Derek Duncan was a recent guest on The Tie podcast with Henry Shimp and Walker Simas. For whatever reason, I never really stumbled onto Derek’s own Feed the Ball podcast in the past, so I enjoyed hearing how well he can speak about golf and himself—including his fondness for Don DeLillo. I’ll need to take a look at his own pods.
At roughly the 1 hour mark, Henry’s last question was directed towards current trends in modern architecture and whether there’s a particular theme Derek’s been mulling. Derek brought up a perhaps contrarian enthusiasm for examples that could buck the trend towards large scale, remote destination designs. He wondered if there could be a “modern day Winged Foot,” focusing more on smaller acreage, ostensibly on sites that are not as far flung from metropolitan areas. These parcels, he concedes, would likely not be as dramatic as a remote sandy site, but for him would pose a more acute routing challenge for a modern architect. Embedded within that sentiment is a willingness to see new designs narrowing its playing corridors, an appetite for a counterexample to how wide many modern builds have become.
Two examples he referenced that might nudge in that direction include Scott Hoffman’s Lost Rail, 30 mins from downtown Omaha, and Hanse’s Kinsale, a Macdonald/Raynor tribute course that will tip out under 7,000 yards in construction in North Naples.
It’s an interesting opinion, particularly as Digest’s architectural editor, and one worthy of more discussion.
Now, I don’t think he’s saying he wants to see a full-on pendulum swing towards tighter regulation length courses, but would rather there be opportunities for modern architects to negotiate a site comparable to Winged Foot, so that the golf community might be able to see how a modern design could compare to it in a more apples to apples way than, say, Mammoth Dunes to Winged Foot.
Or, without putting words in his mouth, I personally would not want to see a genuine pendulum swing, because so many Golden Age courses, whether they be highly ranked or not, are exactly just that—tightly routed designs on metropolitan or suburban parcels. The number of courses in that style, be it from pre-WWII or pre-Sand Hills, still overwhelms the number of courses that might resemble Ballyneal, do they not? Not to mention how hemmed in most average private clubs and American municipal courses have become due to tree growth, or squeezing in 27 or 36 holes on sites that may have started with 18.
Without any data to back this up, of the entire American playing population, I would still suspect a small percentage have actually experienced a wide course—and it’d be those who can afford to visit a Dream Golf resort. It’s predominantly the private club golfer who’s been able to experience the width and angles trend. And I think it’s still more important for that trend to make greater inroads within publicly accessible courses, like The Park in West Palm Beach, or Rustic Canyon, or Wild Horse.
But at the same time, variety is a wonderful thing for golf architecture, and I’m not opposed to seeing new builds reign in their overall widths either. High Pointe 2.0 strikes me as another example that might lend itself to influencing width back towards a more happy medium. After all, it’s bringing back 4 playing corridors (excluding the 2 par 3’s) on the back 9 that were laid out before 1990, and my impression from touring the site last summer was that most of the other holes correspond to a similar amount of respectable but not excessive width off the tee. New hole 10 will probably be the widest, justifiably so since it’s also going to be one of the longest par 4s on the course.
Do you think there’s room in modern architecture for a modern day Winged Foot? Or Harbor Town? Are we interested in a few of those examples to perhaps serve as a check on ultra-wide fairways? Or is there anyone out there who thinks completely pivoting in that direction would be better for golf design?
Podcast:
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-tie-podcast/id1583596139?i=1000648412174