Golfadelphia

Money can buy you almost anything, it can’t buy you immortality. People are going to build you up, and God are they going to, because when you’re great and new, we love you. Man, we’ll build you up into something that doesn’t even exist. You’re going to change the fucking world. But you know what? Once they’ve built you as high as they possibly can, they’re gonna tear you back down – it’s the most predictable pattern. We build you into something that doesn’t exist, and that means you have to try to be that thing all day, every day. That’s how it works. And we do it again, and again, and again.

– Sonny Vaccarro to Michael Jordan

Jordan used to hold a youth basketball camp in Santa Barbara in the summer. The first summer of the camp, everyone started hearing stories of Jordan showing up at the bars downtown and guest bartending. I had just finished freshman year of college and was underage, so didn’t think much of it even though Jordan was in fact someone I worshipped growing up. Then it happened, a friend received very good intel Jordan was coming to the bars that night and he knew which bar he was going to. I was urged to come along. Let’s just say glasses and a button up do wonders and we showed up early to the bar. We saddled up to the seats and waited. The bar was popular but it was clear not everyone knew what we knew, so we had fun as the night ticked away but I never moved from that seat. It started to get late and I suspected the intel my friend received was wrong but what the hell, it was a fun night anyways.

Then it happened. The doors were stationed and no one was allowed to leave or come in. He walked from a service door and into the bar, which was maybe a fifteen foot space for him to walk around. Wearing one of those driver hats and smoking a cigar, he was standing with a group away from the bar, talking and smoking away, not really acknowledging the crowd that was now pressing forward, directly on to me and my stool. He then started in to the bar and taking orders, making drinks and handing beers out. He finally got to me and asked what I wanted. Michael Jordan is asking me what I want to drink. We’re definitely now best friends. I asked him for a Budweiser. He handed it to me and was nice enough but then moved on. The night was perfect and everyone was having fun. Including Jordan. This wasn’t a 20 minute spot, he was hanging out for a while, taking shots with the bar staff, having fun. He went back to getting people drinks and as he was trying to hand a drink to someone behind me, accidentally dropped the drink, on me. Before I could figure out what happened, Jordan was hugging me, apologized and asked what my name was. Good question. What was my name anyways? I figured out and told him. “So sorry Chris. What do you want to drink?” Budweiser was the only thing I could think of. He got me a Budweiser gave me another hug and said, “this one is on me.” I actually kept that bottle for years afterwards.

That was my first time in a bar.

I went on with college and would hear about Jordan being at this bar and that. There were times he would show up with Barkley or Harper and others where it become a highlight of the Summer. Jordan was downtown, who’s in. I graduated college and then went to law school and after that, took the bar. After the bar, I found myself once again in Santa Barbara, visiting college friends as well as my sister, who went to the college a few years behind me. We were downtown at the bars and ended up in the same bar I met Jordan all those years ago.

Then it happened again. Instead of a crowded bar, the room was completely empty for some reason. Jordan was standing behind a smaller bar, by himself. So it was just me and him in the room. It felt like a dream. How often would someone find themselves in this position. Uninterrupted time with the best athlete of all time, his undivided attention. I kept it casual. “Oh, hey MJ.” He was cordial, “do you want something.” I couldn’t think at that point, my mind was playing catch up with what was actually happening. I sat there looking at him, pretending to ponder what I wanted but really wanting to say a million different things to him. His inspiration, grace under pressure, relentless competitive fire, dogged determined preparation, an ideal role model. How great it was having someone like him to look up to while growing up.

“This one is on me.” He handed me a Newcastle. The crowd then enveloped me as I stood there with the Newcastle, dumbfounded. I like to think he knew what thoughts were flooding my mind, he had seen it all before. But there you have it. I now owe Jordan two drinks. I’m biding my time for that to happen.

As I have learned, you never really know what’s on the horizon.

A lot of people can climb that mountain. It’s the way down that breaks them, ’cause that’s the moment when you are truly alone. And what would you do then? Can you summon the will to fight on, through all the pain, and rise again? 

– Sonny Vaccarro to Michael Jordan (same speech actually)

Jordan was indeed a once in a lifetime phenomenon. In basketball, we waited for the next player. Kobe came close but never captured the way in which Jordan elevated the play of his team mates. Lebron is the closest, his staying power remarkable. Curry is close as well. We wait for greatness, celebrate it, critique and compare it, perhaps even start to detract from it. Then when it’s too late, we might celebrate it yet again. I remember rooting for Y.E. Yang in that PGA Championship because I was tired of watching Tiger win everything. Couldn’t someone rise up to the challenge and put up a fight? Then Yang won and I felt guilty. Tiger was my favorite golfer of all time, what the hell was I doing? I wanted to seem him encounter worthy adversity and find new ways to conquer it. I wanted his greatness to be even greater.

