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This week I will be recording a new architecture mailbag pod with Garrett.

Fire away any questions you have.

Thanks

Andy

Pinehurst No. 2 is considered by many to be the magnum opus of Donald Ross. People like the Fried Egg's very own Garrett Morrison have written about the wonderful routing that takes full advantage of the subtle natural topography. Walter Travis, Pinehurst member and 5x North and South Amateur Champion described Pinehurst as having "scientific" bunkering. But we all know that the greens are the star of the show when you go and play it. With that being said, it seems to be pretty much accepted at this point that the greens on No. 2 are not original to Ross (or at least drastically more severe). Pete Dye, who was stationed at nearby Fort Bragg during his Army years had a CO that was an avid golfer, and Pete had the opportunity to go and play No. 2 with him many times. He claims that the greens were much flatter in the 1940s and that the domed greens that we know today are due to decades of top dressing. This should track, as the original "greens" at Pinehurst were all flat, and sand covered squares. Ross and Frank Maples were not able to convert all 18 greens to grass until the 1930s. Bradford Becken, President of the Donald Ross society wrote in his book The Golf Architecture of Donald Ross: "As with the rest of Ross' work, there is considerable variety to his green designs. Many Ross fans associate the turtleback greens found on Pinehurst 2 as emblematic of his work, but this is not the case. in fact, looking at the body of his available drawings, such greens appear to be more of an exception, leading some to attribute the shape to years of top dressing and other maintenance practices rather than what was originally envisioned by Ross."

The Question that this is leading me to is this: Why Pinehurst No. 2 specifically? Why did top dressing not effect the greens on No. 1, No. 3 (which does have some crowned greens, but nothing like No. 2), Pine Needles, Mid Pines, SPGC, etc...? Same playing surfaces, same soil composition, conceivably same general maintenance practices. So why would the greens on No. 2 specifically be top dressed in a way that creates greens so extreme that it has mistakenly became a characteristic of Donald Ross?

My two sons (both college age) have created a card game that is fun to play while relaxing in the 19th hole after your round. I'm biased, but I think they've done a great job simulating golf within the game. The game is called Card Golf Tour; they have created a physical card game and you can play online. If you have a chance to play, I know they would love any feedback.

Andy, instead of lotteries for oversubscribed courses, how about waiting lists? It worked for Bozo Circus (parents used to get tix as baby shower gifts cause there was a 6-8 year wait) and my Cubs season tix (was #87,000 & took 8 years to get a call). At least that way you can make plans months/years in advance. If there’s AI/bot concerns, go old school and only accept mailed entries. Whaddaya think? - Perry Rouches

So my club is undergoing a massive practice area renovation. I definitely did not think that the old practice area/driving range was bad, but I was excited about having some more short game area options, as I really enjoy going out and chipping. However, when I saw the video of what was going to be opening, I got really excited. I’ll link the video below, if you feel like devoting a few minutes to it.

My questions/topics of discussion here are twofold. First off, Keith Foster designed this practice area (he also did the restoration of one of our courses). Is it commonplace for a golf course architect to also design the practice facilities? I’ve never really thought about it, but when say Doak or C&C do a design/build are they also designing the practice area; Or is it usually just a case of parceling off a 300 yard x 300 yard area and the club does what they want with it? I suppose it could vary club to club, but I can't think of a high number of examples where the practice area seemed intentionally designed instead of just plopped down. Keith Foster has a relationship with the club, which would help to get him involved in this, but he also had a bit of legal trouble a few years back, and this might be him trying to tiptoe back in the game. I wonder how many established architects would take the job of designing a practice area?

Secondly, how important is a practice area to your overall enjoyment of a golf course? I don't know if we have any raters here, but if you visited a club and you began your visit with a trip to a practice facility that really wowed you, would it be difficult to not carry those feelings into your round and potentially inform your rating? I have visited some incredible, highly rated clubs that had terrible practice facilities, so maybe it doesn't matter? I do think that we are sort of at the beginning of clubs really paying attention to their practice facilities, many golden age designs are on tighter parcels of land and don't really have the space to devote to a massive improvement. However, at clubs that do have the space, and might have a little money to spend I wonder if we'll start to see more of this kind of thing?

