Golf Course Descriptions

Devil's Pulpit Golf Club     Caledon, Ontario
Golf Course Web Site www.devilspulpit.com

Devil's Pulpit was shaped by bulldozers, necessitating a land movement of huge proportions to create the contouring and movement of the course. It is modern course design at its limits. Perhaps no other golf hole in the world more clearly proves that first impressions are lasting impressions. The first tee at Devil's Pulpit overlooks an awesome collage of dramatic golf features in the foreground, farmland in the middle ground and a backdrop of Toronto's skyline 35 miles away. The hole is named the Tower Hole because the aiming point for most tee shots is the CN Tower. The tee shot drops 60 feet to the wide, contoured member's fairway, or to an alternative narrow fairway sandwiched between a huge hemlock on the left and a lake on the right.

From the member's fairway No. 1 is a comfortable par 5, while from the "pro" fairway an accurate 4 or 5 iron leaves a putt for eagle. My clients, Chris Haney and Scott Abbott, creators of Trivial Pursuit, wanted a dramatic golf course with panoramic vistas. The first hole was evident the minute I saw it, but creating it was extremely difficult. Fifteen acres of additional land had to be purchased, then we had to move 300,000 cubic yards of earth (enough to build a modest 18 hole course) and build a pond on a hillside. What gives the hole its intensity is the shaping of the earth into a land form that invites inspections, teases the golfer to assess distances and directions, and offers a continuously changing kaleidoscope of both light and shadows, color and texture. Players are presented with limitless options to master the hole -- the purest form of strategic design -- with the beauty of the flawless grooming that modern technology allows. Devil's Pulpit was awarded Golf Digest's "Best New Canadian Course" of 1991.

Eagles Landing Golf Course     Ocean City, Maryland
Golf Course Web Site www.ococean.com

The Maryland seashore has always been popular with beach loving tourists, but now it is becoming a favorite of golfers as well. A big part of the reason is Eagles Landing which Maryland golfers rated as #1 public course just after it opened and Golf Digest  ranks it as 4th in the state. The course blends seamlessly with the salt marshes it borders, offering sea views from many holes including the par 3 17th, with its tees set 400 feet out in the marsh on a small island. The combination of constructed ponds and salt marshes were used to create a unique blend of strategic, heroic and penal holes rarely found on public golf courses. The environmental quality of this course has been the attention of wire-service stories on how golf courses can protect resources, and has received an Audubon Society Environmental Stewardship award.

Eaglesticks Golf Course     Zanesville, Ohio
Golf Course Web Site www.eaglesticksgolf.com         100 Greatest Public Courses (2003)

"Build it and they will come," applies to Eaglesticks. Over 80% of their play comes from other counties, golfers drive an average of two hours each way to get there, and some tee times are booked a year in advance. The only reason that this award winning course (Golf Digest  runner-up for "Best New Course" and second "Best Public Course" in the state) is worth the time and trouble to experience it. Always in immaculate playing condition and featuring the best landscaping in the Midwest, Eaglesticks offers a friendly country club atmosphere that is like a golfing Disneyland. The golf course is not long in yardage but it is when it comes to requiring enjoyable shot making , the course flows up and down the mid-Ohio hillside. Built for the McClelland family on their childhood homestead, Eaglesticks has become one of Zanesville's major tourist attractions. You have to visit the course in mid-summer to appreciate the magic of Eaglesticks.

En-Joie Golf Club     Endicott, New York
Golf Course Web Site www.enjoiegolf.com

En-Joie is the home of the PGA Tour’s annual B.C. Open.  This was a
massive renovation undertaken to enhance the course for public play, but more importantly for the B.C. Open.  Major engineering designs were implemented to reduce flooding impacts from the bordering Susquehanna River, as well as reconstruction of all greens complexes, bunkers and tees. PGA Tour Professional Joey Sindelar was a consultant on this project. 

Farm Links Golf Course, Sylacauga, Alabama
Golf Club Web Site Experience FarmLinks

     The Pursell family worked hard for many generations and decades to build a nationally known and thriving fertilizer technology business in the little south central Alabama town of Sylacauga.  As their success grew, so did their love of the land and the Pursell farm grew to over 800 acres of pastureland, woods, mountains, streams and lakes.  They nurtured the rural beauty and the more they did, the more the land seemed to be destined to become a golf course. But the Pursell family doesn't just do things in any ordinary way, and if they were going to build a golf course it would have to be special and reflect their family values and penchant for technology.  With son David at the controls of Pursell Technologies, the idea of a research golf course in cooperation with many golf industry partners took shape and grew.
     A research golf course is meant to be a place where various companies involved with golf, such as Toro, Club Car, Syngenta, and Standard Golf etc. could field test new products and invite small groups of golf course superintendents to learn from those tests.  Evaluations of new grasses, mowers, irrigation, fertilizers, pesticides and cultural techniques and equipment could take place under actual golf playing conditions.  This is unique to the entire world of golf.
     But the Pursell family did not want just a pedestrian playing golf course either, they wanted a spectacular one that would distinguish itself as one of America's great tests of golf.  The Pursell's permitted the design team to use any part of the farm, for all they wanted was the very best 18-holes possible.  The family knew every inch of that land having spent countless days on the land over a 30-year period, so their input was instrumental and valuable in finding the most outstanding natural features. 
     Today Farm Links has earned its place among America's great contemporary golf courses, while advancing the art and science of golf course and turfgrass management.  It is not only unique to the world, it is also world famous.