Summoning the will to fight on, through all the pain and rise again. True greatness. I don’t mind admitting tears were in my eyes as Tiger won the Masters in 2019. And it sure as hell got dusty when Jordan came back to the game and won three more titles during my college years. Those two touched greatness, then reclaimed it. That could be the best definition of immortality, forever living in our hearts and minds.

What defines a great golf course. The quotes here are from the movie, “Air,” the story of Nike courting Jordan before his rookie season. Nike was on the verge of closing down their basketball division but essentially put all of their chips in on bringing MJ aboard. At the time, Converse and Adidas were the marketshare leaders. Converse signed all of the greats and relied on that traditional momentum to keep signing top names. Their shoe rarely wavered in design; they saw the players as representing the shoe without any individuality. And it worked very well for a long time. Adidas has always been a stalwart but again, at the time didn’t emphasize athlete individuality. Really, neither Converse or Adidas kept pushing the envelope. Nike seized on that, coming up with a shoe that encapsulated Jordan’s aura and even offered to pay any and all fines levied by the NBA for violating the amount of color in the shoe that were in place at the time. Nike was also willing to make gain share concessions, something that was never done before. With the marketing, commercials and Jordan’s meteoric rise, Nike became the stalwart, ultimately buying Converse in 2003. Nike became great by coloring outside the lines. The odds were stacked against them within the confines of the traditional marketing rules in place, so they essentially said fuck the rules. They noticed stagnation in the market and an opportunity to capitalize by taking monumental risk. And it worked.

You are remembered for the rules you break.

– Phil Knight

What defines a great golf course. Where perspective and context matter so much, are there objective benchmarks that give us a collection of great courses? Time, a golf course must stand the test of time. The shine of new and excitement must wear off and we must see if there is enough complexity for timeless charm and intrigue. Originality helps but comes in several forms. A course can be one of a kind and break the rules in place before it in brilliant form but can also take design concepts before it and excel or flourish with them. How the course plays is paramount. And quite honestly, this is where many courses end up falling short on the path to greatness. You can have the clubhouse and the views and the members and the exclusivity but at the end of day, it comes down to how does the course play. In a world where Augusta National didn’t host the Masters and was public, how would it fare? The structure of play must shake the conscience and stir the soul. Then, many times there’s some wild card, some special something, that one can’t just put their finger on. But the golfer knows they’re in a place of greatness and the game is more rich because of it.

Architects visit courses all the time for inspiration. C.B. Macdonald designed the National Golf Links of America based for the most part on design features he admired in Scotland, creating the template hole style that remains popular today. Pete Dye and Gil Hanse admitted their design styles changed after inspired visits to Scotland (in Hanse’s case, it was after building Craighead). Those courses worthy of such inspiration can be considered great, or at least they have some aspect of greatness to them. And courses are created with inspiration from these prior courses, how they are presented determines their greatness to lack thereof, but will inevitably be compared to the inspired mold. Yet when we speak of immortality, a course is able to stake its claim in this realm when it’s used to inspire others further down the line.

Is there any objectivity in determining greatness of a golf course? All one has to do is examine course rankings list from year to year. Or take a look at the list from 20, 30, 40 years ago and see which courses are atop the rankings and which are not. Many surprises. Yet it shows that some courses may seem great at one point in time and not at another. At least from a rankings perspective. The power of popular opinion, and which are hosting tournaments and majors, all of it impacts that discussion. Golden Age was not always popular and en vogue; there were multiple eras that aimed to modernize those courses, many of which were seen out of date. Then they were revered once again, which is where we are now. Aye, rankings and trends can only tell us so much about greatness. That’s why we can only surmise which courses of our era will be considered great, or are great, for ages to come.

That test of time also sifts out greatness. The passage of time gives us the rise and fall of eras and trends, from one to the next. Course architecture is some what akin to filling a bucket with water. Each bucket could be considered an era as at first it’s empty and open, then it starts filling and filling until it inevitably starts spilling over and stays that way for a while until it’s finally emptied, the contents of which are cast aside. Then it starts filling again the same way. The bucket always starts with a few concepts that have branched into unchartered or even long forgotten rechartered territory from some time ago that seems new besides, then fills even more as more and more projects go for something similar. For every NGLA inspired by works before it or even Bandon Dunes inspired by the spirit of Sand Hills, there are lots and lots of courses mimicking greatness in hopes of manufacturing the same success, the same reverence. Pete Dye breaks through with creative use of pot bunkers and they start showing up all over the place. Blown out bunkers are used beautifully at Pacific Dunes and they start showing up in places they would never appear naturally. Originality crowns its head, is celebrated, then is replicated again and again until it’s torn down to either return into vogue, resigned to purgatory as outdated or eventually re-designed out of existence. What remains as this cycle does its turning over? And what will it take to once again empty that bucket as it’s overflowing, spilling about?

