Design Notebook: Should the Open Add an Inland Course?

Welcome to Design Notebook, a new Club TFE feature. It’s a weekly roundup of golf architecture-related news and musings. Let us know what you think!

The inaugural edition of Design Notebook includes thoughts on the possibility of an inland Open Championship venue, Tom Doak’s new build in the Scottish Highlands, Davis Love’s gig at Hazeltine, three promising muni revitalizations, and some photos of course’s we’ve checked out recently.

Should the Open add an inland course?

While softer and slower than expected, Walton Heath acquitted itself well at the AIG Women’s Open this past week. If nothing else, it was a showcase for heather, which has to be the best golf hazard this side of duneland. It’s beautiful, random, playable, challenging, and fun to hear pronounced by a British person. What’s not to like?

(Sidebar: I love that Walton Heath’s turf team incorporates heather into the bunker faces, too. This simple choice—which is not particularly simple to execute, I’d imagine—makes the bunkers feel at home in the landscape. More courses should give their bunkers a specific sense of place rather than pursuing a generalized notion of “ruggedness.”)

Lilia Vu at the AIG Women's Open

As I enjoyed this rare glimpse of heathland golf on TV, I started to wonder whether an inland course might make a welcome addition to the men’s Open rota. Whereas the Women’s Open has visited the likes of Sunningdale and—less excitingly—Woburn, the Open has never ventured away from the coast. I’ve heard that the R&A considered going to the London suburbs in the early 20th century, when courses like Sunningdale Old, Walton Heath Old and New, and the three nines at St. George’s Hill were setting a new standard for inland golf architecture. By the early 1930s, however, a modern Open rota had solidified around the seaside links of Scotland and England.

It’s possible that the top heathland clubs lack the course length and infrastructure capacity to host a 21st-century men’s Open. Golf Digest’s John Huggan suggested as much in a column last week, lamenting that Walton Heath and many other great courses are now “too short to fully challenge golf’s (male) elite.” Yet the Walton Heath composite routing—which consists of 16 holes from the Old and two from the New—can stretch to over 7,400 yards, serves as the UK’s U.S. Open final qualifying site, and produced a -9 winning score at the 2018 British Masters (s/o Eddie Pepperell). If that’s too puny for a men’s championship… boy, we are really far gone.

The Open is likely to stay close to the ocean, and perhaps that’s for the best. The tournament’s identity has never been stronger, especially as the Scottish and Irish Opens have fled the ancient links for more tractable modern designs. Being the only major championship wholly devoted the the game’s original playing fields is a pretty strong brand.

So let’s hope the AIG Women’s Open continues to alternate between classic links venues (St. Andrews is up next year, Royal Porthcawl in 2025) and worthy inland courses like Walton Heath and Sunningdale. The possibilities are tantalizing: how about a Women’s Open at a restored St. George’s Hill? Or Woodhall Spa? Ganton? Hollinwell?…. -Garrett Morrison

Doak in the Highlands

Toward the end of last month, details emerged about Tom Doak’s new project in the Scottish Highlands. When it opens in 2025, the yet-to-be-named course will join Gil Hanse’s Castle Stuart as part of the Cabot Highlands resort, which the Canadian development company Cabot purchased last year. Longtime Renaissance Golf Design associate Clyde Johnson, an occasional Fried Egg Golf contributor and pod guest, has an important role on site.

Don Placek’s map shows a course that plays around an inlet of the Moray Firth. The routing has a linksy theme, featuring many shared fairways and not returning to the clubhouse until the final hole. Most unusual, at least for a modern design, is that the first and 18th holes cross over each other. Doak has long been curious about crossover holes, which were common in the 1800s (think of Prestwick’s original layout, or the 7/11 junction at the Old Course, which still exists today) but became less so as golf architecture evolved in the 20th century. Lots of developers would be leery of such an idea, probably unjustifiably so. Props to Cabot for letting Doak be Doak.

Don Placek's map of Tom Doak's new course at Cabot Highlands

Speaking of Cabot, its 40-something founder Ben Cowan-Dewar, whom Andy interviewed last February, is one of the most intriguing next-gen golf developers. His profile now includes Cabot Highlands in Scotland; Cabot Cape Breton, a joint venture with Keiser; Cabot Saint Lucia in the Caribbean; and Cabot Citrus Farms, a reinvention of the World Woods complex in Florida. I’m curious to see how Cowan-Dewar both borrows and departs from the now-familiar Dream Golf model. -GM

Good muni news

Given how many American municipal courses are closing or languishing even during the post-Covid golf boom, I don’t quite buy the idea that we’re in the midst of a “munaissance,” but there are some reasons for hope. Three recent ones:

A redesigned Golden Gate Park Golf Course. This little par-3 course in the heart of one of America’s greatest urban parks closed down in March to undergo a $2.5-million renovation by the talented Jay Blasi. It’s scheduled to reopen in late fall.

Jay Blasi's plan for Golden Gate Park Golf Course

An improved Asheville Muni. Set in North Carolina’s Blue Ridge Mountains, this municipal Donald Ross design, which Andy and I profiled on an episode of the Fried Egg Golf Podcast in 2019, has excellent bones but profound agronomic difficulties. Now it has $3.5 million to spend, and architect Kris Spence, a Ross specialist, at its disposal.

DFW as an affordable-golf mecca. John Colligan and Trey Kemp have energized the public-golf scene in the Dallas-Fort Worth area with smart, economical work at Stevens Park in Dallas, Rockwood Park in Fort Worth, and Texas Rangers in Arlington, among others. Now they have been hired again by the city of Fort Worth to overhaul the 100-plus-year-old Meadowbrook Golf Course. -GM

Hazeltown

Hazeltine National Golf Club has partnered with Love Golf Design to develop a “comprehensive master plan.” Located in Chaska, Minnesota, Hazeltine has been the site of two U.S. Opens, two PGA Championships, and three women’s majors. Next year it will host its second U.S. Amateur and, in 2029, its second Ryder Cup. This is one of America’s most prolific championship hosts, and it’s going to look a lot different in a few years.

Love Golf Design is helmed by 21-time PGA Tour winner Davis Love III, his brother Mark Love, and lead architect Scot Sherman. The firm has done well-received renovations at Sea Island’s Plantation Course and Belmont Golf Course in Richmond, Virginia.

The PR around Love’s master plan has been light on details and heavy on Ryder Cup nostalgia and the word “reimagine.” Rumor has it, though, that a priority of the project will be tournament infrastructure. And not just, like, space for tents. We’re hearing that Hazeltine may build permanent infrastructure—think grandstands that never have to be disassembled and reassembled. Like the original TPC Sawgrass, but distinctly more corporate.

Will this be easy to make fun of? Probably. But in the rat race to lock up major-hosting gigs five decades in advance, a course that offers a readymade buildout is certain to have an advantage. -GM with Andy Johnson

Some courses we’ve seen recently

Sedge Valley (Nekoosa, WI)—Renaissance Golf Design, 13 holes available for preview play, set to open next summer

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The Lido (Nekoosa, WI)—C.B. Macdonald and Seth Raynor channeled by Renaissance Golf Design, opened earlier this summer

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Conway Farms Golf Club (Lake Forest, IL)—Tom Fazio, newly renovated by Jackson Kahn Design

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Quotable

“It is a waste of money putting bunkers in the rough.” –Alister MacKenzie

If there’s something (course, project, rumor, person, trend, etc.) that you think belongs in Design Notebook, send an email to garrett@thefriedegg.com.