The Week That Was, october 23, 2011

brazil Let the Games Begin

The search for the designer of the venue that will host the golf competition in the 2016 Olympics has officially begun.

The interested parties -- a group that reportedly includes Arnold Palmer, Gary Player, Robert Trent Jones, Jr., and the co-ed teams of Jack Nicklaus & Annika Sorenstam and Greg Norman & Lorena Ochoa -- will be filing their applications next week. The dog-and-pony shows are scheduled to take place in November and December, and the winner will be announced on December 23, just in time to ruin the holidays for some of the world's most famous designers.

Nota bene: Nobody is going to get rich off this commission, which has shaped up to be the quintessential high-profile, low-pay gig. The design fee is a measly $300,000.

The bid process is straightforward except for this twist: The firm that wins the contract will be required to maintain an office in sunny Rio de Janeiro, the city that hosts the games. I presume this clause was inserted to help fill some of the vacant office space in Brazil's former capital.

The Olympic organizers have called the search a “contest,” but it feels more like a charade to me. If the committee members haven't already settled on a designer (or a design team), then they've surely whittled down the group of usual suspects to a short list. I don't believe the planet's biggest sporting competition is going to entrust the design of an important venue to an unknown, or to a virtual unknown. There's too much money and privilege at stake.

In other words, under-the-radar architects need not apply.

japan Rees Jones: The Global Conquest Begins

Slowly but surely, the Open Doctor is going global.

Rees Jones recently spent some time in Japan, celebrating his makeover of the West course at Ibaraki Golf Club in suburban Osaka. The course has been under the knife throughout 2011, as part of the club's itch to secure a high-profile professional tournament.

A press release issued by Jones' firm states that the newly doctored layout “undoubtedly will rank among Japan's top championship-caliber venues.”


Jones has given the course, which was designed by Seiichi Inoue and opened in 1960, what he describes as “a full-blown renovation.” He's made numerous changes to the track's design elements and, in the words of the press release, “reworked the entire strategic framework of the layout to keep it current with equipment advances.”

Translated, that phrase means Jones stretched the 7,056-yard layout to 7,407 yards and relocated the hazards appropriately. Even in Japan, chicks still dig the long ball.

“Like top tournament courses touched up by Rees Jones in the U.S.,” the club's captain said in the press release, “the redesigned West Course now demands precise, strategic golf shots by professional competitors.”

One other thing: Like many of Japan's courses, Ibarki was built with twin greens, one covered with warm-weather grass and the other one covered with cool-weather grass. Jones eliminated the duality and fashioned a single, all-season green on each hole.

The renovation was overseen by Bryce Swanson, one of Jones' top associates.

Jones' reputation as “the Open Doctor,” which makes cachet-hungry foreign clubs salivate, earned him the commission. “We highly value the fact that Rees Jones is recognized as the Open Doctor for his redesign of so many famous courses that have hosted major championships,” Ibaraki's captain said.

The renovation at Ibaraki was Jones' first commission in Japan and one of only a relative handful of jobs that he's done in foreign nations. To be sure, though, it won't be his last. Given the power of his prescriptions, the Open Doctor will no doubt be on call to heal ailing and aspiring courses all over the international tournament circuit.

Some information in this post originally appeared in the November 2010 issue of the World Edition of the Golf Course Report.

vietnam The Fix Is In

Too many government employees in Vietnam are playing too much golf. And one of the nation's ministers has decided to do something about it.

According to the BBC, the minister of transportation believes that “too much time spent on the course had affected [his employees'] performance at work.” A statement on the department's website reportedly suggests that a growing obsession with golf -- the game the Chinese call “green opium” -- has led to “the slow handling of affairs, which affects progress on projects and general operations.”

So, in an attempt to improve productivity, the minister of transportation has declared golf courses off-limits. Any employees who can't resist golf's temptations will have to get their fix the old-fashioned way: By keeping their habit a secret.

Of course, such draconian measures are unnecessary in the United States, because hardly anybody here is working anymore.