The post A hole I love: American Dunes’ ‘Beauty and the Beast’ 16th appeared first on Golf.

The post A hole I love: American Dunes’ ‘Beauty and the Beast’ 16th appeared first on Golf.

One key to great design is creating difficult holes that are also fun to play.

It’s the best of both worlds — and easier said than done! The fact remains that these double agents do exist. Case in point: the par-4 16th at American Dunes in Grand Haven, Mich. This Jack Nicklaus layout opened mid-pandemic, but it and its mighty 16th (460 yards from the Valor tees) have not gone unnoticed by GOLF’s course raters.

From the tee, a 170-yard-long bunker sits left of the fairway while another sandscape looms right. That’s okay — the landing area is about 50 yards wide, so most players will find the short stuff. Assuming a good drive, the approach calls for a hybrid, at least, but ahead rests a 130-yard-long bunker slashing diagonally across the fairway, starting 40 yards short, left of the green, before hugging the right side of the putting surface.

The bunker is upward of 10 feet deep — avoiding it is an absolute must. Thank Nicklaus for giving you plenty of room to do so: On the far side of this formidable hazard is an 85-yard-long island of short green grass. The ground is higher on the left (the side away from the bunker). Savvy players will use this area to kick shots right and get them rolling on the green. It’s visually impressive — even intimidating — but it can be had by playing smart. (Call it a “4.5” par.) Beautiful, beastly, with options galore. Mission accomplished.

GOLF.com and Nicklaus Companies are operated by the same parent company, 8AM Golf.

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The post Justin Thomas, Jack Nicklaus collaborating on new golf-course design in South Florida appeared first on Golf.

The post Justin Thomas, Jack Nicklaus collaborating on new golf-course design in South Florida appeared first on Golf.

Justin Thomas — major champion, 14-time PGA Tour winner and seventh-ranked player in the world — now has another title to add to his resumé: golf course architect.

At a groundbreaking ceremony Tuesday in Palm Beach Gardens, Fla., Thomas was on hand to mark the start of construction on his first design project, a collaboration with Jack Nicklaus called Panther National. (Nicklaus Design and GOLF.com are affiliates of 8AM Golf.)

The course, which is slated to open in late 2023, will anchor an upscale lifestyle community of the same name that will feature a range of sustainable initiatives, including infrastructure and amenities powered by energy from Tesla. It is being described as the first golf development in Palm Beach County in nearly 20 years.

“I started drawing golf holes on napkins as a kid, so this is something I’ve wanted to do for a long time,” Thomas said in a statement. “To begin my golf course design endeavors with someone like Jack Nicklaus is a dream come true.”

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The entire venture is the brainchild of Swiss developer Dominik Senn, a former ski racer who went on to become one of his country’s most successful sports marketers. Among other athletes, Senn managed Roger Federer early in the tennis great’s career.

In a statement, Senn said the community is meant to “fill a void in the market” with a blend of aesthetics and amenities that offer the outdoor activities and “work-life” balance so many people have increasingly prioritized since the pandemic.

Groundbreaking at Panther National comes as the PGA Tour begins its Florida Swing at another Palm Beach Gardens property, PGA National. Thomas is not in the field this week, but he lives in nearby Jupiter.

Though details on the course design were not immediately available, a release sent out in advance of the groundbreaking said that Panther National will have “elevations and features unlike any course in the state,” and that it will marry Nicklaus’s architectural approach with Thomas’s “modern perspective.”

Thomas is 28, roughly the same age Nicklaus was when Pete Dye asked him for his design input on The Golf Club, in Columbus, Ohio. In subsequent years, the two men collaborated on multiple projects before Nicklaus embarked on his own design career.

Nicklaus, who was also at the groundbreaking, said that his design work had helped shape his perspective as a player, and the other way around. He said that he expected the same would be true for Thomas.

“I’m thrilled that Justin has decided to take on this rewarding challenge, and I’m confident this venture will serve him well, both on and off the course,” Nicklaus said.

