talking points The Public Domain

Can you build a reputation off a golf course that's practically invisible?

That's the question I asked a couple of weeks ago, in a post about Mike Nuzzo, the architect who designed Wolf Point Club in Texas. Wolf Point is said to be a very good golf course, but it was built for the personal use of a wealthy Texan and, as a result, hardly anyone has played it.

Wolf Point is not a career builder. It may very well deserve glowing reviews, state rankings, maybe even national rankings. But it won't ever get them. For all practical purposes, it doesn't exist.

Similarly, exactly how visible are the golf courses at private clubs? How much easier is it to build a reputation off courses that are only marginally more accessible than Wolf Point?

Tom Doak addressed this issue during a recent interview with Darius Oliver of Planet Golf. Oliver asked about the value of designing golf courses that are open to the public. Here's part of Doak's answer:

When I was a younger architect, I thought doing private clubs had more prestige. Out of the first 10 golf courses I built, eight of them were public golf courses, mostly modest public courses.

But then I built a course in Philadelphia called Stonewall. It was my first private club. I thought it was really good, [but] it got no recognition at all. I thought it was going to be the course that boosted my career up, but once it didn’t get voted best new golf course of the year, no one paid attention anymore, because it was private and people couldn’t play it.

The magazines write about courses that are publicly accessible, that readers can go and play. . . . Pacific Dunes, Cape Kidnappers, Barnbougle -- they’re all beautiful places, they’re all by the ocean, they’re all publicly accessible. Golf Digest, Golf magazine -- every magazine writes something about Bandon Dunes every year.

It’s like being the guy that built Pebble Beach, Jack Neville. [He] really only did one golf course. If he were still alive, he’d still be getting a ton of work without even trying, because everyone would want to hire the guy who did Pebble Beach. But the reason Pebble Beach is as famous as it is is because it’s a resort golf course and people can go there.

It's a great fortune for me to have [my best] courses all be public.

I love Sand Hills, but Sand Hills is not only a private club but a private club with a short season and a small membership. They play maybe 8,000 rounds of golf a year there. The year after Pacific Dunes opened, they played 40,000 rounds of golf on it. They’d already played more golf on it, and more people had seen it, than had seen Sand Hills in the seven years it had been open.

That’s important.