They say we are in a renewed Golden Age at present. I agree to some extent. The emphasis and enthusiasm for golf course design is strong, which has translated to a lot of projects focusing on engaging play above all else. The restoration/renovation trend has been refreshing as courses seek to elevate their structure of play in one form or another. The attention to craft is there without the cookie cutter mass production that plagued the past. Yet the rising tide of sameness is starting to swell and with the sheer amount of money invested in the majority of the new projects, there are a lot more similarities to eras past than most want to admit. We might be getting to that point of stagnation.

I believe the saying that if you say what you want, that’s fine and good, but doing something about it that’s what really counts.

– Dolores Jordan

There’s more than one way to fill that bucket. Coore has always been candid that their work has never been groundbreaking or innovative. Instead, they try to make each course distinct in its appearance and playing characteristics in what Coore characterizes as, “varying arrangements.” Their variety and originality is within traditional, sound design principles, all of it determined from the land and setting. Coore believes there are limitless ways in which to work within those confines. As Coore puts it, “[w]hile there are no new notes, there are limitless ways to arrange those notes into a composition.” This is a much more articulate explanation that greatness doesn’t need to come from originality. One can excel within time tested design rubric and find newness within it. While Coore and Crenshaw will go down as legends in artistic minimalist design with ethereal distinct structures of play, course architecture is always in need of innovation for more and more varying arrangements. Otherwise, while there might be limitless compositions with those varying arrangements, it’s still all the same type of music.

We will be examining what courses are opening this year and what they convey the golf courses stand for. While many claim they will be the, “crown jewel” of golf in that area or the country in general, is anyone actually doing anything more than talking and in fact striving to be the MJ of golf courses or are they all looking to accomplish something else? Are they just looking to be Converse? What new projects are seeking greatness? Pine Valley always intended to be great and went through tremendous lengths to pursue it. Oakmont was created with the same in mind, then Fownes and his son after him continued striving for perfection as custodians to the course. What golf courses built within the last ten years have a chance at being truly great in the next fifty years? Within this, a new generation of course architects continue to take on more work, whom have shown a proclivity towards exploring new concepts, or at least a new set of varying arrangements, while the more well established architects of the last 3.5 decades are opening more courses than ever before. There is a push and pull between these generations for sure. Yet what of the developers? Is there any inclination to break the rules, find that groundbreaking originality and forge a new direction of course architecture, just as those of the Golden Age did way back when. Or is everyone deriving from past designs and hoping to stand out? Is anyone looking to challenge the best and stake their own? Is anyone willing to take on that Nike-esque monumental risk and do something great? Perhaps. These are questions to ponder this year. And that, my friends, is a preview of what’s to come later this month.

I don’t see golf on my immediate horizon this new year as winter has decided to give it to us in spades this time around. But my last golf of 2024 was at my club, where I walked 8 holes on New Year’s Eve day at sunset. The weather miraculously decided to be fairly pleasant for this brief window and I didn’t even need a jacket. As I stood at the Eighteenth tee, an empty course before me, the last daylight of the year fading, I marveled at all the places and people I was able to visit and meet in 2024, most of which I had no idea would happen a year ago as the last rays of sunshine faded from 2023. Yet I smiled a bit since I knew 2025 would be different. I did have an idea of where I would be going, where my journey would take me. It would take me to greatness, for sure. Greatness of the likes perhaps I had never encountered before.

2025 will be the year I visit the Old Course.

Indeed, this preview is different than most. Instead of the whole, “I don’t have any plans really, I’ll just let the golf come to me” jargon, the first half of the year is already planned and structured. And why yes, one of the planned trips is back over to the U.K., to the home of golf. Scotland has been calling for quite some time. I actually came close over ten years ago when I started planning a trip over there with my Dad but it never came to fruition. This time, it is set and will include playing the Old course, twice. One round will be the routing typically played in this day in age while the other round will be the reverse routing, which was in place originally. I was one of the fortunate to get a tee time for the reverse routing and you can say that while Scotland has been calling for some time, it is now in fact commanding. Who am I to say no. And while I’m over there, might as well as check out a bunch of other courses and take in what I can.

