The original 18 hole course was laid out by Colt in 1908 and is set amongst a 18th Century Capability Brown/ Humphrey Repton Landscape. Additionally the magnificent 18th Century Mansion House has been the scene for many movies including Goldfinger (James Bond), Layer Cake and Brigitte Jones Diary.

Stoke Park is a great golfing adventure, subtly integrated into this important landscape.

See below some pictures of the journey undertaken:

Some of the interesting bunker detailing at Stoke Park

John McGuiness, Paul Thomas and Andrew Goosen in front of the splendid clubhouse

Looks like a newly built bunker. There were some disparities in the style and playability of the bunkering

Golf in a grand landscape. Perfect subtly and respect.

John putting on the short par 4, 20th hole. The new nine was done by Donald Steele and fits in well with the spirit of Stoke

Golf can be a great driver to create revenue and finance to help restore historic destinations. Lets hope that planning authorities can hear this

Stoke Park is a great golfing and historic experience. Go play and enjoy the afternoon exploring the Clubhouse, afternoon tea on the lawn and photos in locker room.

www.stokeparkclub.com

By the way. John and Paul beat Tim and Andrew 2&1.

Our new 18 hole golf course in Dubai called Dubai Golf City was featured in a 2 page spread in the April, 2010 issue of Worldwide Golf.

Please see below scan of article.

Please read below for details.

World Forum of Golf Architects,  St Andrews 2010

Golf Course Architecture for the 21st Century – Challenges and Opportunities.

With just over two weeks to go many golf course architects are already looking forward to the historic World Forum of Golf Architects and making the travel arrangements that will take them to St Andrews from 24th to 28th March 2010.

A great gathering of the golf design business

In collaboration with the American Society of Golf Course Architects and the Society of Australian Golf Course Architects, the European Institute of Golf Course Architects, supported by its industry partners, will return to the ‘Home of Golf’ to mark its Tenth Anniversary.

The Forum programme combines serious golf – on both the Old and the New Courses – with fun golf – a competition over the 9-hole 2,022 yard course at Kingarrock Golf Club, just outside St. Andrews, to experience golf played with original hickory clubs and authentic early 20th century tees and balls. Of course, no visit to St Andrews would be complete without a putting competition on the ‘Himalayas’, which this year will raise funds for the Golf Foundation.

Playing on the Old Course again will be a highlight for Ross, Tim and all playing

The Forum, which is confidently expected to attract the largest ever gathering of golf course architects, concludes with a two-day Conference with the theme, “Golf Course Architecture for the 21st Century – Challenges and Opportunities.”

International guest speakers (including Ross Perrett) will be presenting but everyone attending the Forum will be given the opportunity to contribute through a series of short presentations and panel debates. The Conference will be held within the impressive precincts of Upper and Lower College Halls, St Salvator’s Quad, University of St Andrews.

There will be many opportunities for informal ‘networking’ in addition to the two social highlights: a welcome reception in Forgan House, hosted by The R&A, and the Gala Conference Dinner that concludes the Forum and will be held in the Links Clubhouse. At this event the first winner of the Harry Colt Trophy will be announced and presented with the trophy which has been created to honour outstanding service to the game of golf.

“The Forum is really a celebration of the golf business and what golf design has achieved within that over the last one hundred years,” said David Krause, President EIGCA. “For EIGCA it is also our 10th Anniversary so it’s a good reason to be proud of what we have achieved over the last 10 years and to share some of the things that we have done with our sister organisations.

“We had our 5th Anniversary in St Andrews, the last time The Open was played there. We decided to follow the R&A’s rotation and planned back then to return to the home of the Old Course. It’s the same combination in 2010. Everyone loves going to St Andrews.”

Tim and Ross will post some pictures after the event and our scores from playing the Old and New Courses. Pressure is on.

Tim, Peter and Ross in St Andrews, 2008

PRESS RELEASE

TPL host industry leaders to talk bunkers

(London, United Kingdom – March 5, 2010) Thomson Perrett & Lobb, the golf course design practice founded by five-times Open Champion Peter Thomson, hosted golf industry leaders for a seminar on bunkering, embracing the three disciplines of design, construction and maintenance.

