Golf Course Architecture - Issue 60, April 2020

53 professional event there. So, we were not concerned about that aspect of the course. Width and the ability to play the course from different angles and at different lengths creates paths for the less accomplished to make their way through the golf course. We seek to provide a more challenging path, which is something we try to do on every project. We talk a great deal about the level of precision required to play a golf course. If you are a high handicap or average golfer and you have to hit your ball in a certain place, it should be possible to play the course in a fairly reasonable fashion. But the level of precision required to post a score on that golf course, make birdies and play a really good round should be much higher. If we give you different options and different ways to play the course and deliver that precision and take on the challenge, you should be rewarded. It was not some grand master plan or anything that I had thought of as a child. But I am very fortunate that it worked out. When working on a new golf course, are you consciously making an effort to seek high marks from course raters? We just try to build the best golf course we can. We have been lucky to find owners who don’t really push us in that direction, saying we want a high ranking. Most of our recent owners, including the owners at Les Bordes, say that the rankings will fall where they fall but let’s not be preoccupied by this. I would be lying if I said that we don’t pay attention. It is nice to be recognised but I don’t think we start off with this in mind. Did you seek to create a course which would be in contrast with Bob von Hagge’s layout of the Old course? Yes, that was very intentional. We wanted first and foremost for the members’ perspective to have two very different golf courses. I think they are very reflective of the style of the period at which they were created. In the 1980s, the style Bob von Hagge adopted for that property was very much manufactured, more penal with lots of water in play. It was heavily mounded. It is a difficult test of golf, yet it is presented in a very strategic way. It is still very challenging and demanding. It is much more obvious where quantities of earth have been moved, but it makes no apologies for creating an artificial environment. Whereas our course is in the style of the times as they are now, which tends Photo: Norman Vickery The par-five sixth hole on the New course at Les Bordes