A Ryder Cup Connection

A few weeks back, a friend of mine called after watching Corey Pavin make his picks for the USA Ryder Cup team on ESPN. He said, "Hey, Isn't that the same Jim Remy you worked for in Vermont, sitting next to Pavin?" I told him that it was was. We did an extensive renovation at Tater Hill Country Club under the direction of Jim Remy, current President of the PGA of America. It involved rebuilding 10 green complexes and re-routing several holes. I think my friend was fishing for Ryder Cup tickets, but I am too busy finishing my new course "The Lazy Swan" in Saugerties, New York and planning another new course for next year to make any trips at this point. We'll be busy building untill the snow flies, and busy through the winter preparing for the next one. However, I do want to wish Jim and  team USA good luck in the matches. I always enjoy watching the teams play and there are a  number of good guys on both sides this go around.

After we finished our work at Tater Hill, I received a nice endorsement from Jim. It is always good to be recognized by someone with his credibility. I will post that below. I look forward to working with him again in the near future.

"We retained Barry Jordan's services to conduct a major renovation project at Tater Hill Country Club. Barry was personally committed to the project throughout the process and worked hard to come up with creative design solutions that fit perfectly with our goals and objectives. The project has been enthusiatically received by our members and quests. We look forward to continuing our relationship with Barry and would highly recommend him as a Golf Course Architect".

Jim Remy - President PGA of America

Lazy Swan Site Planning

One of the things that has been great about the Lazy Swan was developing the "village concept" for the facilities. It allowed me to create an intimate relationship between building architecture and the golf course. Separate buildings include the clubhouse / restaurant, pro shop, banquet hall, pilates studio, locker rooms, cart barn and snack shop. There are still a few more structures to go in, such as office space and retail shops. The owner is now looking into the development of a hotel on site. The golf business has been booming and the facilities, freshly opened, are booking events at a rapid pace. This is a different model from golf and housing, but one that is quite successful here, particularly considering the economy we are in right now. Golf is up at the course 150% over last season, and it appears the banquet hall will be equally successful in the 2011 season.  

News From the Lazy Swan

Things are progressing nicely on the new nine holes at the Lazy Swan in Saugerties, NY. All indications are that we will be open for 18 holes of golf at this time next year (if not before). The existing nine hole course is doing a tremendous amount of business and bucking the downward trend of golf in general. Below is a recent article on the entire facility and future plans.


http://www.dailyfreeman.com/articles/2010/08/23/news/doc4c71d544cab31851808649.txt

Character Trumps Length

This seems obvious to me……but maybe not so for most golfers. There is no column on the golf card for character. You'll find par, length, handicap, and slope (whatever that is). But you often hear the length of the course mentioned when a course is described - “A brand new 7,500 yard layout”. Often, courses would be better characterized as a long and boring golf course, void of any character or original design concepts. Some of the length of a golf course is simply from not understanding the golf course market that one is targeting. Most often, a golf course is not going to host a PGA Tour event.


There is a HUGE difference in designing a course that will award a professional player over one million dollars for winning a tournament, and designing a course that wants players to pay over a million dollars annually to play. Most of my clients want players to pay to play their courses, not pay out players for winning a tournament.

How many golfers would turn down an opportunity to play National, Augusta, Pine Valley, Fishers Island, etc. if they were required to play a tee length of 6,400 – 6,500 yards?

Lazy Swan Expansion Article

http://www.dailyfreeman.com/articles/2010/07/12/sports/doc4c3aa3e6d56db786700538.txt

The Iron is Ready

Our construction team is on site in Saugerties and ready to go. We will be adding 9 holes to the existing course that opened in 2008. I will keep you posted as the construction gets underway.

Coming Up for Air

It's been over a month since I have posted on this blog. For the past several weeks I have been putting together the final design and construction drawings for the new nine at The Lazy Swan. Once these drawings are completed, my construction guys will start their work. There have been many long nights that have turned into early mornings in the studio for the past three weeks. And once the design for this project is completed, another new course design is lined up right behind it. So unfortunately, there isn't a lot of time to write.
In regards to the Lazy Swan - I am getting many questions about the design from golfers that will play the holes. What’s it going to be like? At one point I considered using the blog to break down and discuss the holes being developed, but after further thought, I decided not to. I felt it would be like telling what happens in a movie before one sees it. So although my journal and sketchbook is full of the concepts and sketches of the holes, I will wait until the holes open and are being played before I discuss them in detail. My job is to create the problem. It's the golfers job to figure it out. Sometimes telling too much about the design cheapens the experience of playing it. I think this is best left to after the fact. However, there are a few principles that are guiding my work that I don't think will give away too much.