In addition to the Nicklaus-Thomas 18-hole course, Panther National will have a nine-hole par-3 course; practice facilities with shot-tracing technology; an indoor simulator; a putting room; and a custom-club fitting center. Set on 400 acres and surrounded by an expansive conservation area, the development will have 218 custom estates, ranging from 4,700- to 10,000-square-feet.

Each of those luxury homes will have a two or three-car garage with an electric charging station. Panther National has also partnered with Tesla Energy to provide power-wall backup systems in all its estates and amenities.

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The post Former major championship host to undergo $5 million ‘reconfiguration’ appeared first on Golf.

The post Former major championship host to undergo $5 million ‘reconfiguration’ appeared first on Golf.

It is arguably harder to find a bagel on the north shore of Long Island than it is to find a golf course. Dotted along the cliffs and valleys near the Long Island Sound are many of the game’s most storied venues, from The Creek Club (GOLF’s No. 62 course in the United States) to Piping Rock (No. 56), to a handful of offerings that fall just outside the purview of GOLF’s lists, from uber-elite Deepdale to Sands Point, and beyond. This, of course, is to say nothing of Bethpage Black, Garden City and Fishers Island, which all stand mere minutes away from the selections listed above.

Perhaps if not for its neighbors, Engineers Country Club in Roslyn Harbor would earn more name recognition among the golf public. The course’s history dates back more than a century, calling Herbert Strong and later Devereux Emmet (of Garden City fame) its primary designers, and the famed boxer Joe Louis among its many thousands of competitors.

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But soon that history will take a new twist. As Newsday first reported, ClubCorp officially assumed operations of Engineers last week, marking the first in a phased series of updates that will alter the course from its longtime state. ClubCorp will assume ownership from RXR Realty, the developer who first purchased the course in the late 2010s, and now plans to develop 92 condo units on course property.

RXR says it has invested $7 million over the last several years in upgrades to Engineers, retaining ClubCorp’s services in that time for help with golf course management. Under the new agreement, RXR will focus its energy toward construction of the condos, eventually handing over complete ownership to ClubCorp for an undisclosed sum. RXR says that, upon the completion of the condos, it will invest an additional $5 million to “reconfigure” the course, and has hired Nicklaus Design to assist in those efforts. (Nicklaus Design and GOLF are both owned by 8AM Golf.)

In its current form, Engineers is a match players’ dream, with gettable holes and challenging terrain melding to form a course that lends itself to the thinker. Evidently, the PGA of America and USGA agreed, bringing the still-match play PGA Championship and the U.S. Amateur to Engineers in back-to-back years (1919 and 1920). Golf’s most famous amateur, Francis Ouimet, came up just shy of his second U.S. Amateur victory at Engineers in 1920, losing to Charles Evans Jr. 7 and 6.

But for all its design elegance, the course had fallen from its century-old hayday. By the time RXR entered the fold in 2017, Engineers was in dire straits. The club’s neighbors — in addition to shrinking membership and outdated facilities — had brought it to the brink of bankruptcy. After a protracted period on the open market, the club’s board approved the sale to RXR, who planned to borrow a tactic from nearby Woodmere Country Club in turning the course into a high-end real estate development.

Of course, the proposed updates are overwhelmingly likely to serve as a departure from the course’s longstanding design. But this is far from a bad news story. Since RXR’s purchase, golf has undergone a nationwide boon, and the company’s efforts to drive membership have followed suit. Membership is now 300 — double its number at the time of the sale — while RXR has received enough additional interest to install a $10,000 initiation fee. As RXR prepares to break ground, the club is at its healthiest moment in a long while.

It’s true, this piece of golf history is likely to take on a much different appearance — and there’s room for litigating whether that’s a good thing. But it’s going to remain a piece of golf history, and even in an area overflowing with it, that’s a good thing.

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The post Jack Nicklaus and Gary Player’s course-design firms form ‘strategic alliance’ appeared first on Golf.

The post Jack Nicklaus and Gary Player’s course-design firms form ‘strategic alliance’ appeared first on Golf.

