Design Notebook: An Upcoming Seminole Project

Welcome back, Club TFE members, to Design Notebook, where we’re trying to figure out what exactly happened to Pete Dye’s Stadium Course at PGA West, the original iteration of which Ray Floyd described as “spiteful” and “belligerent.” At this week’s American Express, it yielded a scoring average of 69.1. Yes, equipment advances are part of the story. But how much have the greens been softened over the years? And can they be given some of their teeth back?

Anyway, in today’s edition of DN, Andy Johnson delivers a scoop on an upcoming renovation of Seminole Golf Club, and Garrett Morrison ruminates on the possibilities of setting golf holes to music. Also included: architect-hiring news out of the Olympic Club and Glen View Club.

Seminole seeks higher ground

Starting this summer, Seminole Golf Club will embark on a renovation motivated by environmental changes in South Florida. A rising water table is causing major issues at many golf courses near the Atlantic coast, and Seminole is no exception. Hanse Golf Course Design, which has been working with Seminole since before the 2021 Walker Cup, will carry out the work over the span of three years, tackling six holes each year in order to avoid course closures and spread out costs.

The project will focus mainly on improving infrastructure and mitigating issues caused by saltwater infiltration. Gil Hanse and Jim Wagner will oversee substantial drainage work throughout the course and lift up problematic low areas. Most of these low areas are currently out of play, so not much is expected to change about the actual golf course.

This renovation is significant because it represents a growing problem for the golf industry: rising ocean levels. A number of links courses in Great Britain and Ireland have been dealing with this issue for years, most famously Royal West Norfolk Golf Club, where the course is accessible only at low tide. Also threatened by drainage troubles are some of Seminole’s neighbors. Loblolly in Hobe Sound recently underwent a renovation by Jim Urbina that involved raising some low spots that had become prone to flooding during big rains.

Unfortunately, most courses don’t have the resources of Seminole and Loblolly, leaving them with undesirable playing conditions and eventually, perhaps, an inability to have golf. -Andy Johnson

Urbina takes the torch from Hanse at Olympic

The Olympic Club announced last Tuesday that it had hired Jim Urbina to “create plans for potential improvements” to the 18-hole Ocean Course, nine-hole par-3 Cliffs Course, and practice area. This announcement comes four months after the San Francisco club reopened its championship Lake Course after a large-scale renovation by Gil Hanse.

A sample of Gil Hanse's recent work on the Olympic Club's Lake Course

Urbina has not yet finalized his plans, but he explained his basic intentions in a document distributed among members last week. He praised the topography of the upper portion of the Ocean Course, comparing it to linksland and waxing poetic about “landforms that challenge your senses and almost make you forget you are in the city.” He promised to “recapture the essence of the land to its fullest” with “modern and artistic bunkering” and by making “more use of the natural rolls.”

As for the Cliffs Course, Urbina teased a “new and improved” version that will offer “a more diverse challenge” than Tom Weiskopf and Jay Morrish’s 1994 design. First, he plans to reroute the course so that all nine holes are located on the bluffs west of Skyline Boulevard. (Today’s ninth hole is east of the road.) Second, Urbina intends to remove several bunkers in order to create “a walk that is more in keeping with the beauty of the Pacific and less about the testing golf shots that you used to encounter with all the bunkers scattered about the landform.”

Currently, Urbina is in the midst of a two-year overhaul of the greens and bunkers at Pasatiempo, a little over an hour’s drive down the coast from Olympic. There’s no timeline for his work on the Ocean and Cliffs courses, but the club told members that they will have a chance to review Urbina’s proposal and offer feedback later this year. -Garrett Morrison

A score for a course

It’s good news that Southern Ridge Golf Club in Phoenix may receive a second lease on life. Originally a 36-hole facility, Southern Ridge was reduced to 18 holes in 2004 in order to make room for more housing. Since closing in 2018, the course has lain fallow between rows of still-occupied residences. Now, as Golf Course Architecture reported last Tuesday, development group plans, pending approval, to add around 400 homes to the neighborhood while converting a portion of the course into a 20-hole par-3 layout designed by Forrest Richardson.

Lots of struggling residential-golf complexes would probably benefit from this kind of retrofit. Par-3 golf is well suited to a housing-heavy environment (fewer drivers off the tee means fewer broken windows) and fills a need in areas like Phoenix-Scottsdale and South Florida, which became oversaturated with conventional “championship courses” in the 1980s and 90s. So: more of this, please!