Link, if interested:

https://youtu.be/E06tZk8KJoo

My sister decided to move to Dublin recently, and we are going to visit her this spring. Looking to bring my clubs and play a couple of rounds while over there. I am looking for any recommendations about golf in the area. A short drive is fine, but this isn't really a golf trip, so I'm looking for local courses where I can go play a round without disappearing for a full day.

Portmarnock is option #1, and I know FEG's concierge service also mentions The Island Golf Club and Royal Dublin Golf Club, but I thought I would open it up to any and all recommendations. I would certainly prefer an under the radar, pure golf experience instead of a mainstream, tourist trap (as I'm sure all of us here would).

Ladies and gents,

Our little Instagram journey that is Design Disasters is officially one year old. To celebrate the anniversary, I'm having Joseph LaMagna and Brendan Porath join me for a lunchtime hangout this coming Friday. If flights go according to plan, we may have another guest as well. Another boy perhaps.

Either way, join us for some fun and merriment as we relive the first year of Design Disasters.

November Virtual Hangout Details

Date: Friday, November 21

Time: Noon ET

Link to Join

On Thursday, November 13, Fried Egg Golf obtained an email to members from North Berwick Golf Club in East Lothian, Scotland, announcing that the club had hired U.S.-based designer Gil Hanse as its consulting architect.

From the email:

"Beginning in 2026, Gil will work closely with us to develop a Master Plan for the West Links, ensuring its heritage is preserved while preparing for the future."

North Berwick's West Links is a revered course, home to the much imitated "Redan" par 3 and "Pit" par 4, along with many other unique holes. Golf architect and longtime North Berwick member James Duncan mused on the magic of the West Links in this Fried Egg Golf video.

More from the club's announcement:

"Gil's strength lies in honoring the heritage of the course, restoring key features, while remaining sensitive to modern play. This thoughtful approach ensures the West Links retains its character while evolving for the future. Continuity and consistency will come through minor refinements, with no major changes anticipated. A critical priority, however, is addressing coastal erosion through robust contingencies and protective measures to mitigate future risks from the advancing sea."

The email also mentions that Hanse's hiring came after "a rigorous selection process, including on-course evaluations and consultations with other leading architects."

For the past few years, North Berwick has employed Clyde Johnson, a UK-based architect and Tom Doak associate, to assist with projects like the restoration of the front-left bunker on the Redan hole. Johnson is a terrific young talent, and from a personal standpoint, I feel bad for him. His recent work on the West Links has been very well received.

Philosophically, the move from Johnson to Hanse is more or less lateral. Both are historically minded architects. Plus, as the portion of the email that I bolded indicates, Hanse's alterations to the course are expected to be, like Johnson's, careful and subtle.

In terms of public relations, however, Hanse is obviously a bigger name. He also commands higher fees, in general.

This decision by North Berwick might be an indicator of a broader sea change in British and Irish golf. Over the last several years, visitor rates at top links clubs, even at those that do not host Open Championships, have skyrocketed. Golf tourism in Great Britain and Ireland has become a big, lucrative business. Many clubs have more money to spend than they ever have, and some have chosen to invest a portion of that windfall back into their courses. Royal Dornoch Golf Club's decision to roll with King Collins Dormer's out-of-the-box plan to overhaul its Struie Course is an example of this trend.

But I'm skeptical that more expensive, ambitious architecture will improve British and Irish links courses. Some places don't really need to change. So I hope Hanse uses a light touch at North Berwick.

Iowa has around 250 9-hole courses. The majority of which are rather basic but fun and cheap. I recently was able to visit the in progress Silo Club by Kevin Hargrave. It's a great looking strategic 9er with many options, including teeing grounds with different angles and elevations.

All this to ask. How do you all compare 9 vs 18? I know many are not into rankings but someone asked me once grown in where I think it might rank in state. I didn't really know how to address it and other great 9-holers in the state or even across the country compared to their 18 hole counterparts. I'm inclined to remove hole quantities from the equation at all, but doing something great 18 times seems like it should carry slightly more weight than 9.

