Courses

Ballyneal Golf Club; Holyoke, Co

2009-11-15T17:37:00.000-08:00

Ballyneal, as in the Irish "Bally" derived from the Gaelic phrase "Baile na", meaning "place of" and the Coloradan "O'neal" as in the O'neal brothers Jim and Rupert, is Colorado's answer to Nebraska's famed Sand Hills. Located in the eastern Colorado farm town of Holyoke (pop. 2223) where the brother's grew up, this is indeed "Place O'neal". Rupert and Jim are not golfing neophytes, or at least Jim isn't. He's the head pro at the Alistair Mackenzie designed Meadow Club just north of San Francisco, a hidden gem if there ever was one. He must have been one of the only kids to play golf in Holyoke back in the pre Tiger era and if he's anything like me he probably looked upon those rolling "Chop Hills" with as much adoration as the local motocross heads, only while they were looking to launch off them on dirt bikes, Jim was dreaming of launching golf balls off them. Now all these many years later his dream has become a reality. And what a reality it is.

The brothers wisely hired links golf guru Tom Doak who's "natural" approach to golf course design couldn't be better suited to a piece of land than Ballyneal. The Chop Hills are actually a small, unique geological phenomenon covering only a couple thousand acres. Most of eastern Colorado is as flat as a pancake and its not until Western Nebraska that you see the huge Sand Hills that are apparently seaside dunes left over from way back when the Gulf of California extended all the way up here. To explain their presence, Rupert posited his own "Nebraska Sucks" theory. He assured me the name of his theory has nothing to do with the fact that he went to the University of Colorado, but rather his purely scientific estimation that the gulf waters receded or "sucked" out of Nebraska and left the rippling Chop Hills in their wake - kind of like the patterns you see at the beach when the tide goes out. Whatever their origin, they are golf country.

The Chop Hills are not as grand as the Sand Hills. They have a harshness to them (I hate to use words like ugly or severe) that recalls not so much Ireland as Scotland - Carnoustie comes to mind. Not a bad track that. And Doak builds on this devilishness with his usual array of wild bumps and bunkers. Not since Pacific Dunes has it felt so good to get totally hosed by a fifty yard carom into jagged backhoe torn slash of sand. This is links golf by the strictest definition: land reclaimed from the sea, even if the sea left town ten thousand years ago.

Pelican Hill Golf Club North Course; Newport Beach, CA

2008-12-25T12:43:00.000-08:00

The North is one of two Fazio designs at Pelican Hill. The other, the South, is actually consistently ranked higher and having not played it I can't comment on the merits of this assessment, but I can say that both courses are exceptional for the dramatic 500 acre parcel of oceanfront land they share. Its possible the south enjoys slightly more varied terrain and therefore a more creative routing, but I found the North to be Fazio at his consistent best - stunning aesthetics and fair (if unremarkable) playability - so I'd be surprised if the South is really that much better.

Fazio's courses are so consistently faithful to a lifelong theme they are like a series of oil paintings called "variations on Augusta National." He seems to be fixated on capturing the essence of the National's acryllic hyper-reality - volcanic smooth terraces flowing into puddles of talcum white sand. There is no denying his mastery of golfing Feng-shui - his courses are as perfect as Japanese gardens - but in my opinion he could benefit from paying closer attention to the strategic detail and architectural playfulness that is as essential to his mentor's success as aesthetics. For all its coiffed allure, the modern incarnation of Augusta National is the least playable of Mackenzie's designs. I would love to see Fazio begin a new series of paintings called, "variations on Cypress Point" or "Variations on Royal Melbourne." Then I think he would go from being a masterful designer of golfing gardens to a master golf course architect.

With that said, the Fazio aesthetic could not be more perfectly suited to a site than this one. His two courses sit atop coastal headlands that have the feel of a "California savannah" - broad, semi-arid, grassy, plateaus dotted with sagebrush and California live oak and blessed with unobstructed, panoramic views of the Pacific. Water flows have etched and eroded these headlands dividing them with narrow, zigzagging chasms like sagebrush embroidered seams stitched into a lumpy down quilt. The great variety of contours and the striking contrast between valley and plateau is visually arresting, making for one memorable shot after another. Though the ocean is ever present, the holes are not right on the beach, they sit up on the inland side of the Pacific Coast Highway hundreds of feet above Crystal Cove State Park, so this is not a dewy, down-low, rugged coastal experience like Monterrey, but a lofty, sunny, mellow, meditative, quintessentially Southern California experience.

A golf real estate development of this scale would not be possible in population-dense Southern California today and was possible 15 years ago only because of the existence of the Irvine Company - the modern day stewards of the single largest privately owned piece of property in Southern California: Irvine Ranch. Purchased from the Spanish and Mexican governments in 1876 by James Irvine, the scope and scale of this property is awesome: it encompasses 800 square miles, touches nine miles of the Pacific Coast from Newport Beach to Laguna Beach and stretches twenty-two miles inland past the city of Irvine and up into the mountains adjacent to Cleveland National Forest where Monument Peak rises to over 6,000 ft. This truly is Southern California's last great coastal golf development.

PGA West Stadium Course; La Quinta, CA

2008-12-23T16:09:00.000-08:00

Pete Dye's infamous masterpiece is a hallucinagenic, voodoo torture chamber. A pioneering product of the 80's that introduced the world to "stadium" golf (perimeter mounding that gives spectators prime elevated viewing) and pushed the outer limits of the concept of "modern" design.

