Finding the Balance Between the Golf Course and the Golf Community


Golf may be one of Scotland’s gifts to the world, but the golf community – a course surrounded by real estate – is an almost purely American idea. An overpass of the American Sun Belt will show you houses tightly packed, often with ropes of green fairways running along their parallel lines.

Early in his career, golf course architect Tom Doak pursued golf community projects while seeking employment, but “I quickly realized I didn’t have the kind of name that would appeal to someone looking to buy a home,” he said. According to Golf Magazine, this lack of brand equity may not be so evident today, as Mr. Doak’s seven courses are in the world’s Top 100. At Golf Digest, Doak has four designs among the Top 100 and seven others that he helped remake.

While Mr. Doak doesn’t develop much, he is certainly aware of how he needs to incorporate housing, accommodation, clubhouse and other infrastructure into a world-class design without ever straying from the golf experience. The following interview has been edited and shortened.

What are the challenges of designing a course when you know homes will be available? What are the things you think about?

The biggest challenge is whether you’ll be allowed to put the golf holes where they fit the topography, or if you’ll need to rebuild the topography around where the houses need to go.

Every developer says they give the golf course architect free rein on where to place the golf holes, but that’s actually pretty rare because it’s not space-use efficient. Builders don’t want to build a road with houses on one side only; this is much more costly. So most of the time, if the property is going to be heavily developed, you start with plots and roads from the outer boundary, and that width has a lot to do with determining where the golf holes will go.

Your new project, Te Arai Links in New Zealand, includes houses along the 18th fairway. This type of housing arrangement appears to have been designed for display of the course from the outside. Does this affect how you can show the hole? Or are you thinking more about how you can show the golfer playing the surrounding pit?

As with Pebble Beach, the houses on 18th street in Te Arai face the beach and ocean across the fairway, so I don’t know if it’s important for the golf hole features to stand out for the homeowners. You probably want the lawn to look like your backyard. There may be some situations where I think about how a hole will look from the lots, but mostly my focus is on what the golfer will see.

Houses placed a reasonable distance from the edge of the fairway aren’t all that distracting, but if the houses begin to come into the line of sight of the golfer playing the pit, it begins to diminish the golfer’s “play in nature” feeling. ”

The American golf community model is not one that is often replicated internationally. Often times homes get the best terrain at the expense of the track. Can you talk to communities that you think have managed to strike a balance in the United States or internationally?

Many famous old courses such as Merion, Winged Foot and Pebble Beach have houses around the course. Others, like Yeamans Hall or Fishers Island, were deftly planned to marry golf and real estate as we do today, but they were only trying to get 50 lots on the golf course, not 250.

When you build houses between golf holes, priorities really get reversed. There have been tons of golf developments of this kind in America over the last 50 years. The lots were sold out and the contractor was happy, but in the long run, many homeowners decided that they didn’t really like the course to be in their backyard where the maintenance crew were mowing the lawn at 6:30 a.m. and a stray bullet into the backyard every few days.

How can good course design help improve not only residences but other essential golf infrastructure such as clubhouses, maintenance buildings and even restrooms and dining facilities?

If we think of the community as a whole when designing the course, we can bring everything together much better. I am currently working on a plan where the middle of the course will be right next to a community park so it can be used as a great picnic spot by not only golfers but anyone who lives there.

If we understand the terrain plan, we can add hiking trails along the trail so residents can really take advantage of the open space the trail provides. This is harder to do in America because everything is so contentious and non-golf’s safety is just as worrying as potential vandalism on the course. But my experience from overseas is that when the two are integrated, residents understand the rhythms of golf and it’s safe to progress – even if they don’t know anything about golf – and golfers respect the safety of their neighbors.

One of the first projects you worked on was the Long Cove Club in Hilton Head, SC, built by your mentor Pete Dye. Most of the houses on this course are hidden from golfers, although they are not far from the course. What did you learn about navigating a route in that project you carry with you today?

Almost every hole in Long Cove is surrounded by houses on both sides, but the corridor of golf holes is wider than usual – 400 feet instead of 300 – and there were lots of trees on the site. We only clear 150 to 200 feet of trees for our fairways, so before they reach the homeowner, there are 100 feet of trees on either side of the hole, whether or not they cut down all their trees. That’s enough to make you feel like you’re playing among trees, not houses.

Pete’s only rule was that he didn’t want to see a house located behind a green for golfers to target. The parties are always on the edges of the holes, but they do not wrap around them.



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