The first time Gary Player spoke with Jack Nicklaus was at the 1959 Masters. 

Nicklaus, then a 19-year-old amateur, had just missed the cut.

“No matter who you are, it never hurts to hear some words of encouragement, so that’s what I offered him,” Player recalled recently. “I said, ‘I’ve watched you hit the ball and I have no doubt that you are going to be a great champion.’”

What Player couldn’t have foreseen was how their relationship would evolve.

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In the 60-plus years since, the two legends have competed both on and off the course, building a rivalry in golf and business based on mutual respect.

This week, they established another tie.

In a move meant to strengthen each man’s architectural interests, Nicklaus and Player announced Wednesday that their design firms have formed a “strategic alliance.”

Under the arrangement, Player will enlist the resources of Nicklaus Design to help him launch his reborn Gary Player Design business. (Nicklaus Design is an affiliate of GOLF.com’s parent company, 8AM Golf.) That business has been largely inactive over the past two years, held up by a legal dispute between Player and a company run by one of his sons.

With that dispute now behind him, Player said he was eager to get back to designing and building courses around the world, and that the relationship with Nicklaus Design would be key as his own design company starts afresh.

“When I get a course to do, it will be great to have Jack’s people be part of the design,” Player said. “They’ve had so much experience with top courses around the world.”

In a statement that accompanied the announcement, Nicklaus said that the arrangement meshed with his own goal of providing “the expertise and resources needed to develop and support the people who will design the courses of the future.”

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In this case, Nicklaus added, he and his colleagues were “happy to be in the position to facilitate the next phase of my dear friend Gary’s career.”

With 27 majors and hundreds of professional titles between them, Nicklaus and Player are two of the winningest golfers of all time. But they’ve been even more prolific in golf design. Gary Player Design is credited with more than 135 courses around the world, while Nicklaus Design has created more than 425 courses, in 40 countries and also 40 U.S. states.

While each man has established his own aesthetic, Player said that their design philosophies are “very similar,” with an emphasis on environmental sensitivity and shot-making demands suited to golfers of all levels.

“That’s why I’m so pleased that Jack agreed to this,” Player said. “We’re not partners, as such, but I love designing courses, and now we’ll be able to have the benefit of Jack’s resources and to help bring about my design ideas.”

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The post The most fun course at The Concession might be one the pros aren’t playing appeared first on Golf.

The post The most fun course at The Concession might be one the pros aren’t playing appeared first on Golf.

Jack Nicklaus and Tony Jacklin are forever joined in history by “The Concession,” Nicklaus’s famously sporting gesture to his singles-match opponent at the 1969 Ryder Cup. But the two golfers are also connected by their co-design work at The Concession Golf Club, in Bradenton, Fla., a property that has received far less attention than the two-foot conceded putt for which the club is named.

Since it opened in 2006, the private club has remained largely out of the spotlight. That’s changing this week.

With the World Golf Championships-Workday Championship at The Concession kicking off Thursday, golf fans got their first televised look at one of Florida’s most challenging tracks, a 7,500-yard-plus, water-laden course with slick, contoured greens that evoke the putting surfaces at Augusta National.

Even before a recent lengthening, The Concession had slope and course ratings of 155 and 77.6.

So yeah, viewers can expect to watch the world’s best players taking on a sizable test all week long.

What they won’t see much of are two other highly entertaining venues at The Concession: a putting course called Snake Acre and a par-3 course with an aptly thematic name: the Gimme.

Nicklaus Design, which is an affiliate of GOLF.com’s parent company, 8AM Golf, built both courses in late 2019, taking advantage of an unused swatch of land that was given over largely to live oaks. A number of those oaks were relocated to other points on property, leaving a blank canvas for challenging short-game fun.

True to its name, the putting course occupies one acre and offers all kinds of snaking putts. The Gimme, for its part, is a 9-hole course, with ample artistry and variety.

