Cape Arundel Golf Club

Favorite Hole

No. 10, par 4, 283-333 yards

Cape Arundel’s back nine opens with the course’s most visually striking hole. This short par 4 travels downhill and bends to the right, ending at a pushed-up, sculptural green overlooking the Kennebunk River. Walter Travis’s signature “alpinization” (intensive mounding) guards the right side of the fairway.

Strategically, the 10th hole is all about the temptations and dangers of aggression. The conservative play is straightforward: from the back tee, a 225-yard shot to the middle-left portion of the fairway leaves about 100 yards up the long axis of the green. Any approach that clears the false front and comes to rest in the green’s flattish middle section is fine.

If you strain for birdie, however, you’d better be precise. The assertive line off the tee is up the right, over Travis’s moguls. Push your drive slightly and you’ll end up among the humps and hollows with no view of the putting surface. Pull it and the slope of the fairway may kick your ball toward a hidden pond on the left. A balance between aggression and caution is also important on the approach. Almost every pin position on the beautiful, intricate green is near some kind of drop-off, so aiming directly at the hole is dangerous even from close range.

There aren’t many sub-350-yard holes where it’s easier to make double bogey.

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Overall Thoughts

Trends can produce a reality-distortion field. Twenty years ago, when baggy basketball shorts were fashionable, it seemed weird that anyone had ever thought above-the-knee shorts were cool. Today, however, LeBron James’s oversized St. Vincent-St. Mary uniform from the early 2000s looks absurd, while his 18-year-old son’s John Stockton-grade wardrobe feels on point. “Why,” we ask ourselves, “did we ever like baggy shorts?”

Fashions in golf architecture fluctuate in the same way, and have a similar persuasive power.

By the mid-1920s, most of the brightest minds in golf architecture agreed that the artificial components of a course, such as bunkers and greens, should be made to appear as natural as possible. In other words, they should be “blended” or “tied” into pre-existing landforms to maintain the illusion of untouched nature. This practice rested on two assumptions: 1) golf courses should mirror the natural landscape, and 2) while architects could alter the terrain to create a coherent golfing experience, they should always cover their tracks (i.e., Alister MacKenzie’s notion of “camouflage”).

These assumptions became so ingrained that many golf courses in the 1920s and 30s removed older, visibly artificial features. Frequently discarded were hummocks, a popular hazard in the pre-World War I era. As MacKenzie pointedly wrote in his 1920 book Golf Architecture, “The glorified mole-hills one sees on many courses should be avoided.”

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Around the turn of the 20th century, MacKenzie’s naturalism-via-camouflage approach came back into fashion. The philosophy eventually dominated high-end golf course design, epitomized by Coore & Crenshaw’s and Tom Doak’s seamlessly tied-in work. It was taken for granted that a good golf architect aimed to make the artificial indistinguishable from the natural.

In the late 2010s and early 20s, trends began to shift again. Some emerging architects, including some mentored by Coore and Doak, questioned the principle that every built element should be camouflaged. Andrew Green, the busiest renovation architect aside from Gil Hanse, reintroduced “mole-hills” to several Donald Ross courses, including Inverness and Oak Hill. In the coming years, some of the buzziest new builds will showcase juxtapositions of blended and unblended features.

Through all of these ebbs and flows in fashion, Cape Arundel has remained largely unchanged. It likely appeared outdated no more than a decade after opening, with its proudly manufactured greens, bunkers, and mounds. Yet this little course in coastal Maine stayed true to its 1921 Walter Travis design long enough for trends to circle back to it. Today, Cape Arundel seems poised to influence the next phase of golf architecture in several ways:

1. Artificiality set against naturalness

Part of what makes Cape Arundel’s architecture so eye-catching is that it’s surrounded by the natural lay of the land. Travis concentrated his earthmoving efforts on specific areas while leaving most of the terrain alone. This approach not only was cost-effective but also drew on the strengths of naturalism and maximalism simultaneously. As you walk the course, you get a sense for the ancient riverside setting because most of the land, including the subtly rumpled fairways, is untouched. At the same time, you can enjoy the eccentric artistry of the greens, bunkers, and mounds. Cape Arundel is like a sculpture garden, blending a natural backdrop with a handful of flamboyant works of art.

