The Golfer "Most Influential Modern Golf Writers"

In the Summer 2004 issue of The Golfer, Geoff Shackelford is named one of modern golf's "ten most influentional writers" as part of their "Best of the World" themed issue.  The full list:

Michael Bamberger
Tom Callahan
James Dodson
John Feinstein
James Finegan
Dan Jenkins

David Owen

                                       Lorne Rubenstein
                                       Geoff Shackelford
                                       John Updike

 

Golfobserver.com Story

Nothing like the media covering the media! So here's the Orlando Sentinel's Steve Elling with an overview on Golfobserver .com and quotes from Geoff.

Omaha World Herald Article On Valentine Project

Stu Pospisil has three stories in the June 6th, 2004 Omaha World Herald, starting with a front page overview of golf in the Sand Hills region, followed by news of the next Hanse-Shackelford-Wagner design near Valentine, and finally, an update on the Nicklaus designed Dismal River Golf Club near Sand Hills.

In a front page piece for the Herald Pospiscil writes , "The allure of the Sand Hills as land unlike any other in the United States for "minimalist" design - golf courses that don't change the land and harken to the game's earliest roots - is beckoning architects and avid, affluent golfers alike."

He goes on to quote Golf Digest editor Ron Whitten, Omaha native and especially-keen observer of golf in the Great Plains.

"It will be interesting to see whether Nicklaus tries to do a true minimalist course or cut through here and there," said Whitten. "Hanse, having trained at the feet of Tom Doak, is a dyed-in-the-wool minimalist. Some of his courses in the east, he's had to compromise. But his finished work is like what nature has done."

In a "Task unique in Sand Hills," Pospisil provides details on the Prairie Club, which breaks ground in spring 2006.

GolfDigest.com Rustic Canyon Review

Following up his glowing review from the 2002 "Best New Affordable Public Course" award write-up, Ron Whitten revisits Rustic Canyon and says it has achieved "cult status."

To clarify one comment by Whitten in the review: there is no book in the works on Rustic Canyon. There is, however, a chapter devoted to the building of the course in Grounds for Golf.

Also, in the May, 2004 Golf Digest, Rustic Canyon receives 4 1/2 stars in the annual "Best Places You Can Play" listing. In spite of its notoriously hit-and-miss service, Rustic rated high, particularly in the value category. The course was listed 6th on the magazine's ranking of best values in America.

Harvard Graduate School of Design

On March 31, 2004, Geoff taught a one-day course on Golf Course Restoration with noted archiect Brian Silva. For more information on the class or Mr. Silva's other course on Golf Course Design check out Harvard's web site .

T&L Golf on The Golden Age of Golf Design

The magazine recently listed the top 25 golf books of all time. The Golden Age of Golf Design topped their list of best golf coffee table books.

The Golfer "Emerald Achievement Award"

In The Golfer's 2004 annual "Emerald Achievement Awards," the magazine featured a photo of Grounds for Golf and wrote:

"Since golf is a game known for its civility and politeness, contrarian viewpoints are sometimes discouraged. Fortunately, golf is lucky to have a voice like Geoff Shackelford, who is happy to call it as he sees it. Though he has cultivated a reputation as a curmudgeon in the world of golf course criticism, his well-researched opinions and diatribes have extended to other areas where he feels the game is headed for trouble, in particular the threat of technology to classic courses."

Misc. 2004 Book Reviews

Derek Duncan reviewed "Books to own" for Travelgolf.com. Here's what he had to say about Grounds for Golf: "An absolute must-have for the thinking player and architecture aficionado, Shackelford wields a broad knowledge base to illuminate the essence of strategic course design and set-up."

And on The Art of Golf Design: "A supremely beautiful collection of Miller's paintings of classic golf holes accompanied by Shackelford's spot-on writing and observations - an exhilarating collaboration."

And finally, on Masters of the Links: "Sort of a "Best of" from this list, this is a stirring collection of essays by noted architects and authors from Tillinghast to Dye to Doak."