The seminar, held at Burhill Golf Club, Surrey, brought together golf course architects such as Dr Martin Hawtree (Hawtree Ltd), Martin Ebert (Mackenzie Ebert), Gary Johnston (European Golf Design) and Greg Letsche (Els Design) and golf course managers from Sunningdale, Wentworth, The Berkshire, Walton Heath and The Emirates Golf Club to name but a few.

The 29 delegates joined TPL’s Tim Lobb and Andrew Goosen to discuss the various aspects of bunkering, and listen to presentations from companies specialising in the bunker construction.

Representatives from bunker lining manufacturers (BunkerMat, Sportcrete, On Course Solutions) were given the floor to explain their products and the benefits of bunker liners, while Nigel Wyatt of MJ Abbott discussed bunker construction techniques and Charles Henderson from the Sports Turf Research Institute explained the importance of particle size and shape in bunker sand.

Presentations from industry experts were educational and topical

A lengthy round table open discussion brought proceedings to a close, with a number of important topics debated, including the merits of bunker maintenance, bunker renovation and course length.

Tim Lobb, who chaired the seminar, said: “We wanted to bring golf industry leaders together, and the subject of the seminar is one close to every course architect, developer and manager. Bunkers have to be designed, built and maintained and to have such knowledge in one room discussing the subject so deeply, intensely and passionately was great.’

“Everyone was quite open in the discussions so we could really go into depth on the issues brought up.”

Craig Haldane, The Emirates Golf Club course superintendent, travelled from Dubai to be at the seminar.

He said: “It was amazing to have so many industry experts sitting around a table talking about a simple hazard, it was well worth the trip.”

TPL are planning to host similar seminars on various topics of golf course design and management in the future.

Delegates of the TPL bunker seminar in front of Burhill's magnificent clubhouse

Victoria Golf Club (Melbourne, Australia) honoured its most famous member by unveiling a bronze statue of five-times British Open champion Peter Thomson AO, CBE .

Peter at Victoria Golf Club in front of statue

Thomson’s five British Open wins between 1954 and 1965 rank him second to Harry Vardon who won the title six times between 1896 and 1914.  Such was his dominance of the title in the 1950s that in the years that he did not win between 1952 and 1958 he was runner-up.

Peter Thomson - Champion of the British Open 5 times

The unveiling was attended by Thomson, wife Mary, daughter Deirdre, members celebrating the club’s Foundation Day, MPs Andrew Robb and Murray Thomson, Bayside Mayor James Long, and the CEOs of Golf Australia and the PGA, respectively Stephen Pitt and Max Garske.

Melbourne sculptor Louis Lauman took six months to produce the work, drawing his subject in charcoal and using Thomson family scrapbooks to capture the swing and accurately portray the clothes and equipment of the era.

The statue is 1.1 times (110%) life size, sculpted in clay and cast in silicon bronze at the Fundere Fine Art Foundry in West Footscray.

Golfing greatness is measured by major championships won and longevity in the game. Thomson’s first victory of note was his club championship at Royal Park in Melbourne at the age of 16 in 1946.

His last win came in the 1988 Seniors British PGA Championship and he won somewhere in the world at least once every year from 1950 until 1973. In 1985 he dominated the US PGA Senior Tour with an unprecedented nine victories.

His brilliant playing career, with victories spanning five decades, was capped in 1998 when he led the International Team to its only success against the might of United States in the Presidents Cup at Royal Melbourne.

Along the way he found time to design and build more than 100 golf courses around the world, serve as chairman of the Australian Professional Golfers Association for 32 years, run for Parliament in Victoria and pioneer the professional golf circuit in Asia.

A silky swing at The Home of Golf - St Andrews

During our trip to Dubai this week to review the design for Emirates Golf Club and visit Dubai Golf City we were fortunate enough to enjoy the hospitality of Jumeirah Golf Estates and play the newly opened Fire Course. The course is of championship length with wide fairways, subtle sloping greens (very fair and interesting) and striking bunkers with a lovely contrast of textures achieved through clever ornamental grass plantings.