The fifth hole, a short par 4, exemplifies this mixture. Its bones are natural: the fairway and green are on opposite sides of a gully, both sloping toward the creek. What makes the hole stand out, however, is a couple of artificial elements. Travis built a cluster of mounds and bunkers on the gully’s downslope left of the fairway. These compelling-looking hazards both penalize wayward tee shots and prevent balls from being lost. The other noteworthy manufactured feature is a bump (or “muffin”) in the front-right portion of the green, a simple contour that creates fun pin positions, rewards accurate approaches, and makes for tricky lag putts.

2. A sense of humor

My favorite chapter in Geoff Shackelford’s book Grounds for Golf is “Comic Relief,” which argues for more humor in golf course design. Architectural comedy comes in many forms but often involves small, unexpected, seemingly irrational features that serious golfers may criticize as unfair. Laughter is a cousin of discomfort, after all. Think of how you’d react if your ball ended up in the hidden pot bunker behind the sixth green at Old Macdonald: you might get angry, but you’d probably chuckle first. “During golf architecture’s short lifetime, the enduring holes display the best strategic values and natural beauty, but with a twist,” Shackelford writes. “Usually, a comic twist.”

Take the eighth green at Cape Arundel. Its back ledge is so small and severe that it can only be regarded as hilarious. When you play, hope for Parkhurst’s crew to cut the hole there: you’ll laugh if your ball crawls halfway up the slope before rolling back down, and you’ll laugh even harder if someone in your group manages to hold the tabletop with an approach or a short-sided chip. Another funny moment comes at No. 17. The green is not only completely hidden from the fairway, but it tumbles away from the line of play and toward the Kennebunk River. Who would think to build such a green? And to have players approach it from the opposite of the rational direction? It’s a reversal of expectations—a classic comedic strategy.

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While Cape Arundel has plenty of comic twists, it doesn’t turn everything into a joke. The funniest golf courses—and people—pick their moments.

Golf architecture, like many artistic disciplines, can take itself too seriously, and that tendency might be increasing with the hyper-professionalization of the industry in the 21st century. Reintroducing a little silliness wouldn’t be a bad idea.

3. Manageable scale

A peak behind the curtain: when the Fried Egg Golf team visits a course for content purposes, we follow a particular routine. We arrive at sunrise, taking photos and video until the light flattens; play the course midday; eat and rest in the afternoon; and then, in the evening, head back out to capture golden hour. Normally we wouldn’t even consider playing 36 holes.

At Cape Arundel, however, we went out for a second loop. This is a testament not only to the course’s culture of fast play but also to its small size. There are four par 3s, 13 par 4s, and one par 5. The course measures 5,881 yards from the back tees and occupies 88 acres, tiny by contemporary standards. At this scale, a round of golf is simply easier for the body to manage.

During our afternoon round at Cape Arundel, I started to wonder whether the game would be more popular if “intermediate” courses—not “championship” in size, yet not “executive” or “short”—were more common. Maybe they will be someday. Tom Doak’s par-68 Sedge Valley is set to open for preview play later this year, and the project’s developer, Michael Keiser, told me in an interview that he wants to continue exploring alternatives to the par-72, 7,000-yard norm. This would be a step forward for golf, especially in light of ongoing concerns about the footprint and environment impact of courses.

In this and several other ways, Cape Arundel’s disregard for trends has, ironically, positioned it at the vanguard of what could, or should, be the next wave of golf course design. -GM

2 Eggs

The club’s respect for history, Bruce Hepner’s restoration work, and Brendan Parkhurst’s greenkeeping combine to earn Cape Arundel a full Egg for presentation. While Walter Travis’s design isn’t flawless—the tee shots on a few long holes are slightly bland, and the routing doesn’t extract maximum excitement from the riverside land of Nos. 1-3—the green designs are so stupendously great that they garner a second Egg almost by themselves. The property, while tranquil and beautiful, lacks superior topography, so Cape Arundel doesn’t reach a third Egg. That said, if we had to pick a course to play daily, this Kennebunkport gem might beat out a number of three-Eggers.

Additional Content

Course Tour

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