From Bob Fagan of Golf Today: "There are a precious few contemporary writers such Tom Doak and Brad Klein that I really look forward to reading. Add to that list Geoff Shackelford. Grounds For Golf explains the basics of golf course architecture as well as any book I’ve read. What’s more, it’s entertaining and exceedingly well illustrated with diagrams, photos, and interesting sidebar quotations. (The diagrams are courtesy of architect Gil Hanse.) Shackelford'’s presentation is complete, easy to understand, and exceedingly well illustrated. He used a number of relevant quotations that keep the text moving, easily keeping my attention. In the second half of the book, Shackelford addresses modern topics that affect golf course development and architecture. The result is as if you were sitting listening to some industry insiders discussing their business. The author is quite opinionated and also shares his experience in building and designing the highly acclaimed Rustic Canyon Golf Club in Moorpark, California...Grounds For Golf is exquisitely written, its presentation superb, and a definite 'two thumbs up' as a best buy.

P.S. The putting surfaces at Hanse's, Shackelford's, and final collaborator Jim Wagner's Rustic Canyon Golf Club, I judge to be the most interesting and perhaps also the most subtly challenging in the California."

New York Times Mentions

In Warren St. John's May 25, 2003 New York Times story, "Defending the right not to have a nice day," Geoff is cited as a "genuinely young American curmudgeon."

Pulitzer Prize winning columnist Dave Anderson refers to Geoff's Alister MacKenzie's Cypress Point Club in his February 9, 2003 New York Times column. Anderson was pointing out that Marion Hollins had consulted on the design of Augusta National.

"In a letter to Roberts, according to Geoff Shackelford's Alister MacKenzie's Cypress Point Club (Sleeping Bear Press, 2000), MacKenzie wrote of Hollins: "She has been associated with me in three golf courses and not only are her own ideas valuable, but she is thoroughly conversant in regard to the character of the work I like. I want her views and also her personal impressions in regard to the way the work is being carried out.

"In a more significant sentence now than it was then, MacKenzie added, 'I do not know of any man who has sounder ideas.''

Rustic Canyon Golfweek Review

Bradley Klein reviews Rustic Canyon in the February 1, 2003 Golfweek under the headline, " Rare Combo: Quality, affordability."

On a Saturday morning in the fall, superintendent Jeff Hicks arrived at 5 a.m. to open the gates to Rustic Canyon Golf Course, only to find a line of eight cars awaiting entry. “We’re all booked up,” he told one driver. “We know,” said the would-be golfer. “We’re here to book times for next Saturday.”

If the golf industry build more courses like Rustic Canyon, the game wouldn’t be in an economic slide. Throughout the Los Angeles area, high-end layouts with triple-digit green fees are discounting and having trouble filling their tee sheets. Not Rustic Canyon. Here is a golf course that meets real market demand – thoughtfully and inexpensively.

Opened in April 2002, Rustic Canyon is a low-profile layout with a classical design sensibility and plenty of optional shot-making opportunities. The par-72 layout stretches to 6,906 yards (73.1 rating/130 slope), and sits 800 feet above sea level in the canyons above Simi Valley, 45 miles north of downtown Los Angeles. Designer Gil Hanse and his associate, Jim Wagner, teamed with L.A.-based golf writer/architecture historian Geoff Shackelford and his associates to design and build a retro-style layout.

They moved only 17,000 cubic yards of earth in the process of routing this easily walkable layout around and through a dry wash and barrancas. Despite 240 feet of elevation change on site and sizable environmentally sensitive areas that had to be avoided, they’ve succeeded spectacularly. You can tell they had fun shaping this layout, especially with some intensely contoured greens that sit in the middle of vast chipping areas that surround the putting surfaces. You also have to love their scruffy, rough-hewn bunker faces.

