by the time Rory returned from this year’s first major at Augusta National.   McIlroy already had a design in hand of his own making, Clarkin says, but Turfgrass Consultancy suggested additional features to Rory’s liking.  “The links bunker was added,” said Clarkin, referring to the deep bunker Rory can be seen hitting bunker shots from on a BBC report filmed there in June.  McIlroy wanted as tough a practice test as any championship golf can provide, which would have to include the pot bunker from the 17th at St. Andrews.   “While the Road Hole bunker is about six feet deep, that bunker is seven feet and you can’t really see where the ball ends up.  Rory would need his dad stand on the green and report to him back down in the bunker on where his shots were landing,” Clarkin joked.

Rory's Road Hole and Practice Pitch

Rory asked TC to build three “holes”: one provides a downhill shot from 170 yards; a second is a 120 yard shot from a flat lie; and the last 110 yards from an uphill lie.  The target greens for these holes are in addition to the main practice green, which was designed to allow TC to replicate conditions on championship courses from all around the world.  The grass on the green surfaces is a mix of creeping bentgrasses and poa annua reptans, a cultivar cousin of the poa annua annual bluegrass that is variously treated as a pesky weed or accepted with a sigh by greenkeepers in cool climates everywhere as part of the family of grasses growing on their greens. This is the same grass that can be found on the greens at Pebble Beach.

The collars and approaches on two of the greens are fescue, while the others have a mix of creeping bentgrass and ryegrass, enabling TC to prepare a practice ground “for every turf type imaginable—excepting Bermuda, of course.”

TC built Rory’s greens according to USGA specs and installed SubAir systems to make sure the greens remain dry and firm, given that  it does rain a bit in Northern Ireland. “The main green is about 650 square meters,” Clarkin says, which is an average green size on a tournament course.  “The other three greens range from 250 to 300 square meters.”

Greens can be fast without necessarily being firm, Clarkin says.   McIlroy wanted to practice on greens with the firmness of Augusta National’s famously taut putting surfaces, where the ball lands with a distinctive ring tone that distinguishes a firm green’s sound from the gushy plop a soft green makes.

In preparation for the US Open at Congressional,  TC had Rory’s greens “close to 12” on the Stimpmeter.   “And we can go to 14 or back down to 12 or 11 pretty quickly.”

“It may have cost him hundreds of thousands of pounds,” the BBC reported, “but McIlroy admits this unique golf range has given him an extra edge and shows his commitment to Northern Ireland as a base.”

“To have a practice facility at the back of my own house is incredible,” McIlroy said.  “It was done as an investment in my future.   Since I got it built I have won my first major, so it has paid for itself already.  It is a long-term commitment to Northern Ireland, I see myself always living here.  It would be a shame to leave it, you couldn’t do it anywhere else.”

In getting ready for the Opens, McIlroy told the BBC, “I can ring up the USGA or the R&A and say, ‘what speed are the greens going to be?’  And they’re going to say, ‘we’re going to try to get them at 10.5,’ so I can say to the guys, ‘I want them at 10.5 for the next two weeks,’ and I can prepare just like I was there, really.”

The key to maintaining consistent Stimp speeds, Clarkin says, does not depend on the height of the cut, but rather on a regimen of both cutting and rolling the greens on a frequent and regular basis.  “Whether they are rolling 11 or 14, we’re mowing at the same height, but to get them really fast we’re rolling often. Topdressing and using the Subair will help to increase speed, too”

TC has two full-time staff on site at McIlroy’s practice ground, and a full complement of equipment to maintain the greens, the fairways, the collars and rough and the bunkers.  The Road Hole bunker has sand from Portrush, McIlroy told the BBC film crew.   The other bunkers, Clarkin says, have either the type of sand the USGA typically wants in the bunkers on its championship courses—a firm sand with particle sizes that resist buried lies and drains well—or the local “rabbit” sand, a finer grained type often found on Irish links courses that is incredibly firm because its small particle sizes pack easily but can make hitting heavy explosion shots risky.

Clarkin, whose grandfather was Lord Mayor of Dublin, consults on new course projects and course preparation for championships around the world.  He was an agronomic advisor to the Robert Trent Jones II design team at Chambers Bay, the publicly-owned links course in Washington State which will host the US Open in 2015.   McIlroy calls Clarkin “The Gardener,” pleased with the work of the man whose company has helped McIlroy prepare for his ascent to the summit of the golfing world.

Many American touring professional golfers live in Texas and Florida and elsewhere in the Sun Belt, where tax laws are more attractive and there is the promise of year-round outdoor living.   But fewer varieties of grass can grow in warm climates, and the so-called “warm season grasses” have different playing characteristics from the fescues and bents and ryegrasses which flourish in cooler climates.   Bermuda greens are grainy, bermuda fairway lies are spongy and the rough can grow as bristly as a wire brush.   Practicing on warm weather grasses may be putting the players who live in the southern USA at a disadvantage.   Unlike McIlroy and Harrington (and Graeme McDowell and Darren Clarke), the Americans practice on turf quite unlike the surfaces they will be competing on in championships.

Despite its northern latitude, the climate of Ireland closely resembles that of the Pacific Northwest, where similar grass types flourish.  Oregon, in fact, has long been the center of the grass seed industry in the US, and the creeping bentgrasses and fescues on thousands of golf courses started as seed in a Willamette Valley farm field.  Belfast is at 54 degrees latitude, slightly north of Edmonton, Alberta.   But the moderating effect of the ocean currents off its coast provides Ireland with a relatively mild winter season compared to inland Canadian cities on the same latitude.

On a typical winter day in Ireland (although there’s never been a typical day in Ireland), the temperature will be in the 40s, much as it is that time of year in Portland, Oregon, which is just north of the 45^th parallel.  (For those of you who are geographically challenged, the distance from the 45th parallel to the 54th is around 550 miles.)    Belfast’s average rainfall is 34 inches—again, comparable to famously rainy Portland’s 35, but much less than Miami’s 55 inches or Houston’s 53.   But the mild persistent rains in Oregon and Ireland provide the green and embracing landscape that its residents love—and the perfect conditions for growing turf grass.  The players who winter in Ireland, choosing to be among their friends and family, may have a distinct advantage in preparing for the next season because they can practice on turf and greens exactly like what they will find on the championship courses in the US and Great Britain.