According to Chris Cochran, senior design associate at Nicklaus Design, the holes range on average from 85 to 125 yards, with the longest stretching to 185 yards. In addition to testing a player’s touch and precision, the course provides a showcase of iconic architecture features, including an island green and a Road Hole green, as well as a Biarritz and a punchbowl.

“We thought it was a pretty small piece of property — it’s only 8 acres and an eighth of that is putting green,” Cochran says. “But it’s a lot of fun. We got nine holes in there, with a huge amount of variety. And we had fun using template holes from the history of the game.”

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The post Inside Concession Golf Club, a Florida course that doesn’t always feel like one appeared first on Golf.

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Few courses can host a PGA Tour event on short notice, as The Concession Golf Club has done in preparation for this week’s WGC-Workday Championship. But Concession’s 7,474-yard routing — which replaced Club de Golf Chapultepec, in Mexico City, as the WGC venue — is a stern, tournament-ready test from Nicklaus Design that requires precise shotmaking and rewards complete games. (Nicklaus Design is an affiliate of GOLF.com’s parent company 8AM Golf.)

Founded in 2006 in Bradenton, Fla., just south of Tampa, Concession pairs the best attributes of Florida golf with some decidedly un-Floridian touches, most evident in the course’s rustic, natural presentation. A handful of the holes are ½-pars that will force the players to make decisions, and every hole has difficult, sloping greens that will test the field’s wedge games and putters.

Here are 5 design elements at Concession worth keeping an eye on this week:

1. A superb set of par 5s

Yes, there are four of them and typically that promotes low scoring over four rounds. Not so fast here, though! The 7th and 16th average nearly 600 yards. The 13th (below) is the shortest at 545 yards but its angled, elevated green is maddening to hit, even for these guys approaching with mid-irons. No one better appreciates what a reachable par-5 can mean than Jack Nicklaus, and his portfolio is replete with excellent examples of this type of hole. Here, the elusive knob green will provide plenty of theatrics and could produce the pivotal moment on Sunday.

2. Rugged bunkering

Nicklaus Design adopted a rough-hewn weathered look to the bunkers at Concession and this style imbues the course with a more natural appearance than many of its Florida brethren. Plenty of Tour stops feature bunkers with clean, crisp edges and pearly white sand; this isn’t that, and give the Tour credit for showcasing a different aesthetic.

3. Risk-reward galore

When Nicklaus worked with Pete Dye in the late 1960s at Harbour Town, one of his takeaways was how finesse holes can be employed to examine who is thinking the most clearly. Like at Harbour Town, Concession has two such holes, one on each side. The 8th, which measures 374 yards from the back (322 yards from the blue tees), features a stream that hugs the front and right side of a smallish green. At 349 yards, the 12th features as much sand per yard as any hole on the course. Will the Tour have fun and utilize a forward tee on one or both of those holes? Fireworks would surely follow. Having two reachable, perilous holes in such a short stretch is likely to shake-up the leaderboard.

4. Sweet 16

Another hole built for heroics is the 16th which buttonhooks around a lake. Matching the club with the line on the tee ball will be critical on this position hole and the difference in direction off the tee from being aggressive or conservative is as much as 50 yards. Penalties for the too greedy and less precise are omnipresent. A disaster here off the tee may not leave the player enough time to recover on Sunday.

5. Vexing greens

As always, the greens ultimately determine the difficulty for the professionals. Concession’s putting greens feature significant contour whether it be tilt, heave or swale. As a set, the green complexes are quite diverse, ranging from deep surfaces like the 45-yard long 2nd to compact ones like the 8th. Some are elevated while others welcome running ground shots. Many are angled to the fairway so positioning your tee ball is important. Indeed, several greens have actually been softened since the course opened though the pros are unlikely to feel like that is the case!

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The post How this new Nicklaus Design course will help extend golf’s reach appeared first on Golf.

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The plan mimicked that of many other Nicklaus Design signature courses.

Have the man himself visit the site. Check out the property. Meet the locals. Get a better sense for the kind of course he wants to design.