Kudos to developer Craig Price and his firm, Highlands Golf, which owns and manages the property. You can almost (but not quite) forgive them for the cluttered look of the clubhouse and practice range. The paved cart paths also are clumsy. At least they’ve held the line on budget -- $3.1 million to build the course – and kept green fees easily affordable.

Rater’s Notebook

1. Ease and intimacy of routing: 7  Big clockwise front nine through low-lying ground is followed by dramatic counterclockwise back nine that climbs into canyon areas. Feels like one of those charming Scottish courses that starts in town and works its way out in the wilds before returning.

2. Quality of feature shaping: 8  You can’t achieve this stuff with a big bulldozer. It’s all handwork, small equipment and lots of imagination. Modern golfers accustomed to soft flow and containment golf will find themselves having to adjust to ground game roll on a very different scale.

3. Natural setting and overall land plan: 6 First few holes scrape up against entrance road, and then after a brush with some housing the course heads relentlessly into the wild. The whole effect is ruined by the caged-in practice range (with artificial turf landing field) and a stark clubhouse/cart barn complex that overwhelms the 18th hole.

4. Interest of greens and surrounding chipping contours: 9  All but one hole (short par-3 eighth) has a putting area surface perched within a vast surround of chipping area that facilitates ground run-up and amazing options on recovery. The bentgrass greens, 5,500 square feet in size, are intensely contoured, but they work because of mowed-down surrounds that average 15,000 square feet.

5. Variety and memorability of par 3s: 8  Gil Hanse evokes classical elements without ever getting carried away trying to copy famous holes. There’s a phenomenal long par-3 sixth across a wash that incorporates elements of both the Redan and the Biarritz, and he has a great little drop-shot, par-3 eighth to a domed green that falls away everywhere. He also pulls off one of the toughest feats in design, building an interesting uphill par-3 (No. 15). Only real letdown is the dull fourth hole (161 yards) to a wide open target.

6. Variety and memorability of par 4s: 7 Good variety of long and short par 4s, though it would be nice to have more than one substantial par 4 on the front nine. Routing constraints limited options here, with the mandatory lay-up seventh hole very disappointing. But that’s the only clear letdown, and the back nine excels with some dramatic, long, sweeping par 4s.

7. Variety and memorability of par 5s: 5 Five par 5s including a generous opening hole. The was on the fifth hole is a dominant diagonal hazard that doesn’t show up well at all because of environmental constraints. The real showpiece is the long 13th, where the putting surfaces wrap entirely around a massive bunker; it’s very reminiscent of No. 6 at Riviera, where George Thomas (subject of a Shackelford design biography) put a bunker in the middle of the putting surface.

8. Basic conditioning: 6  Main playing areas, including ryegrass fairways, are firm, fast and in good shape. Fine fescue/ryegrass roughs are very playable. Some peripheral areas look a bit run down, especially by the entrance road, and while it might not convey the best of first impressions it’s really part of the facility’s sepia-toned look.

9. Landscape and tree management: 7 Excellent for a few native coastal oaks, there are no trees, certainly not in play. Native scrub is gorgeous, but the clubhouse looks like a lesson in how not to do it. They managed to avoid any trees.

10. “Walk in the park test:” 7  The course starts very modestly as it heads toward a residential area, but from the fifth tee in it's a wonderful stroll – except for the very long hike from the 17th green to the 18th tee.

Overall vote: 6.5  Overall vote is additive, rather a total effect. My rating of 6.5 (geometric scale) makes Rustic Canyon a strong contender for top-100 Modern status on Golfweek’s America’s Best list.

