What Differentiates a Good Golf Course from an Average One?

A lot of golf architecture discussion revolves around the fine differences between great courses and greater ones — and I don’t have a problem with that. It’s fun to argue about which Bandon course is best, or whether your next UK trip should be to the Surrey heathlands or the Scottish Highlands, or how many “Eggs” Pebble Beach deserves. In these debates, we tend to split hairs over strategic options, green speeds, bunker shaping, and so on.

It’s not that I find these subjects uninteresting or unimportant; it’s more that, when the courses we discuss always meet a certain baseline of excellence, we never end up talking about what separates good golf from average golf. And that distinction is crucial if you, like me, play your regular rounds at local public courses.

The public golf where I live — Portland, Oregon — is mostly just okay. There are some well-kept modern designs that feel over-shaped to me (Langdon Farms, Heron Lakes) and some strong-boned older courses that could use tree removal and general TLC (Eastmoreland, Rose City). Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy playing at these places and appreciate the affordable green fees. But I wouldn’t consider the golf itself substantially better than average.

One exception is Forest Hills Golf Course in Cornelius, about 20 miles west of the city.

A Billy Bell Sr.-Billy Bell Jr. collaborative design from the early 1950s,* Forest Hills might at first seem like an odd course for a golf architecture nerd to praise. If I were to take Andy out there, he’d probably point out a bunch of mowing lines that need to be pushed wider, and he wouldn’t be wrong. Many of the greens have basic saucer-like shapes and are guarded repetitively by bunkers fron right and front left. There’s not much strategic design to speak of; one side of the fairway is usually no better or worse than the other. 

But Forest Hills has a few fundamental strengths that set it apart from the average course:

A strong routing

At Forest Hills, the greens sit on natural high points, the green-to-tee walks are short, and the holes use the land in many different ways, running alternately through valleys, along ridges, and across both.

Minimal earthmoving

I dislike when fairways are graded out and artificially shaped in order to create “fair” lies. Architects: either stop doing this kind of work or hide it better!

As far as I can see, the Bells didn’t do much earthmoving at Forest Hills. They dug some bunkers (just 29 exist today) and benched a few greens into hillsides, but otherwise they left the land alone. As a result, several fairways have the kind of funky slopes, humps, and hollows that only nature produces. These contours make for exciting, unpredictable golf and give the player a feel for the landscape that predated the course.

Uncluttered playing corridors

As the name indicates, Forest Hills doesn’t lack for trees, but it has avoided the type of ambitious planting program that cluttered up many Pacific Northwest courses in the post-World War II era. The hole corridors are plenty wide, and most of the trees appear to be indigenous. They lend character to the place without, for the most part, disrupting the golf.

Unfortunately, when I played Forest Hills last July, I saw some new plantings, presumably replacing losses from the ice storm that hit Oregon in February 2021. Let’s just hope the additions stop there.

That’s pretty much it. If a course meets those four criteria, I’m probably going to enjoy it, even if I find the other aspects of its design and presentation mediocre.

It’s tempting to imagine what Forest Hills could be if it were renovated by a talented architect. With some Bell Sr.-style refinements to the bunkers and greens, it could be one of the best courses in the Portland area, public or private. Waverley Country Club is the clear No. 1 right now — a Gil Hanse restoration and a location next to the Willamette River are a tough combination to beat — but Forest Hills’ property is more coherent, not as compromised by surrounding development, and better suited to golf.

I wouldn’t want the course to be altered too much, though. It has a quiet, countrified air that wouldn’t fit with Billy Bunkers and USGA greens. Plus, the current walking rate tops out at $35, and I’d prefer it to stay that way.

Forest Hills is good right now, and good golf is a rarer commodity than it should be.

*There’s conflicting information out there about the Forest Hills’ history — the course’s website claims a solo Bell Sr. design and a 1927 opening date — but I’ve sided with the assessment of Bell expert Tommy Naccarato here.