The Tiger Woods Saga - Searching for the Silver Lining

Ever since Tiger’s disastrous car crash last November, and the subsequent revelations about his extra-marital transgressions, ‘experts’ from all corners of the industry have been busy predicting the damage this scandal will have on our game. From reductions in prize money for professionals, to lower television ratings and damaged revenues for the PGA Tour through to a diminishing female fan base and impacts on equipment and clothing sales, the scale of the analysis has been quite staggering. There is a silver lining in all this controversy, however, in the field of golf course design.

Tiger Woods Design was founded at the end of 2006, with Tiger’s first project, in Dubai, announced shortly thereafter. His design fee for the Al Ruwaya project is conservatively estimated at around $20 million, or between 10 and 40 times the average fee charged by successful career course architects. By late 2008 TWD had announced new clients in Mexico and the United States, each supposedly paying the same exorbitant fee for the right, essentially, to use Tiger’s squeaky-clean image to sell their development to prospective home buyers. For Woods a burgeoning career as a signature designer seemed inevitable.

As golf construction slowed in 2009, however, so too did demand, especially for the sort of expensive, high-end ‘signature’ style courses that Tiger Woods was supposedly expert at creating. There was also trouble with his existing clients; construction of the Dubai project was suspended ‘indefinitely’ last June and rumours have been circulating ever since of a contract clause that prevents the completion of his other courses until Al Ruwaya has been finished. The others were scheduled to open later this year, but the Mexico layout in Punta Brava has stalled because of unresolved environmental concerns while work on his High Carolina Course at The Cliffs, first announced two years ago, has so far been limited to conceptual ideas and some tree clearing.

Surrounded by more than a million acres of pristine woodland, The Cliffs development comprises eight separate subdivisions that straddle the North and South Carolina border. It also houses the international teaching academy of top Australian coaches Dale Lynn and Steve Bann. In all there will be eight courses here when complete, with Tiger’s layout expected to have been the centrepiece. It will be interesting to see how his public shaming affects golf construction and housing sales at The Cliffs, which had invested more heavily in Tiger’s wholesome image than either Dubai or Mexico. The Cliffs had pushed the Tiger Woods-family man angle quite strongly, the world’s best golfer himself stating that his priorities had changed since having kids and that his involvement here was to help create the sort of community he can ‘share with family.’

Signature design is all about marketing and reputation, and there is no doubt that it is going to be harder for Tiger Woods to sell the lifestyle component of a golf development in the future. This is the true value of a celebrity golf ambassador; it’s their ability to help promote the associated housing rather than any excellence of design that makes them attractive to clients. It’s why people like Arnold Palmer and Gary Player have managed to thrive in this business without creating any really outstanding golf courses.

With some exceptions, professional golfers are the least qualified people to create or alter a golf course. Creating great golf holes requires knowledge of golf course history and an understanding of design, as well as practical construction experience and the ability to visualise holes draped across natural landforms. The best course architects are passionate about their craft, and have studied extensively both the celebrated layouts from the ‘Golden Age’, and the writings of the men who created them. Aside from getting excited by the prospects of great golf, they rarely score when they play and are often focused more on areas of design than on their own games.

Professional golfers, by contrast, look at golf differently. They analyse a course only to the point that it allows them to score better, rarely considering individual hole quality, or where average golfers hit their balls, or whether ‘challenging’ for them might mean ‘too difficult’ for others. Their answer to most playability questions is a forward tee eighty yards down the fairway.

When contemplating Tiger’s aptitude for design, or the prospects of great players creating great golf courses, I’m reminded of his response to a question asked after a practice round at Kingston Heath during November’s Australian Masters. The question was simple enough; ‘What did he think of the 15th?’ The response took some by surprise, as it became clear that he couldn’t recall the specific hole. That morning Tiger had only played the back nine, and the fact he’d failed to notice Kingston Heath’s most celebrated hole, and one of the world’s greatest uphill par threes, doesn’t instantly disqualify him from a career in design, but it does highlight the mindset of the tournament professional. Tiger didn’t notice the breathtaking bunkering or the ingenious shape and angle of the putting surface because he was formulating a strategy for scoring. Picking apart the layout shot-by-shot, he was focused not on whether it was a good hole, but whether it was a hole on which he could attack.

After six days of play he was perceptive enough to appreciate that Kingston Heath was a fine, challenging golf course, but he couldn't identify the individual elements that made the track so outstanding, and that's really the secret to successful golf design; it’s about creating great shots and great holes, and building features that people will remember and long to tackle again and again. I doubt any serious course architect has visited ‘The Heath’ and not instantly remembered the 15th.

In the 1930s Dr Alister MacKenzie wrote of celebrity designers, ‘today, owing to intriguing advertisements, professional players are again beginning to plan golf courses… Some are able to construct golf courses which have a superficial resemblance to the real thing. But if one analyzes these recent courses there is a complete absence of variety, strategy, and interest, and a failure in planning them to make the best use of the natural features.” One only needs to tour some of the golf clubs in Australia that have consulted with prominent professionals to appreciate what MacKenzie is saying, and to understand what a mistake it can be to engage good players to try to create good holes.

When discussing the attributes that make a great course designer, MacKenzie further noted that it was essential he ‘eliminate his own game entirely, and look upon all construction work in a purely impersonal manner.’ Tiger’s incredible drive, his meticulous preparation and the complete focus he has on his own game, has made him the best player in golf, but it’s also the reason that he is unlikely to ever become an equivalent force in course design.

Although business for Tiger Woods Design had started to dry up prior to the sordid revelations about his apparent double life, with growing markets in Asia and signs of recovery in Europe and the United States, it was likely that additional clients would have been signed to the TWD portfolio before his playing days were finished. Business pragmatism may have even led to a reduction in his design fee in an effort to attract more clients. Tiger’s fee structure is largely irrelevant now, because his brand has been so badly damaged that any value he had as a golf ambassador has all but disappeared.

While Tiger’s public humiliation and his hiatus from the professional tour is hardly something to cheer, I would argue that the likely loss of interest in Tiger Woods Design is actually a good thing, especially for those of us who understand that the best golf courses are created by the most passionate people in golf, and not the most famous.

Darius Oliver, Architecture Editor Australian Golf Digest

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