On New Golf Courses, Nature Wins A Round

In the New York Times story "On New Golf Courses, Nature Wins a Round," Kathleen McCleary puts Rustic Canyon alongside elite company like Pacific Dunes in citing the course as an environmentally sensitive, old-school natural design. In the spirit of sharing and "fair use," most portions of the article are reprinted below, courtesy of the Times who, without authorization, lifted one of Geoff's photos off his old web site. :)

From the June 6, 2003 New York Times:

On New Golf Courses, Nature Wins a Round

By KATHLEEN McCLEARY

On a grassy bluff 100 feet above the Pacific Ocean, you can see for at least 14 miles in each direction, from the windswept dunes and rolling hills along the shore, straight out across the sea toward Japan. The wind can blow so hard here that the rain comes in great horizontal gusts across the dunes. But there's a wild beauty to all the drama, with thick clouds scudding above the waves and the beach grasses and blooming thickets of gorse swirling in the wind. Dozens of different shades of green and gold blanket the hills, from the bright yellow Scotch broom to the deep green pines to the golden brown grass along the fairways.

Fairways? Yes; this particular three-mile stretch of wilderness along the Oregon coast is also a world-class golf course, Pacific Dunes. While Mark Twain famously called golf "a good walk spoiled," a new breed of golf course is turning that maxim on its head. Even bad golf is enhanced at Pacific Dunes, a walking-only course that seems to sprout from the sand, gorse, beach grass and shore pines that characterize this stretch of coast in remote southern Oregon.

"My definition of a great golf course is one that a nongolfer will have as much fun walking as a golfer," said Mike Keiser, 58, the self-described "thoroughly mediocre golfer" who owns Pacific Dunes and its sister course, Bandon Dunes. In a departure from the carefully manicured courses that blanket most resort communities, the best new courses are etched into canyons (Rustic Canyon in Moorpark, Calif.), rolled into sand dunes (Pacific Dunes and Bandon Dunes) or slipped into woods and wetlands (Hunting Hawk Golf Club in Glen Allen, Va.).

"There's a definite movement back toward courses that appear to fit seamlessly into the landscape," said Bill Love, the golf course architect who designed Hunting Hawk. That can include using native grasses that may sometimes be dormant and brown, outlawing the use of carts and avoiding asphalt in favor of weathered wood for paths.

Jay Morrish, president of the American Society of Golf Course Architects, agreed. "We're certainly leaving more untouched areas," he said.

It is not appearance alone that is driving the trend. It is also environmental concerns about course development and maintenance, along with a desire to get back to a more traditional style of golf — "good, solid, honest shot-making," said Mr. Love, who has worked on more than 100 courses over the last 20 years. Many of the new courses represent a return to "links" golf as it originated in Scotland, golf played on an open, windswept and sandy course, with an emphasis on a strong ground game.

For many years, the highest-ranked courses in the United States have also been the oldest. Just eight of the top 50 courses on Golf Digest's 2003 list of "America's 100 Greatest Golf Courses" were built after 1936. Until the 1960's, "golf course architecture was embedded in nature," said Brad Klein, architecture editor for Golfweek magazine. Most courses were created using existing grades and hand tools. Architects had to work with the land's natural features out of necessity. But as technology and budgets increased, course architecture turned to moving major mounds of earth and building moats, lakes and hills.

"That produced a lot of courses on land you couldn't otherwise have used," Mr. Klein said, "but it also created a very unnatural, very contrived look."

The boom in residential golf communities in the 1990's also played a part, Mr. Love said. "It's unlikely you're going to have a golf course that looks like it sits on the Oregon sea coast running through a residential development," he said. But those boom days are over. The number of rounds of golf played annually has fallen every year since 1999, dropping 3 percent in 2002. While 398 new courses opened in 2000 — a 15-year peak — just 220 sprouted in 2002, according to the National Golf Foundation. Developers "saturated the market" with too many new courses in the 1990's, Mr. Morrish said. "We were opening a golf course a day," he said. "That's not going to happen again, even if the economy comes around. It's going to be survival of the fittest."

Or, as the current trend seems to indicate, survival of the most wild, scenic and natural. The top four courses on Golfweek magazine's annual list of best modern courses (opened after 1960) are all natural-style, and all were built within the last eight years. Those courses include Pacific Dunes (2001) and Bandon Dunes (1999) as well as Whistling Straits (1998), near Kohler, Wis., another walking-only course, which runs along two blustery miles of Lake Michigan shoreline and will be the site of the PGA Championship in 2004.