But it was another aspect of the story that caught my eye:

The name of the proposed facility is The Score Golf Club, which relates to a musical element Richardson hopes to implement; the incorporation of geofencing technology and a phone app, which will allow golfers to listen to music selected to complement individual golf holes.

“A few years ago, I was watching two young couples playing Mountain Shadows [an 18-hole par-three course Richardson designed in Arizona] and enjoying music in their four-person party cart,” said Richardson. “It got me thinking how neat it would be if their music could fit the mood of the golf hole. When they got to the tee at the tricky seventh, a short half-wedge water hole, I smiled by imagining their speakers suddenly playing the ‘Jaws’ theme music. I kept thinking of music that would match certain holes—The Beatles’ ‘Long and Winding Road’, ‘Nothing to Lose’ by Kiss, a French melody for the Biarritz—I knew it could be done, we just needed a place to try it.”

According to Richardson, Arizona-based IZON Golf has already laid the groundwork for a smartphone interface that will allow golf staff to create a daily playlist of licensed music. As players transition from one hole to another, the music will change. Plans are also being refined to allow players to select their preferred music genre.

Look, I admire the ingenuity here, but I can’t quite imagine this working. Would the golf staff have the time, much less the musical acumen, to create a fresh mix every day? And how many players would a) want to listen to music on the course and b) go to the trouble of downloading an app to hear the pro-shop attendant’s picks instead of just switching on the Spotify algorithm of their choice? I mean, I might get on board if the course were to hire a recently fired Pitchfork staffer to curate the playlists. Somehow I don’t see that happening, though.

But since I’m almost as big a music nerd as I am a golf nerd, I do understand Forrest Richardson’s enthusiasm for the notion of “scoring” different golf holes.

A few preliminary ideas:

• No. 6 at Pebble Beach—“I Can See for Miles” by The Who
• No. 18 at Essex County Club—“Ride of the Valkyries” by Richard Wagner
• No. 18 at Kapalua Plantation—“Free Fallin’” by Tom Petty
• No. 8 at Pinehurst No. 10—“My Humps” by the Black Eyed Peas (I’m sorry)
• No. 14 at Ravisloe—“Willow” by Joanne Armatrading
• No. 9 at Pine Valley—“Two Headed Boy Pt. 2” by Neutral Milk Hotel
• No. 17 at Royal Liverpool, as redesigned by Mackenzie & Ebert—“bad idea right?” by Olivia Rodrigo
• No. 4 at L.A. North—“All Night Long” by Lionel Richie (submitted by Andy Johnson)
• No. 18 at Wynn Golf Club, along with many other Tom Fazio-designed holes—“Waterfalls” by TLC (submitted by Meg Adkins)
• Any hole at Torrey Pines—“Fix You” by Coldplay (submitted by Joseph LaMagna)

If you’re enjoying this exercise, by all means continue it in comments section below. -GM

Chocolate drops

News and notes from the world of golf architecture…

Another hiring announcement: Glen View Club in suburban Chicagoland has brought on architect Tyler Rae to create a master plan for its 1922 William Flynn-designed golf course. In an email to members, the club stated, “Given the need to redo our bunkers over the next few years, which will take parts of the course out of play during the shoulder seasons, the Master Golf Course Plan will consider an array of other potential course enhancements that could be done concurrent with the bunker work.” Rae has developed a strong presence in the Chicago area over the past several years, carrying out historically informed renovations at Beverly and Skokie (with Ron Prichard) as well as Evanston and Northmoor. Glen View last went under the knife in 2013, when Jim Urbina restored many elements of Flynn’s original design.

Using a panel of four experts, three of whom are former contestants on the ABC show Holey Moley, GOLF has identified the best mini-golf course in each American state.

A course we photographed (not so) recently

Since the PGA Tour is in San Diego this week…

Balboa Park Golf Course (San Diego, CA)—designed by William P. Bell in 1933 and artlessly monkeyed with over the decades

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Quotable

“There’s been a lot of controversy about PGA West this week. Some pros say it stinks, it’s a monster, it’s unfair. Well, I want to ask you, what makes a golf course unfair? Is it unfair because you have to hit the tee ball down the middle of the fairway and good iron shots into the green? Or is it fair because you can hit the ball all over the parking lot and make birdies? You be the judge of that, but if you ask me, if for the last 20 years we would’ve played golf courses like this one, maybe some of you that won a lot of golf tournaments wouldn’t have won as many.” –Lee Trevino at the 1987 Bob Hope Classic