Dye's style might be more accurately labeled post-modern because it is so bold, linear and chaotic that he's almost returned full circle to the origins of the game. One need look no further than the Old Course at St. Andrew's Scotland to find bunkers with walls as massive, linear and sheer as these...just think "Hell" and "Cockle." And Dye comes closer to the bold designs of Charles Blair MacDonald than any other American architect...not surprising considering MacDonald, a Scot, took his inspiration directly from his homeland.

The most amazing and controversial thing about Dye is that he's like the Cat in the Hat. He shows up at these perfectly benign sites and "blam!" - all hell breaks loose. He's Picasso in a sandbox. He digs and stacks and piles and shapes the sand and soil into cubist drip castles and covers them all in caterpillar grass. Look at the picture above and tell me it isn't beyond belief that this property was flat as pancake before he started. Teeing off at the Stadium is like hitting into a roomful of mirrors at a funhouse and I enjoy it every time with the same masochistic glee.

La Quinta Resort Mountain Course

2008-12-22T16:00:00.000-08:00

The Greater Coachella Valley - often referred to generally as Palm Springs or among Californians as simply "The Desert" - is a spacious forty five mile long valley bordered on the north by the massive plateau of Joshua Tree National park and the south by the jagged, crumbling, red rock peaks of the Santa Rosa Mountains. Given this dramatic backdrop, it is amazing that more of the golf courses here aren't built in and around these peaks - every course in the valley has exceptional views of them, but rare is the track that actually gets up into them. La Quinta Resort Mountain Course is one of the few exceptions.

The course is a model of restraint for architect Pete Dye and despite its name and location is anything but a "mountain" course. By this I mean that the only forced carry and significant elevation change are found on the par three sixteenth (above) - a revelation of a hole that is the culmination of a long courtship dance with the surrounding mountains. The course approaches them almost immediately - an aggressive line off the fourth tee can be taken over an out-cropping and the short par three fifth is tucked into an intimate little alcove - yet no sooner are you basking in their garnet glow and sweet sage perfume when the course withdraws again into the benign meadowy heart of the resort. And there it remains for an uninspired stretch of holes that is so excruciatingly long you will think the desert is playing hard to get. But just when you've been lulled into the banality of a housing development and are certain its over between you - the desert opens up her arms and draws you lovingly into her naked bosom.

The fourteenth and fifteenth holes play in and out of a vertiginous mountain cove (right) that echoes with the witches laughter of barking coyotes at dusk. And the sixteenth - an island par three at the base of a wide, gently sloping boulder field that looks like it was deposited by a retreating glacier (top) - is the consumation...the kiss on the lips...as close as you will come to the true heart of the desert mountains without climbing up into them with a gold pan and a mule train.

Aspen Golf and Tennis Club

2008-12-21T09:58:00.000-08:00

Formerly known as the Aspen Golf Course, the Aspen Golf and Tennis club used to be the only game in town. Now there's the high-dollar Tom Fazio designed Maroon Creek Club next door - a nod to Aspen's "super elite" status. Aspen Golf Course may not have the multi-million dollar budget, the mountainous, creek-side terrain nor the movie star membership, but it's a better shot-by-shot golf course, has views of Pyramid Peak and is a "fence hop" from the coziest glass of Cabernet in the valley.

The site its built on is relatively featureless, which anywhere on else on earth would be unremarkable except for the fact that it sits smack in the middle of the Rocky Mountains. This kind of flat open acreage at the base of a steep mountain valley is exactly what makes Aspen so special. Had the golf course been built by a golf savvy developer either pre-1940 or post 1995 it would likely be one of the great courses in the country, but it was designed in the architectural dead zone in between (1970) by local pro Frank Hummel. The result is a very challenging, playable and fun course routed and shaped by someone with an obvious grasp of the game. What then, ask you, is it lacking?

Character. It is one of those modern parkland courses that screams, "MUNI!" The holes are outlined by rounded humps, shallow, floral-shaped bunkers, rows of "christmas trees" and irrigation ditches. It has that soft, green, micro-landscaped, corporate campus/city park look that wouldn't be altered in the least (and arguably enhanced) by the addition of benches, garbage cans and doggie-bag dispensers. That it plays like a championship course is the remarkable thing. This is due to a great variety of shots both in length and shape and well-defended push up greens that require accuracy and a deft short-game.

With that said, part of the charm of this course is its complete lack of pretension in an increasingly pretensious community so bring on the dogs, bring on the frisbees, bring on the clueless barefoot interlopers. I am a defender of public gatherings in grassy alpine meadows! I remember the days when Aspen was holding on to the last vestiges of counter-culture under the flag of its irreverent hero Hunter S. Thompson and there was a ratty trampoline in the backyard of one of the houses along the sixteenth fairway and the ski bums renting it would be out there cranking rock music, drinking keg beer and pulling back flips. To hell with my birdie putt, that is much more important and interesting...I just wish those same quarter-acre, sixties-style ranch houses along Cemetary Lane still cost less than two million dollars.

As for the glass of cabernet...my other favorite thing about Aspen Golf Course is that you can walk into town after your round. This is done by teeing off the back nine at dusk and playing 10-14, then hopping the fence, crossing over Castle Creek via the dramatic Castle Creek Bridge (afraid of heights? Beware) with an obligatory stop at the cute little Victorian A-frame on the left behind the busstop before the S Turn into town. This is Poppies, my favorite restaurant in the whole wide world - an intimate, candlelit, wood-everything, ski-haus, with a small bar where you are guaranteed to meet some of the more interesting locals or have a memorable chat with the wonderfully salty, world-wearied owner. Steak-au-poivre and cabernet, oh yay!