The post Golf course design masterclass: Tom Doak’s emphasis on adventure appeared first on Golf.

The post Golf course design masterclass: Tom Doak’s emphasis on adventure appeared first on Golf.

What exactly makes a golf course great? Scores of weighty volumes and a zillion breezy blog posts have addressed this question, many of them settling on this answer: Great courses marry artistry and scenery with shot-making variety in a manner that blends seamlessly with their surroundings. That’s for starters. The consensus holds that great courses also make you think. They engage and entertain. Offer up any of these observations with your pals over a post-round drink and it’s unlikely anyone will argue. But they may come back with “How about some examples?”

To help you strike an authoritative stance without coming off as a windbag, we asked a quartet of premier architects — Tom Doak, Bill Coore, David McLay Kidd and Jim Wagner — to discuss their own work as illustrations of how their design ideas play out in the field.

Architect: Tom Doak

Course: St. Patrick’s Golf Links

Design principle: Deliver an adventure

When Mark Twain called golf a good walk spoiled, he’d probably had a run-in with some badly arranged holes.

A great routing does the opposite: Rather than put a damper on your outing, it surprises and delights — a journey of discovery interrupted by attempts to get a ball into the hole. Take St. Patrick’s Links, Tom Doak’s new course in Ireland. With all of his designs, top priority is to keep things walkable.

“My rule of thumb is that if I give you long enough between holes to check your cellphone, I’ve screwed up,” he says. Great routings don’t repeat, but they can rhyme. The round, Doak insists, should have a rhythm and a flow, with holes that vary in length, difficulty and direction.

Travel

St. Patrick’s checks those boxes, working across all points on the compass, on a site where the wind often shifts as well. As with other first-rate routings, there’s a sense of exploration, unique to the location. You know you’re by the sea but only as you move from the 3rd green to the 4th tee, passing through the shadow of the coastal dunes, does the course give you its first reveal.

That early glimpse of Sheephaven Bay is echoed, more emphatically, on 14, a dogleg-right par-4 that bends along the water, and even more so from the 16th tee, the course’s high point. The coastal view from there is staggering, but you almost don’t see it coming, as Doak brings you to it with a series of short uphill walks.

“On a hilly property, you’re trying to sort out the sequence to get up to a beautiful vantage point without having any bad holes along the way,” Doak says. “A lot of people have already commented on how we snuck up on that dramatic view.”

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The post New Tom Doak design coming to acclaimed Top 100 property in Scotland appeared first on Golf.

The post New Tom Doak design coming to acclaimed Top 100 property in Scotland appeared first on Golf.

Castle Stuart Golf Links, in Scotland, one of GOLF’s World Top 100 Courses, has a new owner, a new name and big plans in the works.

On Monday, Cabot, the company co-founded by Canadian businessman Ben Cowan-Dewar and Bandon Dunes developer Mike Keiser, announced its acquisition of the Scottish property, which it has renamed Cabot Highlands. Operations at the course will continue uninterrupted, but upgrades to the destination are in store, as Cabot plans to add accommodations, for-sale real estate and, most notably for golfers, a second 18-hole course, designed by the acclaimed architect Tom Doak.

“Our goal has always been to create unforgettable memories in magical places, and this certainly fits the bill,” Cowan-Dewar said. “It’s such a marvelous destination in such a wonderful part of the world, the opportunity was almost too good to be true.”

Five minutes from the Inverness airport and within striking distance of such marquee Highlands courses as Royal Dornoch, Nairn and Brora, Castle Stuart has been a design-world darling since its opening in 2009. It was the brainchild of Mark Parsinen, who also built Kingbarns, in St. Andrews. At Castle Stuart, Parsinen collaborated with Gil Hanse on a links that rollicks over bluffs and along the Moray Firth, with infinity-edged greens, backed by the water, and long views of the Highlands. The course ranks 77th on GOLF’s current World Top 100 roster and four times has played host to the Scottish Open.

The purchase of Castle Stuart is the latest headline-making move by the Cabot team, whose growing portfolio of destination includes Cape Breton, in Nova Scotia (home of two of GOLF’s World Top 100 Courses, Cabot Links and Cabot Cliffs) and a pair of highly anticipated projects: Cabot Saint Lucia, set for late 2022 on the island of the same name; and Cabot Revelstoke, now in progress in British Columbia. Earlier this year, Cabot also acquired its first U.S. property, 45-hole World Woods, in Florida, which is now undergoing renovations and has been renamed Cabot Citrus Farms.

At their Highlands destination, Cowan-Dewar said that he and the Cabot team were proud to carry on the legacy of Parsinen, who died in 2019, at age 70. Along with the original course at Castle Stuart, Parsinen had long envisioned a par-3 course and a second 18-hole course. That short course was recently completed will have its grand opening next year (it is currently open to limited preview play). Construction on the new Doak-designed 18, which will be routed around a 400-year-old castle, will begin next year with an opening scheduled for 2024.

