Ron Whitten, historian and former Golf Digest architecture editor, and Mike Davis, former USGA CEO and executive director, delve deep into the origins, evolution and architecture of Oakmont Country Club. We discuss how and why Oakmont developed the way it has, what makes it arguably the greatest championship venue in American golf, what makes the greens so unique and so fast, whether it’s a purely penal design, how Whitten shamed the club into reclaiming their treeless identity in the 1990s and the course’s specific strengths and weaknesses.

Photos: Main page, Oakmont CC, First hole; Above, Oakmont’s second hole.

Watch Derek Duncan break down the 13th hole at Augusta National.

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Golf course designer Riley Johns joins Derek and Jim from his home in Canada to fill us in on his latest thoughts on course building and artistry. Johns has been splitting time between his own growing business with partner Keith Rhebb, leading projects for Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw, and even working with Jim on the renovation of St. Charles in Winnipeg, a club with nines by both Alister MacKenzie and Donald Ross. We talk about the influence of Stanley Thompson and Thompson’s similarities to MacKenzie, the benefits of unconditional constraints in artistic design, the luxury of improvising in the field, the downside of following recipes and the value of collaborative input vs. intense auteurism.

Photos: Main page, Te Arai South, 5th hole (Ricky Robinson); Above, Winter Park 9

Watch Derek Duncan break down the 13th hole at Augusta National.

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Augusta National is complicated. It’s the most famous course in the world and has been an architectural and maintenance ideal for decades, even though the design is in a continuing state of flux and the turf and bunker conditions have been far from perfect over its life. If it isn’t what we think it is, and perhaps never was, and if it has passed through numerous very different versions of itself, how can it perennially and for most of its history be considered essentially one thing: arguably the best or second best course in the U.S. and number one on every golfer’s bucket list?

Designer, historian and Golf Digest architecture emeritus Ron Whitten, and prolific author David Owen (who wrote the seminal book on the Masters called “The Making of the Masters“) sit with Derek Duncan to hash out all of this and explore the depths of Augusta.

The Comprehensive Guide to Every Change at Augusta National.

Watch Derek Duncan break down the 18th hole at TPC Sawgrass.

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You may have read or heard someone talk about good or bad “tie-ins” on a golf course. It loosely has to do with how the architecture is connected to the land during construction, but the topic is much larger and more nuanced than that. Derek Duncan and Jim Urbina define and discuss tie-ins, what they are, and why doing them correctly is important to the functionality and enjoyment of a golf course.

Cover photo: The 4th at Pacific Dunes, built by Jim Urbina.

Watch Derek Duncan break down the 18th hole at TPC Sawgrass.

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Looking ahead to The Players Championship, former PGA Tour player Richard Zokol and designer Jeff Mingay drop in from Canada to break down everything there is to know about The Players Stadium Course at TPC Sawgrass (Zokol actually competed on Sawgrass in the 1980s). We get into the history and creation of the course, how it exemplifies Pete Dye’s architectural genius, its influence on golf design, playing the course with 1980s equipment, how the professionals have adapted to it and commentary on its best, worst and most overrated holes.

Outro song: “Comfortably Numb,” Pink Floyd.

Watch Derek Duncan break down the 18th hole at TPC Sawgrass.

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Writer Michael Croley, author of the book Any Other Place: Stories, veered into the world of golf with a revelatory profile on Tom Doak in 2017 in the Virginia Quarterly Review, hardly the place you’d expect to find an expose on a golf course architect. Now fully entrenched in the golf writing world while teaching creative writing at Denison University, Croley joins the Feed the Ball podcast to discuss how he was able to get under the surface of Doak’s public persona, the usefulness of being new to a subject, if the concept of “genius” applies to golf course architects, the usefulness of criticism in golf writing and if contemporary architecture is “sanded out.”

Photos: Above, Kinsale; Main page, St. Patrick Links (Clyde Johnson).

Watch Derek Duncan break down The 17th hole at Whistling Straits.

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Former Australian, European and PGA Tour player and current CBS Sports golf broadcaster Ian Baker-Finch joins Golf Digest architecture editor Derek Duncan and golf course builder Jim Urbina on the Feed the Ball podcast. They discuss the lack of architecture discussion during tournament television broadcasts, the dangers of the distance professional players are driving the ball, the importance of seeing as many different courses as possible, the different genius of Bill Coore and Tom Fazio, why PGA Tour rounds take so long, what makes Australian Sand Belt courses so distinct and what Baker-Finch’s ideal course design would look like.

Photos: Above, Pebble Beach (Stephen Szurlej); Main page, Kingston Heath (David Cannon).

Watch Derek Duncan break down The 17th hole at Whistling Straits.

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The post Feed the Ball Salon Vol. 30, ft. Ian Baker-Finch appeared first on Feed The Ball.

Texas-based architect Chet Williams joins the Feed the Ball podcast to discuss designing the 2024 Golf Digest Best New Private Course, The Covey at Big Easy Ranch near Houston. He talks about what made the land special, the ideal of creating as much hole-to-hole variety as possible, working with owner Billy Brown and how 25 years working for Jack Nicklaus has influenced his design sensibilities.

Photos: Above, Whispering Pines 17th hole (Larry Lambrecht); Main page, The Covey at Big Easy Ranch, 8th hole (Brian Oar).

Outro song: “Anything Can Happen,” The Clean.

Watch Derek Duncan break down The 17th hole at Whistling Straits.

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Keith Cutten comes back on the Feed the Ball podcast to discuss the new Shorty’s course at Bandon Dunes that opened last year, Brantford Golf & Country Club in Ontario and building Ken Baskt’s The Ranch near Hobe Sound, Florida. He also explains the working dynamics of his firm Whitman, Axland, Cutten (WAC), how Dave Axland and Rod Whitman work, the importance of small contours and what an updated chapter of his book The Evolution of Golf Course Design might look like.

Photos: Above, Brantford Golf & Country Club (Brantford G&CC); Main page, Shorty’s at Bandon Dunes (Bandon Dunes).

Outro song: “Time Stands Still,” Rush.

Watch Derek Duncan break down The 13th hole at Pacific Dunes.

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Mike Davis was the CEO and executive director for the USGA for over 30 years and was responsible for awarding U.S. Opens and Amateurs to host courses and helping to set them up for those tournaments. Over the course of his career he got to know intricately virtually every great golf course in the U.S. He now takes that knowledge into a new chapter of his life as a golf course designer, working with partner Tom Fazio II at Apogee Club in Florida designing the South Course, just completed.

Davis talks to Golf Digest architecture editor Derek Duncan and golf course builder Jim Urbina about his first foray into design being such a large engineering project, fitting ideas of holes he experienced while setting up Opens into a blank-slate site and the challenges of balancing the demands of agronomy, professional skill levels, average member play and tournament play in modern design.

Photos: Above, Merion’s 5th hole (Derek Duncan); Main page, Apogee South (Jim Urbina).

Watch Derek Duncan break down The 13th hole at Pacific Dunes.

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