Golf Georgia - Changing the Design Rules

Ch anging
The Des ign Rules
Course designers aren’t afraid to try old ideas
Almost every elder generation is
chagrined by what the next generation is wearing, saying and doing. The
ways that trends change and cultures
evolve never ceases to amaze more
conservative, entrenched points of
view. In art, too, movements espousing new shapes and ideas regularly
burst into view, jarring and shifting
paradigms with revolutionary zeal.
The establishment invariably looks on
in disbelief, often with disapproval.
If you believe that golf courses are, or can be, works of art,
you might notice that the state
of golf design in Georgia is currently undergoing a similar type of
revolution inspired by a handful of
courses that look little or nothing
like the courses that have preceded
them for decades. Their architecture is pronounced, brave, sometimes jarring, but never typical.
There is, however, a certain
irony in the particular way these
courses break the mold. The four
GSGA member courses featured
here stand apart by looking old,
not by trying to introduce radical
new concepts. For decades the preBY DER EK D UN C A N
18
GOLF GEORGIA
sumptive ideal was to have a golf
course that might play mature, but
looked modern and fresh. But these
courses tap the spirit of the designs
of the 1910s, ‘20s and ‘30s or even
older. They riff on established but
largely passed-over shapes, techniques and strategies, and accent
them with daring, size and intensity. They look a little scruffy, a little
windswept, and a little volatile, and
they’re the new faces of Georgia
golf. The conservatives among you
may bristle at the new aesthetic, but
you’d better pay attention.
Rivermont Golf and Country Club
The Creek Club
Long Shadow Golf Club
Old Union
Rivermont
Golf & Country Club
Johns Creek
G
reens are the soul of any golf
course. No matter how thrilling
the ride from the tee through
the fairway is, an uninspired
set of putting surfaces can strip the entire
course of its soul.
In Georgia there’s no better example of
soulful greens than Augusta National’s.
The reason isn’t because they’re perfectly
conditioned or swift as marble floors,
but rather because they’re not uniform.
They span the spectrum of presentation
and form, while posing creative foils to
the historical shots played into them. One
green may have bubbling swales, another
split levels, and another bowls or rounded
edges that fall away. Through time Augusta
National’s greens have evolved into 18
nearly perfectly adapted, iconic characters.
There may be no other set of greens in
the state that come as close to capturing
this kind of diversity, motion and purpose as the greens at Rivermont Golf and
Country Club, which were re-conceptualized by Mike Riley in 2006. The Cupit
20
GOLF GEORGIA
family has owned Rivermont in part or
whole since the course opened in 1973. But
by 2004, current general manager Chris
Cupit realized the original Joe Lee greens
and bunkers were on life support and in
need of a major infusion of energy.
Riley, who had recently completed a
remodel of the Rivermont driving range,
impressed Cupit with his creativity and a
dogged attention to detail (not to mention
Riley’s work at area courses such as Atlanta
Country Club and Crooked Creek, now
Alpharetta Country Club’s East Course),
and got the job to renovate the greens and
bunkers, along with a $3.5 million budget.
It was important for Cupit to do something with the golf course that would
invigorate the membership, as well as set
it apart from the traditional style of course
it had always been, the kind seen all over
North Metro Atlanta: curvy bunkers/
white bunker sand/two-level greens. Cupit
found in Riley, who grew up caddying at
the A.W. Tillinghast-designed Somerset
Hills in New Jersey, a kindred spirit who
had a deep knowledge and passion for
classical architecture. The two men spent
hours each day riding the course, talking
about different concepts, drawing sketches
of greens and bunkers, looking at photos
of historic courses, and generally pushing
ideas for the new greens to the edge before
pulling slightly back.
“We [both] loved National Golf Links
(of America), we loved Camargo, we love
all this kind of funky stuff that people just
don’t see,” Cupit says. “So I said (to Mike),
‘Why don’t we do something like that?’
And he kind of laughed and said, ‘People
will hate you. They’ll think you’re nuts.’”
But funky they did. The first hole to go
under the knife was the par-3 fourth hole.
The existing length and orientation set up
perfectly for a redan, and they executed the
right-to-left sloping green complex artfully
and faithfully. From there they were challenged to become more creative with each
bunker and green, to up the ante by finding
fresh ideas for each successive hole.
Rather than create greens with completely random movement and contour
— which might work well in the Sand Hills
of Nebraska but not the forested slopes of
north Georgia — Riley and Cupit focused
on building greens with varying degrees of
severity and strong internal contour, with
one or two dominant features. They drew
inspiration from a variety of Golden Age
courses from the Northeast, trying to capture the man-sized scale common to that
era and geographic region but largely missing in Georgia golf.
In late 2006, Rivermont debuted a full
set of greens that Tillinghast, Alister
MacKenzie and Harry Colt would recognize. Varying from the enormous (the
9,300 square foot par-3 17th) to the diminutive (just 4,200 at the 302-yard 11th), the
nuanced to the exotic (see: the par-3 sixth,
inspired by the 10th at Winged Foot East
with curvaceous slopes in front and a deep
half-pipe swale in the rear), the Rivermont
greens mesmerize in the way they accept
and repel approach shots, offer hole locations that can change the strategy and
sweep the ball on chips and putts.
The massive 15th green is especially
impressive, sitting like a fortress at the
end of the rising fairway with its back left
flank flared up, as Cupit says, “like the gull
wing door of an old DeLorean.” The entire
front half of the 13th green, meanwhile,
is unpinnable and tailored severely downward in the manner of Augusta National’s
14th, sending indifferent shots back to the
fairway. In fact, every green has an attitude. Every green is a unique character.
“I told Mike, my dream is, when a guy
flies into Atlanta, obviously he’ll be told
to play Peachtree, play Atlanta Athletic
Club, play the ‘name’ courses, but if you’ve
got an extra day and you really want to see
something unique and fun and interesting,
(he’ll be told) go to Rivermont.” Mission
accomplished.
May/JUNE
21