Before everyone heaps all the praise on Kyle Phillips let me just add my input about Kingsbarns and what I know about the project:
Mark Parsinen and his partner were the driving force behind the project and made some very crucial decisions. Such as getting Kyle Phillips and giving him a brief to create a links course on what looked like farmland. Two good books to read about the project is Robert Price's book and Paul Daley's new book that just came out and Parsinen has written an essay on the project.
Parsinen brought in some very important consultants including Robert Price who taught the construction team how to create dunes that looked natural.
Parsinen got an agronomist (Dr.Paul Miller) to teach him eveything possible about grasses.
Mick McShane is a great shaper/foreman and with Stuart McCollom from Southern Golf Construction ran the show together. Stuart said never has a project come so close to breaking his back. He was Project Manager for Southern Golf and he is now the in charge of Greenkeeping on the course.
Stuart is applying nearly no fertiliser on the course and still has the greens stimping at around 11. Guess at which height he was cutting the bent/fescue greens?
5-7mm!! He even had to raise the cutting heights for the Dunhill because the Tour didn't want any of the players getting embarassed on TV rolling off the greens.
The whole set up is being run very well by Parsinen and Co. and Stuart. Another new thing that they are doing is closing the course in December for (I think) 4 months which not many if any courses do in Britain. This gives the grass a chance of recovery.
The true test for Kyle Phillips will be to see how well his latest links course does and that is Southern Gailes on the West coast of Scotland. I wish him luck, I only wish he was British!!
I have been shown what the site looked like before and any other team based in Europe would NOT have been able to create the masterpiece that they have created TOGETHER. It was truly a team effort and it sounds like all gave more than a 100% of their effort to achieve it. Everyone I know who was involved with the project is very proud and they should be.
Sand Hills is one of the most impressive courses I have ever played but Kingsbarns is the most impressive golf course construction site I have seen. The routing is also a stroke of genius from Phillips.
Brian Phillips.
PS. In five to ten years time I hope I will be one of the best to choose to design a links course in Europe!
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