When you describe a job as involving overseas travel to some of the world’s most exotic landscapes with long days working on luxurious resorts all with a hint of danger, it sounds like you’re advertising a job with James Bond.
However, it is also an accurate description of the average golf course architect’s life, which is fast paced, full of action and never dull.
Over the course of an average year we will make around 30 site visits, which will equate to about 100 days away from home.
Most recently I’ve been travelling to the deserts of Egypt and Dubai as well as Turkey’s Mediterranean coast.
Our project in Egypt, called New Giza is a fascinating development. An old disused quarry is being transformed into a whole new city, including an 18-hole championship golf course, villas, semi-detached apartment buildings, city centre hub, university, commercial centre and other recreational facilities.
There really is nothing like getting your boots dirty, stepping out on site and working to transform a barren landscape into the beautiful rolling fairways of a golf course.
It can be a pretty dangerous place though and I’ve had a few hair-raising experiences, with one in particular standing out as it nearly saw me swallowed up whole.
I was on a site visit in Malaysia, crossing a stream with an associate who warned me the ground was a little soft. So I made sure I stood on some rocks as we crossed, but one just gave way underneath me and I found myself rapidly sinking in quicksand. They had to get some rope and haul me out. It’s something I smile about when I look back on it now, but at the time it was a little scary.
It wasn’t the last time I’d be caught out by a hazard on a course I’d designed. But fortunately it’s only the bunkers or water hazards that catch me out now.
It’s not all about getting out on site though, there is plenty of work that needs to be done in the office, which is where most of my day-to-day work is done. Going through ideas for projects already underway, while all the time looking out for any potential developments we could work on.
Along with Andrew Goosen in our London office we discuss all our plans and bounce ideas off each other before settling on a design.
The whole process starts when we’re given a survey of the land by the client, who could be anyone from a property developer to Arabian Sheikh or even a wealthy golf nut working on a passion project.
As a team we carefully study the plans to see the contours of the land and any points of interest – like streams, rock faces or even an usual land form we can utilise, bringing the natural beauty into play without compromising the integrity of the course and being sympathetic to the land. A prime example of this is New Giza, where we have incorporated the old quarry wall as part of the design, giving the course a dramatic vertical hazard running alongside some of the holes.
Sometimes we see holes straightaway that fit naturally to the earth and get an idea of what we want to do. We’ll look for a clubhouse site, which will usually be where the 1st, 9th, 10th and 18th holes will also be situated.
However, there is no set formula to designing a golf course. Each has a different personality, you might see some holes straight away, but they might be the 3rd to the 5th in the middle, nowhere near the clubhouse or the beginning of the course.
The drawing process starts by hand, sketching out ideas on tracing paper over the top of the land survey. We could be drawing a single project for anything between 2000-3000 hours, doing 12 different designs, before reaching an agreement with the client and developer.
Once the hand drawing is approved it is moved onto CAD (computer aided design), which is a very accurate drawing, which can easily be manipulated. The drawings are then printed on our printer, which churns out large-scale drawings. We can go even bigger and print the drawings out to industrial size, or even make them into giant posters.
There are additional services to deal with too, such as creating manuals for the course superintendents of developments we’ve designed that are up and running. These important booklets act as guides to the superintendent on how to maintain the design and sustain the course for years to come.
It will tell them how the fairways should be mown and how to enhance certain aspects of the course. For example Carya Golf Club in Turkey, which has just opened, is a heathland inspired course, and we propagated over a million heather plants on site. The booklet we’ve produced has instructions on how to maintain the heather and make sure it has sustained growth throughout the course.
We’ll also instruct on things like future cutting heights, where we want the aprons and grass cut to allow run offs on the greens to maintain the strategy of the course and for golfers moving forward.
Over my years as a golf course architect things have changed quite a bit, mainly for the better and, largely, due to technology.
The digital age has been a huge help to golf course architects much like the three-piece ball or titanium driver has been for golfers. All the little gadgets have made life so much easier and more efficient.
Things used to be very tough when measuring distances in the past, as you’d have to use a measuring wheel or a pacer to mark out distance, which could be arduous work especially in a warm, humid climate. And they were never the most accurate of tools either.
Now with the GPS range finders all you have to do is stand on a tee and point to a bunker being built in the distance and in seconds confirm what we’ve designed is being fulfilled.
GPS surveying equipment has also really helped as they pinpoint exactly where we are in relation to the plans, whereas before everything had to be done by reference points and it could be extremely laborious.
You can even put a GPS attachment onto a buildozer, and it will operate the blade so the course is dug exactly to where it’s designed.
However, that’s something we tend not to do as we feel it takes out the artistic flair, and that’s what the site visit is all about. The plans are a good roadmap to what you want, but you still have to implement the details and put them into the ground.
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