On the most recent FEG podcast, Andy brings up the question of what should the Tour do with all of the cash they have on hand from the recent investment from SSG? He offers the suggestion of adding permanent grandstands because people clearly love to play a golf course when it has the stadium feel, just look at how demand sky rocketed at Bethpage this year.

My initial thought for this question was to use a small chunk of that $3 billion to renovate some of the stinker TPC courses with a top tier architect like Tom Doak, who has proven that he's great at building a golf course that challenges pros and creates interesting tournament play. See Memorial Park in Houston, TX.

While turning a subpar TPC course into an excellent one may not do quite enough to help the PGA Tour gain more momentum it would be cool if the TPC network didn't have a bunch of lousy courses. They already have the infrastructure in place, most are close to metro areas so perhaps a high quality golf course that's stimulating to watch the pros play along with some extra bells and whistles (permanent grandstands?) could create these longstanding hubs for events so the tour doesn't have to rely so much on country clubs hosting their tournaments.

Yes, this does sound like the stadium course concept that Pete Dye and Dean Beaman were after in the 1980's but maybe we could do a better job in modern times. I'm not sure if this is even a good idea by myself and perhaps I'm being selfish for just wanting more quality publicly accessible designs but I'd love to hear other peoples pipe dream ideas for what the PGA should do with its stockpile of cash other than give the players comfy pensions.

Good morning everyone!

I was curious if there were any other topics that folks would like added to the forum (e.g. What's In The Bag -- where members create a post and share all the juicy details on their clubs, bags, quirky ball markers, etc.). In an effort to evolve and incorporate feedback I'm just curious if there's things that folks would like to have a space to discuss here that they don't feel like the current format allows.

Any and all suggestions are appreciated. And within reason we'll do our best to add topics if it seems folks are excited about it.

Don't be shy!

An idea I’ve been thinking about that I think could save Kapalua as a PGA Tour host, turn the Sentry into a match play event.

If the tour isn’t willing to turn the Tour Championship into a match play event then Kapalua to start the season is the perfect opportunity.

You can easily seed the players based on the prior years FedEx Cup Standings. The reason tv allegedly doesn’t like match play is that there’s a potential for a weak Sunday final match, but here you are turning it into an advantage. You are taking the opportunity to have multiple amazing golf matches happening in prime time simultaneously on weekdays. Kapalua Sunday is always competing with football anyway and with only one match to worry about it’s easier to find a time slot that minimizes the direct competition. Finally, if there is an element that people don’t like about Kapalua is that scores are so low but by making it match play you can eliminate that talking point and I think Kapalua could be a perfect match play course.

I’m sure the Tour won’t go in this direction but am I missing something or would this idea work?

For those of us that use the TOUR app to track tournament scores, and abuse the favorites button, it is always good litmus test to see the number of "Favorites" in any given tournament. For me, the high bar is always THE PLAYERS, clocking in at 30 Favorites. Do I have 30 "favorite" players? No. I blame SGS banter and NLU podcast interviews for clogging up my list. In contrast, this week I only have four "favorites" in the Butterfield field:

ZB, Higgs, Sahith, and Kuchar.

Dare I say this is a MargarineField at best. I'll see myself out.

Jason Bruno (aka "Links Nation") caused a bit of a stir on X earlier this week when he posted some fresh shots of Harbour Town Golf Links, which recently reopened after a historical renovation by Love Golf Design. The controversy revolved around a pair of revetted green-side bunkers in one photo.

Some commenters complained that Harbour Town architect Pete Dye never built revetted bunkers. (He did — at Harbour Town. They just didn't last very long because the sod stacks collapsed. Ultimately Dye replaced the revetted walls with the turfed-over walls that became a mainstay of his later designs.)

Others objected to the use of artificial materials in the sod stacks.

For the most part, though, the critics just didn't seem to like the look of the bunkers. Which is fair, but we should probably wait until the bunkers have had a chance to mature before rendering a final judgment.

