9 Aug 2011

Late last year I had the good fortune of taking my first look at the Royal Perth golf course in Western Australia, a layout I have long been interested in seeing. What’s incredible about Royal Perth is that it occupies a tiny 74-acre parcel of land that is squeezed between three roads, yet houses a full 18-hole golf course. What’s more, those 18 holes measure in excess of 6,000 metres and play to a par of 72. Now I can’t be certain, but I‘d be surprised if there was a full-length 18-hole course anywhere in the world on a smaller property.

What strikes you about Royal Perth the minute you step onto the first tee is how dangerous this course is, both in terms of right-to-left players hitting balls onto neighbouring roads as well as left-to-right hitters playing toward those on interior fairways. The club clearly needs to resolve its safety issues, and long-time member, and course consultant, Terry Gale is currently working on a number of possible solutions that should reduce the danger in a few key areas.

The problems here are two-fold; firstly the members seem convinced that they need to keep the course at par 72, which is absurd given technological advances in our game and the sheer size of their property. If ever a golf course ought to play at par 70 or less this is the one. The other big concern at Royal Perth is the further pinching of internal holes by shifting those on the exterior away from the roads. Across Australia this has been a common answer for golf clubs with boundary problems – the default position often being to simply realign your perimeter holes to play away from neighbouring houses or roads. The problem with Royal Perth is that its interior holes are already crammed in and dangerous, and you can’t just shift golf away from roads on such a tight property and retain both your par of 72 as well as your standard of golf. Seems to me that the only workable solution, without further compromising the layout or reducing par below 70, is to contemplate what has been a dirty taboo at private clubs in Australia for decades now – installing nets.

At Yarra Yarra on Melbourne’s Sandbelt they have been dealing with boundary issues for years, and the club recently engaged English architect Martin Hawtree to make radical changes to its 3rdand 4th holes in order to move play away from houses. Prior to Hawtree’s involvement the club had realigned its 2nd and 12th holes away from home sites and had also tried adding bunkers on the problematic short par four 3rd to dissuade players from using their driver. It didn’t work so the club instead turned to Hawtree, who provided them with a permanent solution to their boundary problems on 3 by shifting the hole toward the old 4th tee, some 50 metres or more away from the boundary fence. To further secure the safety of those neighbouring homes, Hawtree designed the hole with a central waste area cutting across its fairway, once more forcing golfers to lay up from the tee. While there is no doubt that he has succeeded in turning the most dangerous hole at Yarra Yarra into one of the safest, whether he’s improved the golf course as a result is highly debatable.

After spending a good deal of time recently in Westchester County, New York, I’m more convinced than ever that landlocked Australian clubs should consider safety nets as a possible solution to their boundary concerns. I’m told that erecting a fence along the 3rd fairway at Yarra was considered at one point, but dismissed as expensive and unsightly.  Plus, as critics will rightly point out, the old 3rd at Yarra was a disaster and erecting a large safety net wouldn’t have improved it at all. But what if the previous hole had been better? What if the 3rd at Yarra Yarra had the same architectural merits as the 3rd at nearby Kingston Heath?  Would the club have still redesigned the hole, or would they have recognised the need to protect its genius and instead put up a net to at least partly preserve its quality? If the answer to this question is yes, then is it not also worth considering whether a net and an improved strategic short par four might have worked better than a safer, but compromised, hole that also ended up squeezing two additional holes?

Many golfers will dismiss this suggestion outright, but perhaps it’s time for Australian golf clubs to look at nets as a sensible solution to their boundary issues?  It seems unlikely that the game’s governing bodies are ever going to wind back technology, so space will become a premium as better players continue to hit the ball further and further. Westchester in New York is very similar to the Sandbelt in Melbourne, in that it’s full of old golf courses that were built on farming ground that is now completely engulfed by suburbia. Elite club’s like Quaker Ridge, Sleepy Hollow and Fenway have nets protecting certain areas of the course, as does Winged Foot. In fact walk down the very first fairway on famed Winged Foot West and you see a tall net protecting players on the adjacent East Course from those on the practice tee. At neighbouring Quaker Ridge, an equally prestigious club with an equally revered A.W. Tillinghast designed golf course, recent court action by an adjoining homeowner forced the cessation of play on the 2nd hole until a solution to balls over fences could be found. Redesign was certainly an option for the club, but a genius Tillinghast green would make no sense at all played from an adjusted angle so they instead opted to erect a 60-foot safety net. Like others in the area, this net causes little, if any, aesthetic irritation, thanks to both effective tree plantings and the use of timber, rather than steel, supporting beams.

While there is no doubt that nets and mesh fences are far from ideal, preserving acreage and the integrity of well-designed holes or existing routings is crucial for most established golf clubs. As the case study at Yarra Yarra showed quite clearly, solving boundary issues through redesign rarely involves a one-hole solution. Shifting playing corridors invariably leads to further adjustments elsewhere. In this instance Yarra’s once fearsome 4th hole had to be shifted toward the old 7th tee while the 7th itself was shortened by around 15 metres. Cause and effect.

The ramifications for Royal Perth are likely to be even greater, as there is talk of shifting the 2ndgreen further inland, which would mean the loss of 80 or more metres on the par five 9th. This change alone would drop par from 72 to 71, with several other areas of concern still needing to be addressed.

So why are nets such a taboo subject in Australia? The obvious answer, of course, is that they are ugly and likely to damage the aesthetics of the golf course. The easiest retort, I guess, is that often so are the changes that come about because of safety concerns. Personally I don’t like nets or fences on a golf course, but I’d prefer discreet screening nets and a great hole to safety and a poor one. They clearly don’t suit every club or solve every boundary issue, but if more golf club boards saw how effectively, and unobtrusively, nets are used in America I’m certain as an industry our attitudes toward them would start to shift. Players hit the ball further now and boundaries are continually shrinking as a result. For tight, landlocked courses, nets may well be the most effective way of future proofing your layout whilst also protecting your golfing acreage and retaining some degree of design integrity. At the very least, they are clearly worth considering.

 Darius Oliver, Architecture Editor

 

Architecture Update

Another boost for the newly formed Ogilvy Clayton design team, with recent announcements from the Sun City Country Club near Perth confirming the team had commenced work on a masterplan to redesign its golf course. Originally built in the 1970s, Sun City was designed by Murray Dawson and, as Mike Clayton noted, resides on ‘sandy and undulating natural dunes land (that is) unbelievably good for golf’. Back in 2000 the course was ranked among the Top 50 in the country, but by last year it had slipped completely off the Australian Golf Digest Top 100 ranking list. Clayton and his partners are looking to reverse the slide and improve the layout by injecting more strategy into the golf holes, and better blending them into their natural landscape.

Sun City General Manager Doug Hannaford, part of our Top 100 ranking panel, said members would be consulted throughout the masterplan process and that they can ‘look forward to fresh and satisfying new challenges when the redesign is complete, as well as the intriguing experience of helping to evolve the master plan along the way’.

We will keep readers informed as the Sun City redevelopment nears.

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