Feed The Ball

Like most architects, Steve Smyers has a deep reverence for the classical era and the strategic brilliance of Harry Colt, Alister MacKenzie, George Thomas and others. However, as an elite player as well as a veteran designer, he realized the basic strategic precepts that have existed since the early 1900s and have guided much of his own work might no longer apply to golf at the highest levels. Smyers joins Golf Digest architecture editor Derek Duncan to discuss the a-ha moment that led to his evolving views on strategy and course design for the game’s best players, and whether or not a changing understanding of strategy symbolizes the end of strategic play as we’ve always known it.

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[Photos–above, Old Memorial, courtesy oldmemorialgolfclub.com; cover page–Pine Valley, Derek Duncan]

View my narration of Golf Digest’s “Every Hole at Whistling Straits”

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Twitter: @feedtheball

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Derek Duncan discusses the breakdown of Golf Digest America’s 100 Greatest Courses list with Aaron Abrahms and Jimmie James on the Golf Nuts Podcast, Episode 15.

The post Episode 78: Steve Smyers and Rethinking Strategy appeared first on Feed The Ball.

In this Feed the Ball podcast, we get deep into some Wisconsin golf talk with golf course architect Craig Haltom. Haltom joins Golf Digest architecture editor Derek Duncan to discuss recreating C.B. Macdonald’s The Lido at Sand Valley, how GPS technology has the potential to change the way courses are preserved and finished, how he located the Sand Valley property over a decade ago and brought it to the attention of Mike Keiser, renovating a municipal course in Madison with a crew of talented designers, the power potential of adventurous practice putting greens, and his new 18-hole course, The Club at Lac La Belle outside Milwaukee.

Photo, above: The par-4 5th, “Cape” at The Lido in Wisconsin. Cover photo: the wild par-3 4th at The Club at Lac La Belle.

View my narration of Golf Digest’s “Every Hole at Whistling Straits”

Subscribe to Feed the Ball on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher Radio and Google Play

Twitter: @feedtheball

Instagram: @feedtheball

Derek Duncan discusses the breakdown of Golf Digest America’s 100 Greatest Courses list with Aaron Abrahms and Jimmie James on the Golf Nuts Podcast, Episode 15.

The post Episode 77: Craig Haltom appeared first on Feed The Ball.

Is it possible we take Whistling Straits for granted? Of all the spectacular builds in the history of golf, from The Lido to Calusa Pines, very little is spoken about how Pete Dye and Herb Kohler transformed flat farmland and an abandoned Army airfield into the wild, multilayered Irish-looking golf course gouged into the bluffs of Lake Michigan that is the 23rd ranked course on Golf Digest America’s 100 Greatest Courses ranking. How did Dye do it?

Mike O’Connor can tell us. While Dye is known for beginning the careers of many current designers and course builders, very few knew him like O’Connor did, who worked as Dye’s construction manager at a multitude of courses for over 25 years, including running the job at Whistling Straits. He essentially lived on site for several years, and in this podcast he shares his insight and recollections of what it was like to build the course, and what it took to pull off one of golf’s most dramatic land transformations. He also shares stories about working side-by-side with Dye, meeting and developing a friendship with Kohler, what the virgin property was like, discovering live rounds of aerial ammunition on site, how the course evolved from conception, the origins of the out-of-character par-5 5th, and one very strange but discarded idea for the famous par-3 17th.

View my narration of Golf Digest’s “Every Hole at Whistling Straits”

Subscribe to Feed the Ball on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher Radio and Google Play

Twitter: @feedtheball

Instagram: @feedtheball

Derek Duncan discusses the breakdown of Golf Digest America’s 100 Greatest Courses list with Aaron Abrahms and Jimmie James on the Golf Nuts Podcast, Episode 15.

Photo: Early days at Whistling Straits (all construction photos courtesy of Mike O’Connor).

The post Episode 76: Making Whistling Straits appeared first on Feed The Ball.

Davis Love III needs no introduction. But just in case, he’s a member of the World Golf Hall of Fame, has logged over 20 PGA Tour victories, won the 1997 PGA Championship, was twice victorious at The Players Championship and is a two-time Ryder Cup captain. He’s also a tournament founder (the PGA Tour’s RSM Classic at Sea Island), philanthropist and golf course designer. Love Golf Design, which he operates with brother Mark Love, is a craft-oriented and highly creative design firm that has produced courses like Diamante Dunes in Cabo San Lucas, The Plantation Course at Sea Island, Atlantic Dunes at Sea Pines, and Kinderlou Forest in Georgia. They’ve recently completed projects at Birdwood Golf Club at Boar’s Head at the University of Virginia, and Belmont in Richmond in conjunction with The First Tee of Greater Richmond, consisting of the restoration of 12 original A.W. Tillinghast holes plus the conversion of six others into a dynamic short course, expanded practice area and Himalayas putting green.