But this time was different. The pandemic kept him from making the trip.

No matter. Jack Nicklaus scoured photos, topography maps and design plans and worked with members of his team who had been on the site to formulate a strategy.

As a result, Nicklaus Design, an affiliate of GOLF.com’s parent company, 8AM Golf, is well on its way toward building a championship course about 30 minutes from Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Construction is slated to begin this spring with the opening likely to be near the end of 2022. It will be the first Jack Nicklaus Signature Design in the Middle East to involve Nicklaus himself.

The golf course, Qiddiya, will be an integral part of Golf Saudi’s goal of elevating the game in the Kingdom, where there are just 5,000 golfers. Golf Saudi is aiming to more than double the number of public-access courses in the country — there are five today — by 2030.

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Bringing golf to a place where it hasn’t been part of the culture is not new for the Nicklaus Design team.

“This is, literally, what was done in Dubai 20 years ago,” said Dirk Bouts, a senior designer for Nicklaus Design. “You’re kind of doing it all over again.”

The goal is to design a course that can host prestigious events — the European Tour’s Saudi International would appear to be the most obvious candidate — while also catering to players who might be new to the game. The design, which will sit about 2,000 feet above sea level, will have wide fairways and no rough.

“Jack definitely wants to make sure it’s enjoyable,” Bouts said. “Surely the local people playing it will not be that familiar with the game yet, so you want to make sure they have a great time.”

As is the case with any new project, there will be hurdles to overcome. Weather is near the top of that list. The summers in Saudi Arabia are long and hot and there is little rainfall.

“Maintaining the turf and having the right amount of water there will certainly present a challenge,” said Paul Stringer, president of Nicklaus Design. “They’re up to that challenge.”

Nicklaus Design will put in a couple of lakes, mainly for irrigation storage. “The site doesn’t have a lot of vegetation,” Stringer said, “so like a lot of desert golf courses, it will have to be created.”

Stringer, who has lived in Scottsdale and Tucson, sees similarities between the Arizona desert courses and the Tuwaiq mountain range which will surround Qiddiya.

“It reminds me a little bit of Pinnacle Peek in north Scottsdale in terms of the formation,” he said.

One main attraction will be the three holes that will sit on a small escarpment on the southern edge of the site with “tremendous views of the valley down below,” Stringer said.

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Beyond golf, the development will also include amusements parks, a safari park, a high-end resort hotel and spa and a residential community.

Qiddiya’s origin story began two years ago when Nicklaus met with His Excellency Yassir bin Othman Al-Rumayyan, the chairman of Golf Saudi and the Saudi Golf Federation. Golf Saudi was seeking a design firm to build a new private golf club in the Kingdom.

At the end of 2019, Nicklaus Design was awarded the project. The team will also create a nine-hole par-3 course and a large practice facility. Sean Quinn, another senior designer working on the project, said the team plans to have fun with the par-3, including a “St. Andrews 17th green with a wall behind it.”

The notion of growing the game in a country where golf is just catching on was appealing to Nicklaus Design.

“That’s what makes it exciting for Jack and all of us,” Stringer said. “Jack loves creating golf in new cultures and new environments that haven’t had golf.”

Once it’s deemed safe to travel, Nicklaus will pay a visit to the Kingdom, where he will put his official stamp of approval on the design.

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The post Check out Arizona’s first new public golf course in five years appeared first on Golf.

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From the city of Surprise, Ariz., comes word of something pleasantly unexpected: the first new golf course to open to public play in Arizona since 2016.

Set in the shadow of the White Tank Mountains, roughly 40 miles northwest of Scottsdale, Sterling Grove Golf & Country Club will start welcoming limited preview play on Feb. 11, giving golfers a sneak-peek of the pristine 18-hole layout.

“In Europe and Asia, we get to do a fair number of new builds,” said Chris Cochran, senior design associate at Nicklaus Design, who headed up the project (Nicklaus Companies and GOLF.com are affiliates of 8AM Golf.) “But in this country, it’s not often that you get a raw piece of land to work with, so that made this one a lot of fun.”

