Teeing Up a New Game

By Kristina Dell / Pierce County

The wild beauty of the Chambers Bay Golf Course in Pierce County, Wash., is obvious and abundant, a gorgeous canvas of mountain, sea and sky. As you begin to walk the course, a second natural element makes its presence known: the wind. It swirls and dips and then slaps you sideways, an "invisible hazard," as the course's architect, Robert Trent Jones Jr., likes to call it, mimicking the roughness of the stubbly Van Gogh--like landscape.

For Americans used to target golf on manicured greens, this links-style course is a different sport--more blustery St. Andrews than pristine Augusta. It's also a superintendent's dream: tough fescue grass makes up 94% of this Pacific Northwest terrain, requiring half the water and half the work of traditional courses. "I can't get over how few pesticides and fertilizers we need," says David Wienecke, Chambers Bay course superintendent. "We have the same standard of quality for 30% to 40% less cost."

Chambers Bay is not your typical golf course--condos don't line the fairways, carts are forbidden--but in other ways it exemplifies many of the trends in golf architecture: green maintenance practices, natural designs that follow the land and clever reuse of land. This stunning $20 million public course was an underproductive mine.

In the oversaturated U.S. golf market, courses have to stand out to survive. The slow but steady decline in golfers over the past six years resulted in a 70% decrease in commissioned courses from 2000 to 2006. Last year the number of core golfers (those playing at least eight rounds a year) fell about 11% from 2000, with a 3% drop in rounds played during the same period, according to the National Golf Foundation. More golf courses closed in the U.S. than opened (146 shut down, while only 119 opened), the first such occurrence in six decades. "The game is less attractive to beginners because the courses are too long and hard, take too much time and are too expensive," says Jones. A top-tier course designer like him earns about $1 million on a typical commission, so the decrease has made the business tougher.

That's why the designers are teeing up new strategies. They're making the most of every patch of greensward, revamping older courses and shifting their practices to booming markets overseas. With new course construction lagging in the U.S., the hottest trend in golf architecture is the restoration of classics built by greats like Donald Ross. "We've seen a shift from new construction to remodeling in the past five years, and I think it will continue to grow," says Greg Muirhead, senior designer at Rees Jones Inc., another leading firm.

To cut costs, they're using hardier grasses like fescue in the Pacific Northwest and paspalum in Hawaii, Florida and Majorca. These drought- tolerant varieties don't require as much water for irrigation. And designers are working with what the land has to offer--the days of creating a pine forest out of a desert, `a la Steven Wynn in Las Vegas, are numbered. "I take advantage of Mother Nature," says designer John Robinson. "At Blue Heron in Medina [Ohio], I had ravine after ravine, so I positioned the course to hit over those, like a steeplechase."

Big name designers such as Tom Fazio, Tom Doak, Rees Jones and Ben Crenshaw have all spent time sprucing up older fairways, updating technology and incorporating current golfing trends. Rees (the Open Doctor) Jones, whose nickname refers to his knack for transforming older courses into U.S. Open--worthy playgrounds, says about a third of his projects are fairway refurbishments. "There is a trend now to get away from the modern and build it back in the classical style," says Jones (brother and rival of Robert). He recently remodeled the Highlands Course at the Atlanta Athletic Club.

In counterpoint to its stagnation in the U.S., golf is exploding overseas and attracting PGA stars, including Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson, to the design game. Courses are popping up in places never before imagined as golfing destinations, such as Ghana, Vietnam, Croatia and Turkey. In the past five years 1,055 courses were built outside the U.S., in sunny spots like Majorca as well as in Sweden, where golf among young people is thriving. Over the next two years, 850 overseas courses are planned, according to the Golf Research Group. "Mediterranean countries, Eastern Europe and the Middle East will be in the forefront," says Andrea Sartori, a partner at KPMG's Golf Advisory Services.

Not surprisingly, wealthy, opulent Dubai has some high-profile projects. Woods has signed up to build a golf course, a golf academy, a hotel and homes in Dubailand, the region's largest tourism and leisure facility, while Greg Norman is teaming with Sergio Garcia and influential designer Pete Dye to create Dubai's first links-style course. Jack Nicklaus, a pioneer among the player-designers, has announced a $1.35 billion golf-resort venture in the Cape Verde Islands, off the West African coast. Gary Player Design built the first public course in China on an island off Hong Kong and just opened another course outside Shanghai. "Seventy percent of the people who live on these courses in Asia don't play golf," says Marc Player, CEO of Gary Player Design. "They just want the lifestyle." Which is easier to achieve than par.