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Love joins Golf Digest architecture editor Derek Duncan and golf course builder Jim Urbina to discuss:

–The Ryder Cup and setting up Whistling Straits;

–What makes a great match-play course;

–Preserving and fighting for the integrity of old courses;

–Working with talented creatives like Forrest Fezler, Paul Cowley and Scot Sherman;

–How to balance the needs of the skilled with the desires of the everyday player;

–How Pete Dye defined a golf course architect;

–And what types of courses attract him personally.

Subscribe to Feed the Ball on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher Radio and Google Play

Twitter: @feedtheball

Instagram: @feedtheball

Derek Duncan discusses the breakdown of Golf Digest America’s 100 Greatest Courses list with Aaron Abrahms and Jimmie James on the Golf Nuts Podcast, Episode 15.

Photos–Cover Page: The Plantation Course at Sea Island (photo: seaisland.com). Above: Dormant grass at Ricefields at Hampton Island Preserve; Below: more scenes from the abandoned Ricefields.

The post Feed the Ball Salon Vol. 18, ft. Davis Love III appeared first on Feed The Ball.

James Duncan came to the U.S. from his native Denmark in the early 1990s to learn the craft of building golf courses. He learned from the best, working first with Tom Doak and Renaissance Golf Design, then joining with Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw to help construct courses like East Hampton, Old Sandwich, Bandon Trails, Clear Creek Tahoe, Shanquin Bay in China and many others. He has his own firm now, and he’s currently fulfilling a lifelong goal of founding and designing a new course, Brambles, in Northern California, along with Coore, Crenshaw and his own team of creative shapers.

Duncan joins the podcast to talk to Golf Digest architecture editor Derek Duncan and golf course designer Jim Urbina about the Brambles site, meeting Jim and Tom Doak and Gil Hanse almost immediately upon arriving in the U.S., the value of traveling to see great architecture, architects as “editors in chief,” his attempts to have Brambles reflect the simplicity and essence of golf as he knows it, what a course would be if you had once chance in life to build it, using ground as a means of connecting to a community and beauty of keeping it simple.

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Photos: Above–copses at Brambles’ soon-to-be 10th hole; Main Page–the green at the par-4 4th at Brambles, looking back.

The post Feed the Ball Salon Vol. 17, ft. James Duncan appeared first on Feed The Ball.

Designer Troy Miller worked for Landmark Land Co. for a decade, building golf courses around North America, before leaving the company to settle down in his hometown of Charleston, SC. The move put him in a unique position to do something he’d first envisioned years before: help the city rebuild the popular but dated municipal golf course he grew up playing, that happened to be in the same neighborhood where he lived. With help from an organization called “Friends of the Muni,” Miller got the Charleston Municipal project off the ground and reimagined the design as the third installment in a trilogy of Seth Raynor courses, the architect who built two other clubs in the city in the years before Muni first opened in 1929, the esteemed but private Yeamans Hall and Country Club of Charleston. Miller pulled many of the famous Raynor and C.B. Macdonald template hole concepts into the Muni design, giving public players at last a taste of what private club members had long experienced.

Miller joins the Feed the Ball podcast to discuss the how the Muni came into being, how smartly done municipal golf projects can be financially prosperous, Raynor’s presence and influence in Charleston golf, the advantage of keeping green-speeds lower, watching The Ocean Course at Kiawah Island get built and then being present years later when Pete Dye renovated it, The Ocean Course as a “golf safari” and a potential redevelopment of the Patriot’s Point course overlooking Charleston Harbor.

Photo: the par-4 13th, “Road,” at Muni. Cover photo: the “Maiden” green at the par-5 15th.

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The post Episode 75: Troy Miller appeared first on Feed The Ball.

