Judging the Competition

BY Tony Cashmore

This article is an interim report; to many readers of this forum, and to throngs throughout the world of golf who relished the idea we had, to offer an internship at our Melbourne office to the winner of a golf course design competition.

Let’s backtrack just a little. Early this year we presented on iseekgolf, detailed base information and photographs of a glorious site in the Pacific Islands, a site for which we had prepared schemes for, not just a fine golf course, but a full resort, with 5-star hotel, diverse housing, a marina, and sundry recreation and activity facilities

We had completed schematic designs to prove the site, and, having the idea that this project would be exciting to the many young people who approach us for employment in golf course architecture, sought and received permission from the clients to offer the project up for a course design competition. The Brief to applicants was simplified but clear; the emphasis was to be on the golf course itself, that it should exploit waterways and the natural contours through the site, that other built forms needed only to be identified and broadly placed in useful context.

We were looking for someone with golf course design flair, imagination, knowledge. The ability to draw beautifully was not important. Although obviously we’re all more likely to be impressed if the standard of the ideas’ presentation is clear, convincing, and sure, the winner would be offered a position here where design skills ought to be accompanied by the ability to render them properly, preferably in CAD work. But drawing was not going to be the decider.

Just as well. Of the 40 entries received, only a handful had been presented on computer, and most drawing was desultory at best, sometimes traced onto several A3 sheets stuck together – one of these actually showed deep appreciation of the actual land forms, even if there were only 17 holes.

So, to the dilemmas I created for myself in opening such a competition. Firstly, to be fair to all applicants, fervent golf-loving enthusiasts that they obviously are, I needed to divorce myself and my personal likes and dislikes about golf courses from the judgement process. I needed to adopt a more catholic attitude of what golfers of diverse quality might like in the exploitation of the site. No personal beefs, unless they were likely to upset many or most players.

Secondly, it became an exacting challenge then to keep other designers at our office away from proffering strong and sometimes well-argued opinions about individual submissions. Or parts of them. This could not, ought not to be a committee adjudication process – the analysis, already taking days and nights of my time, would stretch inexorably if several strong-minded people here were to be let loose on the studies. And of course they are keen analysts of golf course routings and strategy determinations; they want to be involved, they know they will be working with the winner, and feel the need to peer into his/her golfing mind. So they were kept out of the initial assessment I carried out, only becoming part of the decision-making when I had identified a short list, after thorough examination of each submission, copious notes, sketching over proposals, pondering the reasons why the clubhouse hub was placed where it was, how one could possibly manoeuvre from this green to that tee, why the routing here missed the opportunity to do that, and that – is there a reason I’m not seeing?

Thirdly, the range of routing arrangements was so vast that no two schemes were anything like one another – so more than 40 utterly different treatments of the terrain character had to be companied, one against every other. Have you any idea how complex that task is? Of what trouble I bought for myself when I enthusiastically offered the idea up to golf architecture lovers world wide? Because the submissions generally showed a lot of time and analysis work went into them, and deserved to be seriously considered in turn. I treated the exercise very seriously therefore.

To give you some idea, four submissions presented several completely different course routings, predicated on different hub positions, and all of them described in detailed notes – one submission produced 18 pages of careful, handwritten descriptive points – and another a full booklet of drawings, including the scope and articulation of each green, the multitudinous number of ways of playing each hole – and in reverse too – I could go on.

Well, I’ve now written to some of the applicants, hopefully encouragingly, and some – not the winner this time – I have alerted that I want to stay in touch with them, perhaps for work with us in their own corners of the world – Asia generally, the USA too, and several from Europe who have attended the Golf Architecture Course in Edinburgh. And I will invite to all of them, discussing their submissions, and offering I trust some thoughts to absorb.

But yes, I have selected a winner, and Todd Hyland, from here in Melbourne, a keen good golfer who left a successful career in banking to pursue his dream of becoming a golf course designer and is on salary and working with us right now. His submission was excellent of course, that’s why he won the competition – a keen eye for determining a clever and convincing course routing, requiring really minimal major earthworks, golf holes which would excite and be flexible enough to challenge players of whatever skill and strength levels, an imaginative approach to “risk and reward” strategy, capturing of exciting backdrop views and vistas from the tees, and a useful attempt to consider the entire resort elements in context.

Winning Entry – Todd Hyland

Todd Hyland Course Design (Small)Todd Hyland Course Design (Large)Todd Hyland Submission (PDF)

What came out of this enormous undertaking? Well, it’s apparent that many of the designers forced routing solutions requiring long passages from lots of greens to the next tees. Mackenzie would not have liked that – whoops! I’m not allowed to bring that up! So, a carts only course. Probably not the best. And a proliferation of bunkers – 10 or 15 to a hole – was an often-drawn solution to forcing strategic interest or protecting danger confluence points. Sometimes the absolute need to exploit one obvious peninsula land tract resulted in no way to get away from the green except by boat. And on this fabulous visual site, with views to the sea paramount, it is possible to site a clubhouse and hotel which garner those views without in any way compromising the quality of the golf course.

Would I do this all again? Absolutely. We have found through the process a real gem of a guy in Todd Hyland. Keep an eye out for the next competition.