Aside from Scotland, there are a couple of other trips already set in stone that have me visiting some very much anticipated courses. Spread out over the country, really. When all is said and done, this could be a banner year in terms of courses I have been longing to visit but have locked away that longing for the appropriate time. That time for many of them might be this year. Instead of mentioning them by name, I’m going to describe them and why I have wanted to see them for so long.

• There are golf courses that define the legacy of an architect. Their masterpiece if you will and it’s not always limited to one course. On some of these, the architect had free rein to do as they saw fit, so there is no hiding from the design by pointing to client demands or environmental restrictions or clubhouse location. The course is their best iteration of course architecture personified. So looking beyond the name, its stature or ranking, what do these masterpieces signify for their respective architects? And how interesting are those design concepts?
• A legendary surfer once said that between living in palatial estates with unfathomable riches or a shack on the shore walking distance to a splendid break, the real surfer would pick the shack every time. That has stuck with me all these years and to some extent, I refer back to it for golf. Sure the comfort stations and perfect conditioning and awesome practice facility and mega octopus burger and Bentley golf carts and it hosted the such and such tournament where famous golfer X made albatross to win are all well and good but when all of that is stripped away and nothing is left but the course design, what are you left with. One of the courses I’ll be visiting has been on my radar for quite some time because of this concept. It’s not known for the scenery or anything else really but its design. Could be my kind of place, only way to find out.
• I’ve been rather vocal that course length does not automatically equal interest, engagement or even challenge. In fact, some of my favorite courses are able to capture a riveting round with shorter lengths altogether. One of the supreme examples of this will be visited, at last, this year. Such a powerful yet constantly underrated and ignored design concept at present for the most part.
• Restorations have been an important aspect of course architecture for at least the last quarter century. There are two very notable projects that took place long ago we’re able to evaluate their long-lasting impact. Two well known architects with different styles each restoring respective very well known courses originally by the same architect is an evaluation exercise I’ve wanted to embark on for a while. This is the year it happens.
• Obviously the Old Course is one of them so might as well name names on that one. Shackleford wrote about the Old I believe in, “Grounds for Golf” that resonated with me a lot. It’s how the Old at first blush doesn’t really seem to be all that much but a flat field but it’s only after the passage of time and experience that the course reveals its layers slowly to the golfer, its whims and thoughts so that the golfer earns the right to know the Old in its proper light. The course was very much shaped and formed by the elements over time as the beginning era of the game took hold, evolving into one of the finer strategic monuments of the game. I’m elated to be able to play it more than once on this maiden trip. I’ve written before that there’s simply not enough time and it still holds true, as other parts of Scotland will need to come at some point in the future.

What else is on tap on the empty promise list. You just never know. Last year saw Golden Oaks, Knoll West and Shoregate after years and years of being in this space so I go through the exercise anyways, no matter how futile or unfulfilled.

• First off, there are two new secret reviews. The third nines at Metedeconck and Little Mill are now up, completing reviews of all of their holes. Stealth reviews are a new thing!
• I was only able to get to Long Island once last year. Unconscionable. I’ll at least match that, as there are still quite a few courses I very much would like to visit. I already have a trip in mind, deep into the island. This preparation thing is something.
• Late last year, a few of us showed up at Rolling Green for a round to see the recent changes that took place there. The cold and extreme wind made that unappealing for most so we walked the course instead. I realized I need to walk courses more often, there’s just a lot more you pick up on that’s different than when you play. Yes, I’m sure it’s obvious to everyone but me. What can I say, I’m more prone to picking up the clubs. At any rate, there will be more walk throughs moving forward. And in fact, I’ll be picking up the clubs some where I was able to walk quite a bit in the past.
• While the first half of the year is well plotted with all kinds of course architecture greatness, the second half is another story. I really see an expedition to the south, multiple perhaps.
• The three local publics on my list to review include Bensalem (for years and years now), Manor and Green Pond. And Bethlehem Municipal. And Hershey East. And
• Hey, one can dream. Maybe this is the year I start updating some reviews. We now have the Redux, so perhaps, perhaps.
• Content wise, we’re gonna try to get to those in the industry a little more. Golfadelphia has questions and things to discuss and these people will help.
• Also, it was a banner year for getting out reviews but we may start branching out a bit. A Return of Return of the New is already in the works and there’s a few more ideas to explore.
• Did I mention St. Andrews?!?!?!

As the rest of you stand on that wide open tee that is the New Year, I hope you do everything you have in mind. Do the old and comfortable that makes you feel all warm inside, do the new and different that might scare you a little. Do the thing you don’t entirely have thought out yet. And do those for the sake of others and for the sake of the game we all revere. But by God, above all else for the sake of this life that we only have one time around with. Just do it.