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By Design
“You have to establish solid
landscape ‘rooms’ so that as you
traverse the property, you bring the
golfer into landscape settings that
may look and feel different from one
another, but always feel in harmony
with the natural environment of the
site. We understand that we need a
variety of shot values to test players
throughout a round of golf. But for
players to respond well to the golf
course, to the property itself and
to the overall experience, we need
to take players through different
landscape settings.
“Of course, if you don’t have a
strong site with strong natural
features, you should create them.
If you don’t create strong features
first, you’re going to have weak
holes—maybe not weak from a shot
value standpoint, but you’ll have
weak holes from a memorability
standpoint. That’s because, in any
great golf course, the landscape
features don’t come from the holes;
the holes come from the landscape.”
“Almost always it is the case that
numerous routings are created for
a piece of land,” says Richardson.
“We go back into the field to walk
the land again, and sometimes
over and over until we sense the
routing will be enjoyable from many
perspectives. The list is long. Flow,
pace of play, vistas, downhill holes,
uphill shots, reasonable safety and
even the way the holes interact
with each other—or not. It is very
similar to writing a piece of music.
There is structure, and it is defined
by movement, bridges, melody and
crescendo. I suppose the only real
rule is that what goes out must
always come back.”
Changing demands
As the golf industry evolves to address
the common challenges of time and
difficulty, have golf course architects
changed their approach to routing?
“I do try to present clients with a
wider range of routing options for
them to consider,” says Schaupeter.
“That might include shorter formats
either incorporated into a longer
course or as a completely separate
layout for their evaluation. Clients
usually have a
specific idea of what
they are wanting to
develop when they hire
me, but I tell them that I will
wander out ‘into left field’
with initial concepts, routings
and ideas so that they can
fully evaluate all of their
options before we get committed
to a final plan.”
“When the opportunity presents
itself, I will try to return a number
of holes in close proximity to the
clubhouse so that golfers can
play a loop of three, six or nine
holes,” says Carrick. His new
design at Friday Harbour Resort in
ROUTING
CASE STUDY:
THE JOURNEY AT PECHANGA
Coping with constraints
Designed by Hills & Forrest and
built on a Native American Indian
reservation as an amenity to the
Pechanga Tribe’s casino, The Journey
at Pechanga golf course in Temecula,
California is situated on a beautiful
piece of property with rolling terrain
located at the base of the mountains.
However, portions of the dramatic
site were very steep and unsuitable for
golf, and there were multiple cultural
areas and protected live oak trees
that needed to be avoided. The first
step to developing the routing was to
identify the areas of the site that were
not useable for the golf course.
Holes were then weaved around
the multiple points of interest, turning
areas that had been constraints to the
golf course layout into features of the
golfing experience.
The first step was to eliminate areas that
would be unsuitable for golf (top images)
before routing golf holes that would
weave around points of interest
An extract from the routing ASGCA Past President Ste
created for Maridoe in Dallas, Texas. Below, field not
Forrest Richardson, ASGCA, giving direction to shap
Image: Forrest Richardson & Assoc.