In an April 2025 edition of Design Notebook, Scot Sherman, lead designer at Love Golf Design, gave me some insight into the thinking and technical process behind bringing back these bunkers:

Scot: We’re working on some details that really speak to what Pete did originally that didn’t last real long. He did some sod-stacking to several bunkers out there, and from the pictures and from recollections of others, some of that stacking was with Bahia and or St. Augustine grass, and it didn’t last long. And natural sod-stacking usually has to be replaced every three or four or five years, and [Harbour Town] just didn’t do it and [eventually] just grassed the faces. So again, in a tip of the cap to [Dye], we’re going to go ahead and do some of these that were originally stacked, but we’re going to do it in a little bit of a modern context. We think we could do something that’ll last a little longer. We have an artificial product, and we’re going to alternate artificial stacking with natural sod. We really don’t want it to look artificial, but we also want there to be hints of the sod-stacking. So we’re going to do a row of the artificial, a row of Celebration [Bermudagrass] sod, a row of the artificial, a row of the Celebration, and it’ll fuzz a little bit, and you’ll be able to discern the stacking.

Garrett: So the outcome of this sod-stacking process — will it look like a revetted bunker, like you would see in Scotland?

Scot: It’ll have a little bit different appearance. It won’t be that clean revetment like you’re used to seeing, and nor was Pete’s original sod-stacking. It’s going to be a little fuzzier, a little more ragged.Between ourselves and the owner and the old pictures that we have from the late 60s — the original tournament there that Mr. Palmer won — we’re going to put some of them back. I don’t know that we’re putting all of the ones we know about back, but some of that’s going to be a field decision. For example, there were a couple [sod-stacked bunkers] behind No. 9 green. Those are going to go back for sure. We’re putting back the dreaded deep pot bunker left of 14 green.

"Restoring" a golf course always involves tricky decisions like this one. If you want to honor Dye's vision, do you try to recapture the course that existed on opening day, including the parts that didn't end up being sustainable because of some technical deficit? Or you do pay tribute to the architectural refinements of the ensuing years — which, in Harbour Town's case, were overseen by the original architect and a long-tenured, well-respected construction company?

Or do you simply trust your own taste and go with what you think is the better option?

I'm personally a skeptic of the new revetted bunkers at Harbour Town. But not because I think they dishonor Pete Dye. They just don't look all that great to me. But I'm not too worked up about it because ultimately it's a fairly minor aesthetic issue.

These past several days have been rich with cross-discussion between FEGC and Golf Club Atlas! There's now a thread discussing the subject I raised in this week's edition of Design Notebook.

By far the best reply, in my opinion, comes from Mike Young, who has turned into something of a pen pal of mine over the years. Mike designed and continues to own and operate The Fields Golf Club in LaGrange, Georgia. He has influenced my thinking about golf architecture and maintenance deeply. The last time I interviewed him was in March 2024, when we discussed the ins and outs of building and running a mom-n-pop golf course. I find him to be a unique and important voice in the industry.

So it's no surprise that I found myself nodding along vigorously with his contribution to the GCA thread:

"I'm not sure original or unoriginal should be the question. The question should be are [the courses] sustainable and can the game continue to be played on them. If not then why does it matter. Subtlety seems to be gone no matter the 'style' and the abundance of money has ideas being tried that may have been thought of earlier but could not or would not be implemented int he past due to agronomic issues or playability issues.... There is a lot of good young talent out there and the overabundance of money available today may be more of an issue when it comes to originality than we think."

Mike also says that "a good routing with subtle, strategic greens and bunkering can always stand the test of time if it can be maintained."

Right on. I think this is a logical extension of my own statement that an important, under-discussed task of a golf architect is to "prepare a ground for the game." Part of preparing a ground for the game is ensuring that the game can be played on it affordably and sustainably into the future.

If I could write my essay again, I'd probably add a section about the importance of "innovating" in the arenas of economical construction and maintenance. The industry has learned an incredible amount about golf course maintenance over the past several decades. Because of these knowledge gains, architects now have the ability to build the most affordable, sustainable golf courses the game has ever seen. But the problem is we're lacking owners and developers for whom that is a primary objective.

To be clear, I don't think Mike is saying golf architecture shouldn't be bold or innovative. He's just pointing out, accurately, that if it can't be maintained without great expense and effort, there's no real point to the initial boldness or innovation.

Anyway, always listen to Mike Young.