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Friar's Head, NY, USA
How man interacts with nature is at the heart of golf course architecture. Max Behr spoke of courses 'uncontaminated by the hand of man' and of natural courses that possess 'a certain charm wholly lacking upon a palpable man-made golf course.' C.B. Macdonald wrote in Scotland's Gift that 'When playing, you want to be alone with Nature. Glaring artificiality of any kind detracts from the fascination of the game.' Later in the 1920s, he wrote with regard to National Golf LInks of America that 'the only thing that I do now is to endeavor to make the hazards as natural as possible.' Though their words contain timeless truths, their message was lost during the last several decades of the 20th century. With both equipment and money plentiful, courses became more and more landscaped. Man's hand upon the property became heavy to the point where it was too evident. During the late 1980s and 1990s, there were a few architects bucking the trend. Rather than over-stylizing a site, they were intent on following nature's lead and incorporating nature's subtleties into their designs. The architect firm of Coore & Crenshaw was one such firm and as a result, time has proven them to be particularly successful in building courses that are reflective of their surrounds. Of course, crucial to an architect that wishes to make the most of the land is a good piece of property. The opportunity to build a course from scratch in the desert replete with waterfalls, rolling hills, and imported mature evergreens is of minimal interest as they realize any such attempt to replicate nature will yield a product that is a distant second to the real thing. Far preferable is a varied piece of property full of natural hazards. As Coore remembers thinking when he first got in the industry in the early 1970s, 'in this business, you can't ask for any more than a decent piece of property with some natural features and a principal who allows us to work.' In the early spring of 1997, just such an opportunity presented itself when Ken Bakst invited Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw to tour a 350 acre block of land outside of Riverhead on Long Island. In hindsight, it would prove to be Coore & Crenshaw's most exciting piece of property since Sand Hills. Initially, Bakst drove Coore and Crenshaw onto the property via an old service road. The first bit was through trees but then they came to a clearing, a landscape with wide expanses of 60 foot sand dunes dotted with natural vegetation. Yes, indeed, this property might well be different from most (!), thought Coore.
The three men tromped around 125 acres of massive wooded rolling dunes for most of the day. To the north, the dunes gave way to 150 to 200 foot bluffs overlooking Long Island Sound. To the south was farmland, which upon closer study, possessed natural depressions and features on a human scale. Coore & Crenshaw were sure holes of interest could be found and/or created on the farmland portion of the property; the challenge was to find natural holes with golf quality in the dunes without doing any major alterations and to have those holes link to the ones in the field. For the rest of 1997, and with no signed contract, Coore made several site visits to study the complex dunes portion of the property. The 15th hole was an easy find with a tee high on a dune and its fairway tumbling through a natural valley toward Long Island Sound. Coore could also see the short one shot 17th hole and eventually came to see the 18th hole as well. However, Coore & Crenshaw resist signing any contract until they find a routing that is pleasing to all parties and in this regard, finding a satisfactory way to get from the 15th green to the 17th tee remained a missing piece to the puzzle. Coore kept walking through the sand dunes until late that fall. On the one hand, the scale and size of the dunes was so severe as to make one wonder if there was a good golf hole in there. On the other hand, the dunes were too beautiful to want to 'fix' them for golf. As winter set in, Coore didn't have an answer and he returned home. In March 1998, Coore returned to the site and his break came when he stumbled upon the shoulder of a sand dune that was completely masked under years of organic matter and debris. He thought it would make for a handsome feature within a hole and working off it, he soon found an ideal spot for the 16th tee going 230 yards back from this dune shoulder as well as for the green complex some 150 yards ahead of it. With the 16th found and an appealing routing now in place, Coore & Crenshaw signed the contract in August, 1998, more than sixteen months after they first walked the property.
When permits were received in February, 2000, Coore & Crenshaw's team was busy finishing the Chechessee Creek Club in South Carolina and the Austin Golf Club in Texas. Fortunately, Coore's long time friend and work colleague Rod Whitman was immediately available to assist at Friar's Head. (please note: Whitman has built first rate courses on his own as has Dave Axland who ran the Friar's Head project for Coore & Crenshaw). With the general routing known, the challenge was now tying in the dramatic contrast between the dunes and the field, especially given that the tree line abruptly stopped at the base of the dunes. As Coore puts it, they needed 'to balance the visuals without overpowering the substance of the golf.' The team started on the initial clearing in February and didn't finish for five months. Great care was taken in creating wide corridors to transition the golfer from dunes to field and vice versa.
Not until the clearing was completed was any dirt moved, and by this time it was July, 2000. With the exception of James Duncan who was overseeing the construction of the delightful Hidden Creek Golf Club in New Jersey, Coore & Crenshaw's entire team would at one time or another work on Friar's Head over the next 2 1/2 years. What transpired during that time was an evolutionary process, with talented professionals slowly uncovering the site's finest natural attributes and incorporating them into a golf course. Examples of the evolutionary process are seen in the Holes to Note section below. Holes to Note (Note: all yardages are estimates on the part of the author as the score card contains no yardage information). 1st hole, 380 yards; The course commences in the dunes portion of the property and from the start, Coore wanted the 1st fairway to be where it is today as it occupies the only flat part within the dunes and he wanted the golfer to get into his game before going up and down in the dunes. Originally, the green was staked at the base of the hill upon which today's green sits atop with the hole being a short opener in the 330 yard range. However, nagging doubts persisted as after putting out, the golfer would have to climb 35-40 feet to get to the 2nd tee. Instead of benching the green 10 feet up the hill, perhaps they could do 15 or 20 feet? Finally, the suggestion that perhaps the green should go atop the hill was thrown out. Would the uphill shot be too much for the first approach shot of the day? Coore asked Bakst that very question and the reply was an unhesitating 'no'. Thus the trees were cleared atop the hill (though the rest of the hole had been cleared weeks prior), and so sits today's green. As Coore says, 'this is a prime example of letting the process evolve in the field and of avoiding a regrettable situation.'
2nd hole, 580 yards; The first transition hole, as the golfer starts high on a dune and ends at a green that was once in the middle of a potato farm. The all important question was how to gracefully transition the golfer from one extreme to the other. Coore & Crenshaw felt that these transitions were the single most crucial design aspect to the course's overall success. After speaking with Coore, Whitman went to work in his D-6 and shaped the dirt into random movements which start out bigger and more pronounced at the base of the sand dune and then gradually taper out at the green complex. Where man's hand starts and nature ends is undetectable, the true sign of a job well done.
3rd hole, 480 yards; With every other two and three shotter on the course containing plenty of movement from tee to green, Coore & Crenshaw let this fairway stand as they found it, which is to say essentially flat. In that manner, the hole is reflective of its surrounds while at the same time stretching the variety of the course. Of course, there are subtleties in the approach with a slight rise at the front left corner of the green nudging balls into the awaiting left greenside bunker. On a recent visit, the mowing lines were being adjusted to ensure that only short grass was between the green and that left bunker.
4th hole, 230 yards; This long one shotter is at a right angle to the 3rd hole. To break any hint of monotony that can come in a flat field, Coore & Crenshaw placed a series of diagonal bunkers across the tee and ran them 160 yards to the left of the green. Thus, the tendency off the tee is to steer the ball a bit to the right, away from this obvious hazard. The problem arises as the green slopes from right to left, making a recovery from the right problematical.
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