Interesting stuff about the Bellarena development. Hard to judge from the limited information available, but looks like it is intended for an area of outstanding natural beauty. Typically quite tricky to get consents for those sort of protected areas and from a very high-level search of the relevant bodies, it doesn't appear to have submitted any planning applications. No doubt they have had preliminary conversations but I would suggest the plans to break ground next year are pretty ambitious.

Carts available?

I mean that would make sense if it was a binary choice, but in reality the mid century courses had a lot more mown rough. One reality is that newer courses are built on better sites than standard farmland, and they are trying to keep more native plants. That can often be really penal, so sand at least is a place for balls to stop, and if a course is built on sand, the process of building a bunker is easy and costs no money so it’s an easy decision. If we ever saw the industry shift back towards more courses built on farmland than it would make a lot of sense to see a shift back to more rough.

Gil Hanse came up in the context of the then upcoming Yale restoration. I was taken aback by how vociferous this guy was. I doubt he represented majority opinion at Winged Foot, otherwise there probably would have been noise in the ether that Winged Foot’s membership was unhappy with his work.

Great video on Cypress Point. I liked the transitioning back-and-forth between black & white and color videography. I think Cypress Point will be a great match play course for the Walker Cup and look forward to watching it.

Golf was great a long time before it had playoffs, for sure. I'd add that if signature event congestion is Issue 1 for Brian Rolapp, What You Let TV/Streaming Do With/To Your Product is issue 1*. I can't get to Pebble from North Carolina. You can't get to Pinehurst from California. We're watching 99% of the Tour on TV and streams. Annoying viewers with fluff and even worse, missing key action in an Event are both problems that need to be solved, and it's probably easier to solve them by working with the networks, than it is by dictating terms. I hope Rolapp delivers us excellence as Tour fans. It sounds like he has an inkling how to do that, and that makes me happy.

Great job on the CPC video @Garrett and team. I wasn't expecting every hole, but then realized it was a live version of a course profile. Really cool concept, plus good insights from Geoff. Also, I'm curious your thoughts about #17. It's obviously one of the greatest setting in golf, but if it wasn't CPC, how would you rate the central hazard and how it impacts the strategy of the tee-shot? From what I can see, right of the hazard isn't a real option. So it's either just lay back to 130-150 yard and play a short iron over the trees, or try and bomb something over the hazard and hope for a decent lie. I guess it's not all that different that the Alps hole at Prestwick.

Interested to listen to that Rees pod before passing full judgement. From the quick quote I'd disagree. I'd rather have a chance out of sand than dropping from water or being deep in a forest.

I think Frisco was very poorly show on TV and players complaining about set up didn't help. It's a great built-for-pros course. Ending on 9 was dumb. Just needs to be showcased better. Although the surrounding McMansions hurt that a lot.

I'm not sure what one unhappy Winged Foot member proves, but certainly there are varying opinions about Hanse, just as there are about most golf architects. I'll just call each project as I see it. I think the work at Baltusrol was successful in recovering some quality from two courses that had been monkeyed with extensively since Tillinghast designed them. I also don't think it's a settled fact that the Women's PGA at Frisco was a debacle. For my own part, I didn't think the course was much to look at, but I enjoyed seeing the players challenged. If we want to have a discussion of Hanse's work more generally, I'm happy to get into that. He's not a sacred cow, nor is anyone.