1. Character trumps course length.

2. Flow and overall quality of holes trumps the "funkiness" of a hole or two.

3. It's more about what the site "needs to be", rather than what I "want" the site to be.

4. More linked passages - playing through spaces.

5. Balancing the test of both precision and power.


I will break down each of these in the coming days. But for now, I just need to breathe a bit of this Spring air.

Where Design Inspiration Comes From – Some Thoughts to Consider

Consider this: Not all music is inspired by other music; not all paintings are inspired from other paintings; not all architecture is inspired by other architecture; not all writing is inspired by other writing; and not all golf architecture should be inspired by other golf architecture.

It was 1994 and I was doing some research during my graduate studies. I contacted a few prominent “Golf Course Architects” to ask some questions in regards to design. What I was interested in at the time was the inspiration or conceptualization of the final forms of the golf holes. I remember one conversation in particular. I asked this architect about “form generation” and where he got his ideas for the forms and features of the golf course. There was dead silence. It was like I was speaking a foreign language. Most well known building architects can articulate where their forms are inspired by. But when it comes to golf design, I am continually struck by the “shallowness” of it. I went on to explain that a Ross bunker doesn’t look like a MacKenzie bunker, and so they obviously had different inspirations for design. What I am asking is, “What is your inspiration? What is leading your forms to become what they are?” I guess maybe he never thought about it, which I found incredible. Yet 16 years later, you rarely hear a “Golf Course Architect” talk about their inspiration. Or when you do, it is always about other golf holes, historical courses, or dead architects. I am so tired of hearing –“This hole was inspired by (fill in some classic golf hole here)” Or, as every architect now claims, “I am inspired by the classic golf courses of the golden age of golf design”, and not those “horribly boring modern designs!” How convenient, how cliché, and how easy it is to try to align oneself with the esteemed architecture of the past. The only problem with this is that they were creating original designs. What do you have to offer? My eyes glaze over every time I hear the “Classic Design” cliché. Enough already, we got that back in 101 Design Theory. There are indeed important foundational principles and characteristics of classical golf design, just as there is in building architecture. But they are to be built upon, not plagiarized. I, for one, am very skeptical of the “template” mentality. I speak as a designer, as one who creates. Not as an architectural critic. As a critic, it is often very useful to describe new holes in comparing them to older designs. This is to describe – it’s not about the genesis of the form. But as a designer - as one who creates - I believe great architecture at its best is original, intuitive, comes from within and can be inspired by a variety of sources – not just the study of other golf holes, or great golf course architects.

As Emerson said,
“Shakespeare will never be made by the study of Shakespeare.”

Think about it.

Hibernation Design

“They steal upon the sleeping mind while winter steals upon the landscape, sealing the inviting cups beneath sheets of ice, cloaking the contours of the fairway in snow.”

John Updike - opening line to Golf Dreams

The photo shown here is the view from my studio window this morning. As a Golf Course Architect in the Northeast, I am often asked by folks that don’t know the industry, “What do you do in the winter?” I usually tell them that I plow snow – (and in this economy, I might make better money doing it!) But honestly, I prefer the break from the game of golf itself and welcome as much snow as possible between December and February. Come March, I am ready for a couple of months of warmer sunshine, but January and February are wonderful times to walk or cross country ski in the winter landscape and work on next seasons designs. “Hibernation Design” I call it. And it can be one of the most creative times of the year for me. Blowing snow and rounded forms provide inspiration much in the same way that blowing sand and beach forms do. The process of nature is visible and the palette is clean in new fallen snow. Rough forms are softened. There is also purity in the light that illuminates relief in the simplest of undulations. Well, it's time to let the dogs out and shovel again.

 By the way, for those of you that have never read Golf Dreams by John Updike, it’s the perfect time to do so. Golf Dreams is one of my favorite all time golf books.