Real estate sales will begin at Cabot Highlands in 2023.

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The post How Top 100 newcomer St. Patrick’s Links quickly impressed our course raters appeared first on Golf.

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Tom Doak’s newest addition to GOLF’s Top 100 Courses list, St. Patrick’s Links, made an incredible debut at No. 55. Ran Morrissett, Thomas Brown and Simon Holt discuss why with GOLF Senior Editor Sean Zak.

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The post Inside St. Patrick’s Links, one of the most anticipated new courses of 2021 appeared first on Golf.

The post Inside St. Patrick’s Links, one of the most anticipated new courses of 2021 appeared first on Golf.

Happy St. Patrick’s Day!

To mark the occasion, we’re bringing you exclusive photography of something as rare as a four-leaf clover: a new links course in Ireland — and the first design on the Emerald Isle by the noted architect Tom Doak.

Built as an amenity to Rosapenna Hotel & Golf Resort in County Donegal, aptly named St. Patrick’s Links, which is slated to open this summer, spills through rollicking dunes on a seaside swatch that was home to 36 dormant holes. Rather than try to revive two courses, Doak instead opted to rework the land into the finest 18 holes that he could muster.

The ample canvas gave the architect the liberty to craft what he describes as a routing that “roams freely,” moving from outsize sandy blowouts on the property’s eastern boundary to dramatic acreage along the edge of Sheephaven Bay. Splendid scenery awaits throughout, but perhaps nowhere more so than between the 15th green and 16th tee, which Doak says will offer “some of the grandest views in the game.”

“The property is more than 270 acres, dominated by a large hill in the center that rises more than 100 feet above the bay,” Doak added. “One of the tricks to the routing was to get up there to enjoy the view without building any inferior holes on the way to the top.” 

New courses are hard to come by almost anywhere. They are especially scarce in Ireland, where Doak had long yearned to take on a project. The opportunity at Rosapenna has brought him to a remote area at the top of the island, west of Northern Ireland, that is widely recognized for its untamed beauty. 

“The opportunity to build a seaside course in Europe is almost impossible to come by now,” Doak said. “But St. Patrick’s is the next best thing: a total redesign.”

St. Patrick’s Links will join an existing 36 holes at Rosapenna Hotel, a 2003 links designed by the Irish architect Pat Ruddy, and the Old Tom Morris Links, designed in 1893 by Old Tom himself. It promises to become yet another must-play for golfers on trips to other courses in the vicinity, including Ballyliffin and Port Salon, or other headliners within a few hours’ drive, including Royal County Down and Royal Portrush.

Scroll here to continue your tour of St. Patrick’s Links:

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The post Tom Doak reveals his top 10 overlooked courses in the U.S. appeared first on Golf.

The post Tom Doak reveals his top 10 overlooked courses in the U.S. appeared first on Golf.

Nobody gets more from less than Tom Doak. The father of modern minimalism has six original designs in GOLF’s ranking of the Top 100 Courses in the U.S. The Cornell grad can also boast of five entries on our World list — part of a résumé 30-plus years in the making. And between designs like Barnbougle Dunes and Cape Kidnappers, there may be no architect in the world with a better-named stable of courses.

But as Doak will attest, greatness doesn’t always garner the necessary votes. Every year, dozens, if not hundreds, of courses remain hidden from the rankings. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and there are plenty more than 100 beautiful golf courses in the United States (and many more in the world). Often, our favorite gems are the ones that welcome the least praise, or have the smallest cult following.

It is this love for the unheralded that led Doak to release his ranking of the top 10 overlooked gems in our Top 100 Courses in the U.S. list.

Tom Doak’s 10 overlooked gems in the U.S.

1. Crooked Stick (Carmel, Indiana) — Pete Dye

2. Davenport Country Club (Davenport, Iowa) — C.H. Alison

3. Holston Hills, (Holston Hills, Tenn.) — Donald Ross

4. Northland (Duluth, Minn.) — Donald Ross

5. Pete Dye Golf Club (Clarksburg, W.V.) — Pete Dye

6. Roaring Gap (Roaring Gap, N.C.) — Donald Ross

7. Rolling Green (Springfield, Penn.) — William Flynn

8. Sand Hollow (Hurricane, Utah) — John Fought & Andy Staples

9. Tobacco Road (Tobacco Road, N.C.) — Mike Strantz

10. Whitinsville (Whitinsville, Mass.) — Donald Ross

*11.* Stone Eagle (Palm Desert, Calif.) — (Mine!)

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