Working on what was a flat swatch of farmland, Cochran and his colleagues crafted an engaging modern course, graced with classic elements, including nods to Golden Age templates such as the punchbowl and the Biarritz. 

“I think we have a collection of very interesting holes and a routing that shifts nicely in complexion,” Cochran said. “There’s a nice story going throughout the property.”

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Built in collaboration with the real estate developer, Toll Brothers, the Troon Managed Course will eventually become the centerpiece of an exclusive private club, accessible only to members and their guests. It will anchor a luxury lifestyle community featuring trails, parks, community gardens and other amenities. 

At the club itself, pickleball, tennis and bocce courts are scheduled to open in phases throughout the summer and fall, along with locker rooms, a fitness studio and a full-service restaurant, Copper & Rye. 

While the clubhouse and other on-course amenities are being completed, a food truck will operate on site, serving snacks, sandwiches and other items along with non-alcoholic beverages. The club expects to have its liquor license by March.

Green fees during preview play will be $89 per person, with reservations accepted up to 30 days in advance. For regular rates, click here.

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The post GOLF’s Subpar: How Jack Nicklaus and Lt Col Dan Rooney ended up collaborating on the design of American Dunes appeared first on Golf.

The post GOLF’s Subpar: How Jack Nicklaus and Lt Col Dan Rooney ended up collaborating on the design of American Dunes appeared first on Golf.

Subpar’s Colt Knost and Drew Stoltz are joined by the founder of Folds of Honor, Lt Col Dan Rooney, who shares the origins of his collaboration with Jack Nicklaus designing American Dunes and what their relationship is like.

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The post How this week’s PGA Tour venue has changed in an important way since its last close-up appeared first on Golf.

The post How this week’s PGA Tour venue has changed in an important way since its last close-up appeared first on Golf.

Sherwood Country Club, site of this week’s Zozo Championship, is no stranger to the limelight.

Since opening in 1989, the Southern California course has hosted a robust slate of high-profile events, including the Shark Shootout, the Chevron World Challenge and the Showdown at Sherwood, a primetime televised match between Tiger Woods and David Duval that was won by Woods under the lights. The course, in short, has been there, done that frequently enough that many fans tuning in this weekend will see a layout that looks familiar to them.

Looks, however, can be deceiving.

Meet the new Sherwood: same routing as before, but a very different course than it was the last time it appeared on TV, as the stage for the senior circuit’s 2016 PowerShares QQQ Championship.

That same year, Jack Nicklaus, the original architect at Sherwood, returned to carry out a $10.5 million renovation, a project meant to accommodate not only changes in the modern game but also the effects of a changing climate. 

Among the modifications were agronomic improvements designed to cut back dramatically on water use.

“It’s the old form follows function,” says Chris Cochran, senior design associate at Nicklaus Design, in which GOLF.com’s parent company has an ownership stake. “Our first job is to get the course to be sustainable and playable for the long term. After that, we get to have fun with the aesthetics.”

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Along with rebuilding greens, renovating and reposition bunkers, and sharpening sight-lines, Nicklaus and his team sand-capped the course to improve drainage and planted new drought-tolerant grasses that weren’t available when Sherwood was first constructed. In native areas dotted with California oak and sycamore trees, invasive grasses had encroached over the years. Those were removed, and replaced with California fescue. A more targeted irrigation system now ensures that the course gets water only where and when it really needs a drink.

The cumulative effect at Sherwood has been a 25 percent reduction in water use.

Timely when they were implemented, the changes seem especially prescient in 2020, a year that has seen California ravaged by wildfires while drought conditions intensify around the West. Though the environmental implications extend far beyond golf, few issues are more pressing for the future of the game.

“Best practices are always front and center of everything we do,” Cochran says. “It’s especially important in a place like Southern California, where water is so precious and water quality is so poor. You need growing conditions that can handle it. The goal is to be a responsible steward, even as you’re working to create a wonderful place to play.”

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