Tom Doak, the architect behind Pacific Dunes, said that a decade ago golf course architects would "brag about how much money they spent and how much dirt they moved around." It is not unusual to move a million or more cubic yards of soil in building a modern golf course. At the private Sandhills Golf Club in Mullen, Neb., the paradigm for naturalistic courses, the designers Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw moved just 5,000 cubic yards of dirt. At Pacific Dunes, Jim Urbina, who oversaw construction, estimated that 45,000 cubic yards were moved, and most of that was putting back sand and soil the wind had blown onto the dunes, he said. (But sometimes architects have to move dirt to create the look of a naturalistic course. At Whistling Straits, Pete Dye started with 560 acres of completely flat land and trucked in 800,000 cubic yards of sand to create huge dunes with tall wild grasses for a rugged links-style course that is nearly treeless and decidedly not parklike.)

Leaving much of a course in its natural state sets the stage for how it will be maintained, Mr. Doak said. "There are two approaches to golf course management, just like medicine," he said. "You can take the holistic approach and create the course in such a way that it needs minimal intervention to maintain, or you can take the surgical and medicinal approach." Mr. Doak said he spent "an inordinate amount of time telling workers where not to go" in building Pacific Dunes. He worked with a soil specialist, Dave Wilbur, an agronomist who instructed Mr. Doak's staff on the best way to preserve topsoil loaded with organic material so grass would put down deep roots, creating healthier plants that require less water and chemical intervention.

Ken Nice, the course superintendent, said he used fertilizer "very, very sparingly," and only organic products. He said he sprayed a herbicide just twice a year; most courses use herbicides four times a year.

Preserving as much natural character as possible on a course is in the best interest of course developers, said Bill Love. "The result is that you're able to lower operating costs because you're not maintaining as much ground, or maintaining it as frequently," he said. The notion that golf courses should stay lush and green year-round is wrong, he said. "If you have an area of the golf course that tends to brown out a little in summer, that can be very pretty and doesn't have to detract from the look."

Not all architects agree with the leave-it-alone approach. "Some people want to do as little as possible to a piece of property and make it look natural," said Mr. Morrish, who has been involved with the design on more than 100 courses in the United States and Europe. "Someone once asked me if I was a minimalist. I said, `No, I'm a necessarist.' If it means tearing off the top of a hill by six or seven feet so it will receive the ball, that's what I'm going to do. I don't think God ever played golf." But the bottom line for golfers is always how well a course plays.

On a typically sunny cloudy windy rainy day in late March at Pacific Dunes, Tom Doak stood over his ball on the fairway at the 12th hole at least 40 yards from the green. With his George Low putter, he rolled the ball across the unusually short grass of the fairway, up a slight mound to the left of the green and to within a foot of the cup. "Most golfers would take a 7-iron and try to fly the ball" to the green, Mr. Doak said. "You have to play golf differently on this kind of course" where strong winds, many dunes, firmly packed sand and smooth colonial bentgrass on the fairways encourage playing the ball on the ground.

Differently, at Pacific Dunes and other naturalistic courses, means playing a game in response to the elements. "I've played Pacific Dunes when it was sunny when I got on the first tee and hailing by the fourth tee," said Scott Burridge, a 10-handicap golfer and CBS sports anchor for KOIN-TV in Portland, Ore. "When you first see some of the nice wide fairways, you think, `Oh, I can hit that.' Well, if the wind is blowing at 40 m.p.h. it's not so easy."

The new courses are not for everybody. "A lot of people don't get it," Mr. Klein of Golfweek said. "A lot of people think that a golf course ought to be lush and green."

