Chocolate Drops: It’s Not the Circuit

Welcome to the week, FEGC. Here are a few golf architecture-related morsels I’m chewing on right now:

→ As a casual F1 fan, I’ve occasionally ruminated on the parallels between racetracks and golf courses. So I perked up on Monday morning when Andrej Buchko, a young golf architect who works with Renaissance Golf Design and Brian Schneider, sent me this clip from P1 with Matt & Tommy, an F1 podcast. 

The hosts were discussing last weekend’s Belgian Grand Prix, held at the classic Spa-Francorchamps circuit. The race disappointed many fans partly because there was relatively little overtaking. That is, most cars maintained their track position throughout the race, without much opportunity to move up or down the leaderboard. This made for a rather static and tedious grand prix.

Some fans, I gather, blamed the circuit, arguing that Spa-Francorchamps is outdated and no longer capable of producing compelling races. (Sound familiar?) The hosts of P1 with Matt & Tommy disagreed. One of them—Matt, I think—said, “It’s not the circuit. The circuit is phenomenal…. It’s the cars. The cars are the problem. The cars are ruining iconic circuits, not the other way around.”

Well put!

We debate the parallel issue in golf so often that I fear we’ve lost the ability to state the truth as clearly as these F1 guys did. When it comes to distance-vulnerable venues like LACC North or Merion or Southern Hills or, hell, St. Andrews, it’s not the golf course. It’s the equipment. The equipment is ruining iconic courses, not the other way around.

*Hopping down from my soapbox*

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→ Reef Capital Partners—the private equity-backed developer behind the $2-billion Black Desert Resort near St. George, Utah—is looking to expand its footprint in the St. George area. According to the Salt Lake City Tribune, Reef is in “high-level discussions” with the Shivwits Band of Paiutes about building a “sports and cultural education complex” on 1,250 acres of tribal land just west of Ivins, where Black Desert is located. Reef’s current proposal involves the construction of three regulation golf courses—two public, one private—and a short course. Tiger Woods’s TGR Design has agreed to design one of the public 18s, while Tim Jackson and David Kahn’s firm Jackson Kahn Design has signed on to create the private and short courses. 

All of these plans are tentative. “No decisions or commitments have been made at this point,” a tribal leader told the Salt Lake City Tribune. In fact, the only reason we know any details about the project at allis that an internal document drawn up by Reef and the Shivwits Band of Paiutes was accidentally published on the tribe’s website. Whoops.

Anyway, the proposed Shivwits complex is just another example of how aggressively private equity-funded developers are moving in today’s golf course industry.

→ David Zinkand has completed an extensive renovation of Knollwood Country Club, a 100-year-old course in West Bloomfield, Michigan. The project involved the creation of a new par-3 17th hole, significant changes to the ninth and 10th holes, an overhaul of the course’s bunkering, tree trimming and removal, and the expansion and recontouring of all 18 greens. Looks cool.

→ After a redesign by Bruce Hepner, Miami Lakes Golf Club—a public course in Miami Lakes, Florida—has finished growing in and begun to host juniors in the First Tee program. No adults will be allowed on the course until at least September. “[It’s] driving me mad watching these kids play it before I do,” project manager Danny Martinez wrote to Fried Egg Golf in an email, “but I’m trying to get our guys to walk the walk with putting kids first and [leading] by example.”

Hepner will visit Miami Lakes in late August or early September for a final inspection. For the full backstory on this project, check out this Design Notebook from last October.

→ The USGA announced on Monday that Oak Hill Country Club in Rochester, New York, will host the 2037 U.S. Women’s Open and the 2027 U.S. Amateur. In recent decades, Oak Hill has been associated more with the PGA of America than the USGA, so this is a notable move.