Golf Club Atlas
GolfClubAtlas.com => Golf Course Architecture => Topic started by: Ran Morrissett on October 29, 2014, 01:39:57 PM
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This month’s Feature Interview with Rob Collins tackles the age old question: if a tree falls in the forest, and no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound?
By that, I mean how do you credit an architectural firm that conceives an AWESOME design on spectacular land only to see the developer go in a different, non-golf direction? I first met Rob face-to-face this past February after his round at No.2. At that time, he showed me photos and drawings for a golf course outside Fernie, British Columbia. It had all those hallmarks that Lorne Smith of FineGolf would categorize as a very high ‘joy to be alive’ quality: shared fairways, huge central bunkering, a zig-zagging stream, minimal rough, and vistas of the snow-capped Canadian Rockies. Very tasty – a modern Jasper Park! However, the developer opted to go the home/park route and golf was scrubbed. What credit will King-Collins ever receive for such an unrequited effort? Essentially none. That’s why I promptly invited them for a Feature Interview and I believe that this firm is capable of grand things, well beyond the same old fare.
(http://golfclubatlas.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/a1.jpg)
What an environment for a game! This was going to be the three shot twelfth, featuring a shared fairway with two other holes (width: nearly 300 yards at the widest point)!) and a Hell’s Half Acre.
Fortuitously, the Feature Interview coincides with the re-opening of their nine hole Sweetens Cove (formerly known as Sequatchie) in the hills of eastern Tennessee. For more information on this course refer to Adam Lawrence’s current thread: http://www.golfclubatlas.com/forum/index.php/topic,59774.0.html
My gut instincts seem well founded that these lads can produce something out of the ordinary.
As expressed by Rob, their philosophy is near and dear to many of us:
We both felt strongly that the best courses in the world built in the last 25 years had been constructed using the design/build concept. We each share a strong love of site work and feel that much of the art and fine details, so important to the finished product, are often lost in translation in the typical architect/contractor model. Therefore, we formed our company with the intent of using our own crew to carry out the vision of our design, fully aware that we would both be heavily involved in the hands on creation of our golf courses. It is our strong belief, and as our work in Tennessee is testament, this method allows us keep costs down while delivering a very high quality product.
We cover lots of ground in the Feature Interview section, from writers to greenkeepers to you name it but talking one-on-one with architects is of obvious importance. After 2008 (and perhaps even before), unless you were a big name architect, you had limited means to get the word out regarding your work (Adam Lawrence’s Golf Course Architecture magazine being a rare exception) other than self-promotion. GolfClubAtlas.com continually tries to change that. Folks like Rob often offer the most interesting commentary on the state of architecture/the game and we delight in providing them a platform.
Hope you enjoy reading this month’s Feature Interview as much as I did.
Best,
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Thank you Rob and Ran for a terrific interview.
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Thanks to Ran & GCA for the platform. I am deeply honored and thankful to have had the chance to do an interview.
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Enjoyed the interview greatly.
I look forward to playing the course.
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Great interview, playing Sweetens Cove was a treat and it's great to talk to Rob about the course and his passion for it.
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Great interview!
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I'm one of those looking forward to seeing Sweetens Cove. Hopefully before the year is out.
Though I've never seen any of Rob's work, this comment sold me.
It was the most fantastic thing I had ever seen on a golf course at that point in my life and I believe that that moment helped me to realize that the unlimited variety and abundance of potential outcomes found on links golf courses are largely absent on the American courses with which I was familiar.
It's hard to imagine how someone can play in the UK and not have their golf tastes affected. Few of us do as much about it as Rob did, and I'm guessing the rest of us will be beneficiaries in time.
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Great Interview. What is so great about Rob, besides the fact that he is an outstanding up and coming Archie, is his humility. That is really something missing today in society, and if more people (including myself) could emulate Rob we would be better off.
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Ran
I hope you still have the King Collins Book I left with you last Dixie Cup and got it signed.
Had a suspicion you might be sucked in. I just hope these guys have an opportunity sooner rather than later
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I had the pleasure of meeting Rob in Chattanooga earlier this year.
One of the things that stood out to me was that his design philsophy seemed to truly be a rawly-defined and personal one. He's not a wannabe. His ideas seemed to have a wide range of influences, rooted in an appreciation for classic strategy and the principles of the Golden Age, but without a fear of venturing into what the ODGs might have considered excessive. There's a boldness and variety, even just in the holes at Sweeten's Cove, that shows he can craft a cohesive golf experience from holes that exhibit a tremendous breadth in style. It's a bit surprising, for instance, to see the small green on a short hole with the devilish fronting bunker at the fifth hole immediately after playing the demanding long-iron to a 20,000 sq ft green 4th, with its rugged and massive surrounding bunkers. The ninth hole has features in its green encouraging the ball to run and bounce after landing that most architects would only build on longer par 3s, and the firmness of the turf coupled with the uphill shot makes it work even though you're approaching with a short iron.
What I'm really saying is that I see very little "convention" in what's on the ground at Sweeten's Cove. At most courses, you can glance at the scorecard before playing and get a pretty good idea of what you're in for. That quick test reveals less at Sweeten's than all but a few of the courses I've played. There is scale where another architect would have gone small, risk where you might expect safety, and features that would prompt cries of "unfair!" if they weren't so obviously fun and knit into the core challenge of the course itself.
The one course at Sweeten's Cove is a small sample size, but there's a tremendous amount of variety packed into it that makes me excited to see what Rob does next. Like many other very good modern courses, it's strategic, natural-looking, quirky, playable, and challenging. Unlike many other very good modern courses, though, you won't walk away feeling like you just played a course that you had seen before.
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Congratulations to Rob and friends at SCGC, named Golfweek's Best You Can Play in the State of Tennessee!!
http://golfweek.com/news/2016/mar/01/golf-courses-golfweeks-state-by-state-2016/ (http://golfweek.com/news/2016/mar/01/golf-courses-golfweeks-state-by-state-2016/)
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Amen. That's great news. Nothing more rewarding than hard work.
Congratulations to Rob and friends at SCGC, named Golfweek's Best You Can Play in the State of Tennessee!!
http://golfweek.com/news/2016/mar/01/golf-courses-golfweeks-state-by-state-2016/ (http://golfweek.com/news/2016/mar/01/golf-courses-golfweeks-state-by-state-2016/)