By Design - Fall 2018

19 “Most resort courses today need play from local golfers,” adds Richardson. “The smart resort course design takes into account the financial equation, making sure we are creating a golf course that will appeal to the golfers that will need to fill the tee sheet, and in some cases, this is not just the guest staying in a suite overlooking the course.” The wow factor The value of a hole like the par three seventeenth at TPC Danzante Bay (pictured on this issue’s cover) can’t be underestimated, says Weisser. “When we, along with developer Owen Perry, found the location to create the seventeenth hole we knew it would become the calling card for the resort. We don’t believe in designing a course around a single hole and the design of the course didn’t evolve that way. Our goal from the beginning was to create a destination course that suited the resort’s guests. The course has a fascinating and diverse set of holes, but it is the drama of the seventeenth that motivates golfers to decide that TPC Danzante Bay is a ‘must play.’” “From a visual standpoint, we want to make extra sure that the course is beautiful,” says Goetz. “That means embracing the natural surroundings and accenting them where possible. Incorporating natural features, such as the lava flows at Hualalai Golf Club in Hawaii, the rugged coastline of Cabo del Sol in Mexico or the beautiful rolling hills of the Algarve at Monte Rei in Portugal, is critical in creating a sense of place, identity and beauty.” “We never want to create a golf course people play once and then never come back,” says Richardson. “But in resort golf it is essential to create those wonderful photos that have the ingredients of beauty, uniqueness and wow. If you fail at creating that, the marketing team will hate you forever. “At Arizona Grand Resort, which was among my first projects, the site of the par-five thirteenth was special in so many ways. Everyone imagined the tee shot from an elevated point, and I will admit you got a great view from there. During one of many hikes around the routing I began to look at it backwards, and that’s when the realization came that the drama was even better looking toward the mountains, and to an elevated green guarded by natural bunkers etched into the hillside. Drama is essential in resort golf—you need that shot that places the golfer in the game well before they check in to their room.” • The par-five thirteenth at Arizona Grand Resort. "In resort golf it is essential to create those wonderful photos that have the ingredients of beauty, uniqueness and wow," says Forrest Richardson, ASGCA Photo: Lonna Tucker, courtesy of Forrest Richardson & Associates