Very warm weather welcomed the participants with firm and fast conditions on the brillant Red Course.

Below are a couple of pictures from the day.

Participants at the 4th Annual Thomson Cup.

Peter presenting the Thomson Cup to winner, Sir Rocco Forte

Get practising for next year…..

Thanks to The Berkshire Golf Club for allowing us to play our event on their fine heathland course.

Click on link above to see original footage of Peter winning the 1955 Open Championship at St Andrews.

As the golfing greats gather at St Andrews for this years Open Championships Peter, Ross and Tim make the annual journey to attend the Championship.

Peter Thomson is captaining the team of Tiger Woods, Sir Nick Faldo and Mark Calcavecchia at Wednesday’s Champions Challenge.

Click on the below link to watch a video on Peters thoughts of St Andrews.

http://www.tpl.eu.com/library-old-course.php

Peter won the 1955 Open Championship at St Andrews.

Tim, Peter and Ross at the famous Old Course in St Andrews

Drop Tim an email if you are attending and want to meet up

tlobb@tpl.eu.com

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fhzjyFSCc4Q

What a swing.

Our electronic newsletter was distributed with news of our current projects.

Please click on below link for review.

http://www.tpl.eu.com/news-11.php

If you would like to subscribe please email us at info@tpl.eu.com

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

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

In these times of glossy magazines and seductive/ touched up photos of exotic golf courses it got me wondering – has golf lost its ‘fit for purpose’ importance. Is the golf industry really creating golf courses that fit into each and every golfing environment that they are found in?

On a recent trip to Australia via Malaysia the need for diversity of mindset to produce a golf course that is 100% fit for it’s purpose was exemplified. Malaysia has torrential heavy rain to cope with while in Melbourne, Australia the golf courses are facing severe and prolonged drought conditions.

Hopefully the pictures below will help to explain.

Silty soils and torrential rain greets golf construction in Malaysia

The above picture was taken from the re-construction of the Bunga Raya course at Saujana Golf & Country Club, just out of Kuala Lumpur. The old firm I used to work with, E & G Parslow are undertaking the works and have to contend with very difficult conditions to produce a golfing product that is ‘fit for pupose’

Next on the tour was a visit to Yarra Yarra in Melbourne. Yarra Yarra is in the famed sandbelt region and ranked in the top grouping of Aussie courses. Recent design work has been undertaken by Hawtree Limited and the 10th green complex re-built to produce a fine example of a subtle renovation blending into the existing course.

The new 10th greensite at Yarra Yarra

On the Mornington Peninsula, just an hours drive from Melbourne there is some of the best golfing territory around. Rolling landform, deep sands and sea views make the perfect foundation for some of the best golf courses in Australia.

The natural and dramatic bunkers on The Ocean Course, National Golf Club

The silky swing of a 5 times British Open winner - Peter Thomson

Thomson, Perrett & Lobb enjoying a round. We all love playing golf. Some are better than others of course.

Last week also saw the hosting of the Nationwide/ Australian Tour event, The Moonah Classic on The Open Course at Moonah Links. The course was designed by our Melbourne office (Thomson Perrett) and has the good fortune of being built in perfect golfing land within the Mornington Peninsula.

18th green of The Open Course, Moonah Links, what drama

6th West at Royal Melbourne, natural terrain for a great hole.

Richard Forsyth, Course Superintendent at Royal Melbourne Golf Club was kind enough to show me around the West and East course to inspect the ongoing re-grassing activities. A major re-grassing exercise has been undertaken in preparation for next years Presidents Cup and it looks as if Royal Melbourne will be back on top of the perch once all grown in.

The final course visited was Riversdale Golf Club, 20 km out of Melbourne. It was my old home course and it brought back alot of memories to go back there.

Hole 10 at Riversdale Golf Club, a tempting short par 4.

It is always great to meet up with golf industry leaders in various golfing regions and environments. The underlying key to success for each and every region is that the individuals involved with the golf courses, whether it be the design, the construction or the maintenance of the golf course is that they produce a golfing product that is fit for the purpose.

That purpose will be environmental, financial, social and cultural considerations.

Back to the UK next week to enjoy some cold weather again.

He spent four years flying with the South African Air Force during World War II and these were, I suppose, his prime years as a golfer. It was a similar story with Henry Cotton, Tommy Bolt and a lot of others. Locke returned to golf after the war and his experience in combat stiffened him so that he became such a very fierce, mean character on the course that he didn’t enjoy any popularity with his fellow players. He almost went out of his way to irritate them and, at the end of his life wasn’t much mourned.

Locke & Thomson played 63 rounds of golf together over 9 weeks in South Africa (1951-52)

Also, if we look into the annals of the game, he doesn’t feature as prominently as he should have. Nevertheless, he was a hell of a good player with his own distinct style. He played bare-handed, always played sensibly, and was a good putter, although not with the brilliance of more recent players. For example, Gary Player, who came behind him, holed 10 times as many putts as Locke ever did. As for Arnold Palmer, nobody holed long putts like he did. In Locke’s time, it was thought ridiculous to try and hole a three metre putt as the greens simply weren’t as good, so the aim was to get it near enough to the hole to make the next putt a certainty. Locke always left his first putt dead by the hole, so therefore had a reputation for being a good putter.

Taken from Peter Thomson’s book ‘Lessons I have learnt’

Golf Digest, July 1984

No-one who enjoys a game of golf could tee off at St Andrews on that first tee at the foot of the steps from the house without a racing of the heart. When I first looked out in September of 1954 it seemed like heaven. All my imaginings were proved true. There before me in the soft damp light of autumn lay this holy ground. So wide and keen was that first hole, sharing with the last the width of two cricket fields, and down at the end that dark surface ribbon that indicates the narrow burn (stream). And over it, banking it, the closer cut with the flag straight out in the wind.

Peter teeing off at St Andrews

Beyond in the near distance were the blackened railway sheds I would face to face come the 17^th hole, and beyond that the Hills of Fife in the direction of Edinburgh. The railway sheds have gone, alas, but nothing else has changed.

The North Sea rolls into the Firth of Tay and along the beach to the right. The Royal Air Force Station at Leuchars sends up its jets from the distant pines, the seagulls the real landlords.

Taken from Peter Thomson’s book ‘Lessons I have learnt’