PGA Tour and current PGA Champions tour player Tom Lehman, winner of the 1996 Open Championship at Royal Lytham & St. Anne’s, has seamlessly managed to maintain an elite game while developing a golf course design outlook that almost entirely eschews consideration of elite players. Lehman stops by the Salon to speak with Golf Digest architecture editor Derek Duncan and golf course builder Jim Urbina about:

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–The importance of hitting your line when playing links golf;

–how golf is too consumed with “championship golf;”

–the overuse of multiple tees;

–the similarities of old-school U.S. Open setups and links golf;

–the curse of construction technology;

–anchoring a routing on several special natural features;

–and how some players just “get it” and “see it” when it comes to architecture (and others don’t).

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Photos: The Prairie Club, courtesy lehmandesigngroup.com

The post Feed the Ball Salon Vol. 16, ft. Tom Lehman appeared first on Feed The Ball.

In a limited amount of original work, David Kahn has proven to be one of the most creative, courageous and expressionistic golf course architects working today. Along with partner Tim Jackson, the other half of Jackson Kahn Design, he’s reimagined the shaping and visage of the historic Dunes Course at Monterey Peninsula Country Club, built an artistic and technical tour de force with The Other Course at Scottsdale National, as well as the world’s most outlandish (and fun) short nine-hole course at the same facility (The Bad Little Nine). What consumes him most, however, is the rapidly declining health of his twin daughters, Amelia and Makenzie, who each suffer from a fatal neurological disease known as CNL3 juvenile Batten Disease.

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David joins Derek to talk about the emotional toll of caring for his daughters as they lose the ability to speak, walk and see, the shock of their diagnosis four years ago, and how he and his wife, Karen, have created the Fore Batten Foundation to raise awareness and money to fight the disease through one of golf’s largest and most prestigious online auctions, with bidding available for rounds of golf at America’s greatest and most exclusive courses.

He also discusses the grueling curriculum of a landscape architecture degree, modifying Robert Trent Jones’ work at Eugene Country Club, his interest (or lack of) in historical restoration, hiding cart paths, finding a golf course owner with means (Bob Parsons at Scottsdale National) but also knowing what to do with the gifts of land and money, and the extreme luxury of complete creative freedom.

Read more about the Kahns and the Fore Batten auction in my recent Golf Digest story here, and in Alan Shipnuck’s original story on the family from 2018, here.

Listen to Derek Duncan discuss the book “The Match” by Mark Frost in the Good-Good Golf Podcast Book Club edition.

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Photos: Cover page: the par-3 3rd at Scottsdale National; above: the sensational 18,000 square foot 17th green at Scottsdale National.

The post Episode 74: David Kahn appeared first on Feed The Ball.

Canadian designer Ian Andrew, Feed the Ball guest from Episode 14, is back to visit with Derek Duncan and Jim Urbina. The conversation turns to topics of:

–Choose Your Own Adventure golf architecture;

–The satisfactions of playing “unknown” courses;

–Golf as an emotional experience;

–The importance of “compression and release” in design;

–Creativity beginning with saying “I don’t know”;

–How the best architects “fight” for contours;

–and the genius of Stanley Thompson.

Listen to Derek Duncan discuss the book “The Match” by Mark Frost in the Good-Good Golf Podcast Book Club edition.

Subscribe to Feed the Ball on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher Radio and Google Play

Twitter: @feedtheball

Instagram: @feedtheball

Photos: Cover page, St. Georges Golf & Country Club, 1st hole, Clive Barber; above, Knollwood Country Club, 16th hole, Evan Schiller

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The post Feed the Ball Salon Vol. 15, ft. Ian Andrew appeared first on Feed The Ball.

Larry Lambrecht has been one of golf’s most prolific and talented photographers for over 30 years. He’s shot golf courses and tournaments, as well as Super Bowls, World Series and other major sporting events, for virtually ever major publication. He’s also published a number of books and club histories along with his course photography, including, in 2004, “Emerald Gems”, a lusciously photographed book dedicated to the links courses of Ireland.

Lambrecht joined Derek on the podcast to discuss what initially drew him to photography, shooting courses like Augusta National, being in the NFL Hall of Fame, transitioning from film development to computer editing, how the iPhone revolutionized the field of photography, how cart paths ruin photography, the natural photographic composition of Tom Fazio holes, the unique light of Ireland, meeting Eddie Hackett and his most harrowing visits abroad.

Listen to Derek Duncan discuss the book “The Match” by Mark Frost in the Good-Good Golf Podcast Book Club edition.

Subscribe to Feed the Ball on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher Radio and Google Play

Twitter: @feedtheball

Instagram: @feedtheball

Photos: Ballybunion by Larry Lambrecht (above); Cape Wickham by Larry Lambrecht (title page).

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