talking points Coore Values

It's only been open (officially, at least) for a month or two, but Bill Coore's new golf course in Tasmania, off the southeastern coast of Australia, is getting rave reviews. The most notable comment has come from Mike Keiser, the developer of the Bandon Dunes golf resort in Oregon, who said that it “just may be the strongest golf course built anywhere in the world since Augusta National in 1934.”

Full disclosure: Coore and Keiser have some history. Coore co-designed (with his long-time collaborator, Ben Crenshaw) one of the four existing courses at Bandon Dunes, and he's been hired to design the resort's fifth course, a 12-hole, par-3 track. It could be argued that Keiser's comments about Coore's course in Tasmania are merely marketing hype.

Still, Coore's stock as a designer has clearly risen higher than it's ever been. And as a result, when he talks, people listen.

Coore recently talked about the course in Tasmania, the Lost Farm track at Barnbougle Dunes, with John Huggan of the Scotsman. Along the way, he made a few comments about golf design. To wit:

On the lay of the land: We truly do let the site dictate what we do. We look for sites that feel like golf in its natural state. We have no preconceived notions about par or yardages. We just let it evolve. To us, course architecture is an art, not a science. It does have a technical foundation, but the creation of the holes is an art.

On being pro-choice: We like to present situations where golfers choose how to play the hole, as opposed to us dictating how they are going to play it. . . . Dictating to players is the easiest thing to do, particularly very good players. They love to play holes that tell them exactly what to do, so all that is left is 'hit between this and this.' Technically, they can do that over and over. When there is mystery involved, the decision-making process becomes part of the challenge.

On following the straight and narrow: A lot of the problem is television, where people watch the same courses over and over. They watch professional golfers being asked the same question time after time. They hear commentators talking about the 'premium' on driving the ball in the fairway. So the perception grows that hitting to those narrow spots is what the game should be. But it is the most uninteresting golf to watch and to play.

Here's a link to the story.