Please see below some picture to help describe this achievement.

Lovely textured bunkers

Hole 2 is a cracking par 3 with significant challenge

So refreshing to see a natural looking golf course in the Middle East

Dramatic bunkering at the forefront of this design

Congratulations must go to Greg Norman Design, the onsite construction/ maintenance guys and to the Jumeirah Golf Estates team who are rapidly developing this into a world class golfing experience.

Please follow our upcoming blog posts in the near future describing the modernisation works that we are going to be undertaking on the Majlis Course, Emirates Golf Club. Good luck to all the guys at Emirates Golf Club for the upcoming European Tour event – Dubai Desert Classic.

Well, I can’t say for certain the economy has turned a corner and we are on an upward trend, but we have certainly had a significant increase in enquiries from a variety of new projects suggesting, at the very least, investors and developers are looking ahead.

In the past two months we have been contacted by developers involved in projects in North Africa, The Mediterranean and the Caribbean.

In recent years, we have undertaken a great deal of work in the Middle East and, despite the well publicised difficulties in some countries, work continues on new projects. We recently won the contract to design a championship golf course for the Blue City development at Al Madina A’Zarqa in the Sultanate of Oman, where a number of significant developments are underway.

They have the benefit of learning from the experiences of other regions of the Middle East where golf has developed rapidly over the past 20 years.

What is becoming clear is that investors and developers are now proceeding with greater caution and diligence. That means they are putting more thought into the design of their golf courses and the architect they appoint. Until recently, there was a focus on high-end developments and signature designers, whatever the cost. A more mixed approach seems to be emerging with a greater emphasis on the quality of the golf course design, and not just how it fits into the plan for the real estate development.

Golf course design takes time – often 12 months – and the smart developer is now looking to move things forward. Those that have started construction are benefiting from some of the lowest construction costs the industry has seen in a long time. So there are incentives to taking steps now.

However, developers need to take a long term view, demanding good quality, sustainable design for their golf courses, employing architects who can deliver value for money and a return on investment. That is the path to true economic recovery.

TPL's contract with Blue City indicates movement in the Middle East market.

I played at Turnberry in the British Matchplay Championships, I think in 1957, so I was very familiar with the place having had a lot of serious rounds there in the Championship. As a matter of fact, I lost to Christy O’Connor on the final hole in our match, in the semi-final, so I was very familiar with the course and rather liked it, actually.

The course was resurrected after the war, when it had served as an airfield, and was put together again in a nice way – I think it is impossible to criticise. It is a top class course, one of the category A courses, I’d say. But it needs wind, like all the seaside courses do – wind and a bit of dryness to make the lies tighter on the fairway. Then it is as good as anything in Britain.

I was fortunate enough to win three consecutive Opens, 1954-1956, and Padraig Harrington has the opportunity to achieve this later this month. I think his chances must be good. If he’s good enough to win two, he’s good enough to win three. But the extraneous issues, such as how well other people play, come into the picture. He’s quite capable of winning three in a row, but whether the other players allow him to do that is in the lap of the gods, I would say. There is no doubt there is pressure on him to perform, and that can have its toll on a fellow’s performance. He can’t really free-wheel it and let it happen – he has got to make it happen and I think that is a big burden to carry.

Saying that, I didn’t really feel under pressure at St Andrews in 1956 – I was actually very pessimistic, I wasn’t playing well and I had a driver I didn’t like. I wasn’t putting that well, so I thought, well, I would be very lucky to get into the top half a dozen in this event. But as time went by I found that everyone else was having similar troubles. In the end I was the one that was high and dry, just a stroke ahead. You know, to win you have got to be very grateful to the people who lose, that’s been my philosophy all my life.

I won’t be at the Open Championship this year – the first time in a long time – and I am missing it already, truthfully. But an 80th Birthday is something special. I would prefer a 70th Birthday, but I have had that already and my family is assembling, so it will be an emotional time for us.