Glenmaura National Golf Club     Moosic, Pennsylvania
Golf Club Web Site           www.glenmauranatlgolfclub.com

We started with a valley floor of mostly wetlands, middle slopes that had been badly strip-mined, and upper slopes that were solid granite. There was virtually no topsoil on the site. Protected environmental areas that marbled the site restricted movement, and it would take 100,000 cubic yards of rock blasting to create the golf course. After three years of design and construction, Glenmaura National was rated a runner-up in "The Best New Private Course" ratings and hosted the Pennsylvania Mid-Amateur Championships (where less than one-third of the field broke 80). The sternest of the 7,000 yard plus test is partially attributed to Larry Mize, PGA Tour star who was a design consultant on the project. From the other four sets of tees the course is progressively shorter and more forgiving, where from the 5,000 yard forward tees the course is a favorite of average women members. Besides requiring an impressive engineering feat to route and build the course, preserving the natural assets of the Pennsylvania mountainside has yielded a course that is framed by massive trees, bisected by bubbling mountain brooks, punctuated with waterfalls, and offers some of the most dramatic off-site views in golf. Glenmaura was the most difficult challenge a golf course designer could face, and we believe our work there stands as testimony to our combined talent and creativity.

Georgian Bay Club     Collingwood, Ontario, Canada
Golf Course Web Site     http://www.georgianbayclub.com

Just a couple of hours drive north of Toronto is a meeting of land and water that destined this place to become a relaxed refuge from the big city. Built on the Niagara Escarpment, a ridge of high hills that starts at Niagara Falls and flows north several hundred kilometers and into the Bruce Peninsula that separates Georgian Bay from its parent, Lake Huron. The Escarpment supports several snow skiing areas in winter stretching from Collingwood to Thornbury, and in the summer the blue waters of Georgian Bay look like a boating paradise that might be found in the Caribbean. So the first time the design team saw the site of what is now the Georgian Bay Club, with all of its resident beauty, we were captivated and knew the golf course on this land would be one of Canada's best.

The Golf Club of Dublin     Dublin, Ohio
Golf Course Web Site     www.golfclubofdublin.com

When the staff answers the phone at this Hurdzan/Fry public course, they say, "Welcome to the Golf Club of Dublin, home of your British Open experience in central Ohio."  That might be a bit of an exaggeration, but in fact, the course was designed to be a little bit of Ireland, and this is reflected in the fescue fairways and “riveted” bunkers, meaning they all have stacked sod faces.  The golf course winds through an upper end housing development, but you never get the feeling of being confined as only a few holes have houses on both sides, and even then the 400-foot wide corridors keep the out-of-bounds far from play areas.  Greens that average over 8000 square feet, tees that are squared off, wide fairways, immaculate conditioning and a staff in shirts and ties, make the Golf Club of Dublin a memorable golfing experience that everyone can enjoy.  The course is already rated by various local and regional publications as one of the best in the state.

Ironhorse Golf Club     Leawood, Kansas
Golf Course Web Site        www.ironhorsegolf.com

When this upscale, Kansas City suburb was offered a piece of ground by a developer for a golf course, they wanted it to be special. After an exhausting search for a designer, they felt that our staff could turn their creek bottom and steep hillside site into a winner. And after less than three full months of operation, it has been rated by Golf Digest  as the #1 "Public Golf Course" in the state of Kansas. We utilized the same formula of blending golf into all of the natural resources the site had to offer, which included ancient oak trees, a meandering creek, rock outcroppings, and rather abrupt natural topography. Most holes play down hill to wide zoysia grass fairways to green sites framed by mature trees, rock ledges or both. We are so proud of this design that it is used in Dr. Hurdzan's book as an example of how golf courses are planned.

Lassing Pointe Golf Course     Union, Kentucky
Golf Course Web Site www.lassingpointe.com

Boone County already owned and operated one of the best overall public golf operations in northern Kentucky, so we were thrilled to be selected to design their newest addition, Lassing Pointe. A runner-up in Golf Digest 's "Best New Public Course" ratings and the #1 "Public Course in Kentucky" was the result of their patient teamwork with us, a super site, and a reasonable construction budget. Not only was the project professionally exciting, working with the team was personally enjoyable. Jerry Coldiron, the supervising golf course superintendent, and Jeff Kruempelman, the director of golf, gave lots of input to our project architect Bill Boswell and Dr. Hurdzan, and it is the combination of those ideas that makes Lassing Pointe so unique. Examples include building stone walls that looked old and partially fallen down, designing a green near a pioneer cemetery, and a 27,000 square foot 19th green. The golf course is very forgiving for average golfers at middle distances, while from the back it can have a humbling effect on very good players if their game is not up to their low handicaps.