Natural Golf

By Jeff Mingay

All of the very best golf architects throughout history have shared a common approach to naturalness. They’ve sincerely allowed inherent environmental characteristics to drive golf course design. In turn, all of the world’s very best courses are truly natural.

Pine Valley. Cypress Point. Muirfield. Shinnecock Hills. Pebble Beach. Royal Melbourne. These historic courses, perennially ranked amongst the world’s top-10, are genuinely laid out over native terrain and feature indigenous plants and grasses that provide those courses with a rugged, natural appearance. They meld harmoniously with native surrounds as a result, and are unlike any other course precisely because they reflect a natural environment unique to a specific locale.

Curiously, a majority of the courses appearing in the upper half of consensus world rankings were constructed during the interwar period, the so-called “Golden Age” of golf architecture. Many golfers have a sentimental feeling for that era these days. Consequently, most contemporary golf architects claim to be faithful to the natural, Golden Age approach to golf course design. Why then, are so many modern courses blatantly over-shaped? And why is native vegetation so frequently eradicated from golf course properties?

Unenlightened golfers are comfortable with what they already know. They prefer their golf courses like Big Mac hamburgers, the same in Toronto as in Timbuktu. So, golf architects and course developers have been apprehensive to try something new over recent decades. Instead, they’ve taken a safe, fast food approach. Native landscapes have been completely rearranged to create courses of remarkably similar character. And many old courses that were originally more natural have been renovated on the same model. As a result, there’s an unnatural sameness and predictability about too many courses these days.

Nature can always beat the handiwork of man. Whereas the green end of a golf hole always requires some modification during construction, and tees usually need to be tinkered with, principally to facilitate surface drainage, heavy-handed shaping elsewhere should only occur where nature is deficient. Even at comparatively flat sites. And native plants should always be left alone where possible, too. This, after all, was the methodology employed during the creation of the world’s great courses, from Pine Valley to Pacific Dunes.

Still, entire properties are frequently stripped of native plants, artificially reshaped, and replanted with non-indigenous materials these days. An interesting study of modern golf architecture involves comparing courses to adjacent, natural properties, where possible. Do so and you’ll realize how unnatural modern courses tend to be. The art of golf course design is over-complicated, at great expense.

Instead of simply concentrating on the greens and bunkers, contemporary golf architects move mountains of dirt to introduce extraneous features like symmetrical mounds running parallel to trough-like fairways, artificial ponds, and even waterfalls. Such features propel a construction budget skyward but rarely, if ever enhance the natural beauty of a property. Educated taste admires simplicity.

More contemporary golf architects should sincerely practice what they’re preaching. Variety is the spice of life, and golf. And the game’s remarkable inventory of diverse playing fields can only be enhanced if golf architects continue to strive to create natural golf courses.

This article appears in the August 2004 issue of GOLF CANADA magazine.