If You Go

IF you're looking for new naturalistic courses, look west. "Converted farm and ranch lands lend themselves more readily to more naturalistic forms of construction," said Brad Klein, architecture editor for Golfweek magazine. This explains the courses sprouting in Nebraska, New Mexico, North Dakota and other states west of the Mississippi.

Mike Keiser, the owner of Bandon Dunes Golf Resort, said he searched the East Coast for years for property on which to build the wild, links-style course he envisioned. "I naïvely thought I could find 500 acres on the ocean with gently rolling dune land," he said, "but everything on the East Coast had been discovered 100 years ago." Mr. Keiser, who lives in Chicago, ended up building two courses in a remote corner of southwest Oregon.

Here is a quick look at some courses:

PACIFIC DUNES Bandon, Ore., (888) 345-6008. A 6,600-yard par-71 course, Pacific Dunes has wind, views, thickets of gorse and some of the best playing in the country. Its sister course, Bandon Dunes, which opened in 1999, is a 6,700-yard par-72 links-style course that is also one of the nation's best. Both courses are open all year and are a five-hour drive from Portland or a one-hour flight (into North Bend Municipal Airport, where cars can be rented, 40 minutes away). Shuttle vans also operate between North Bend and the Bandon Dunes Golf Resort.

RUSTIC CANYON Moorpark, Calif., (805) 530-0221. Golf Digest magazine's pick for "the best new affordable" public course of 2002, Rustic Canyon is treeless with firm, sandy soil in a broad, wild canyon north of Los Angeles. The par-72 course is 6,900 yards.

WILD HORSE Gothenburg, Neb., (308) 537-7700. Foot-high prairie grass and wildflowers choke the rough on 300 acres of rolling hills near the Sand Hills. This 6,800-yard par-72 course has no trees or water hazards — just hills and giant "blow-outs," where the soil has eroded down to the sand.

Past Articles and Miscellaneous Links

Golfdom

For some of Geoff's monthly columns and features, check out Golfdom's website.

Australian Society of Golf Course Architects

Geoff has two articles featured in Volume 7 of the highly respected annual journal published by the Australian architects. A 5000-word story on the life and ahead-of-his-time thoughts on golf, and his "Case for the Classic Course Ball." He also has a story in Volume 6.

Golf World

July, 2002 Golf World column on Bethpage Black.

February, 2002 Golf World column on Riviera.

Los Angeles Times

Los Angeles Times contributions include a November 20, 2003 story titled, "Trying to Drive Debate Home." It looks at the recent comments from past-USGA presidents Sandy Tatum and Bill Campbell, with many other views shared by Trey Holland,Judy Bell, Reg Murphy and former Executive Director Frank Hannigan. The story included news of a possible change in USGA rules that would allow for a competition ball to be introduced.

The August 14, 2003 Los Angeles Times featured Geoff's story on the recent rebirth of the PGA Championship, "Minor Major."

The July 17, 2003 Los Angeles Times featured Geoff's story on links courses. "Hitting Unfairways,"

Geoff's article on the USGA's recent course setup follies, was featured in the June 12, 2003 issue.

"Where Risk is No Longer Rewarding," Geoff's story in the April 8, 2003 Masters special golf section, appeared alongside a revealing interview with two-time Masters Champion Ben Crenshaw.


Links Magazine
Geoff's "Stadium Golf Gone Awry" was the Links cover story in May/June, 2005.

A feature on Harold Lloyd's ultra cool "backyard" 10-hole course is featured in the January 2004 issue of Links.

Geoff's article, "The (Lost?) Art of Course Setup?" was featured in the May/June 2003 issue of Links along with a Classic Course feature on Max Behr's Rancho Santa Fe CC.

Golf Magazine
"Major Identity Crisis," a look at the sameness of the modern day grand slam course setups, was featured in the August 2003 issue of Golf.

Masters Journal
"Hidden Hazards," a feature story on Alister MacKenzie and his camouflage theories, appeared in the 2003 Masters Journal, the official publication of the Masters.

Misc. Links
Geoff Shackelford discussion group.