GOLF
LIFE
Novel approaches
THE ECONOMY HAS SLOWED THE PACE, BUT NOT QUALITY, OF NEW DESIGNS
By Bradley S. Klein
Wine Valley
Golfweek ranks
courses in a variety of
categories, including
best modern, classic,
and state-by-state.
To learn more, visit
top100.golfweek.com/
GolfweeksBest/.
When the economy goes
upside down, all sorts of new and
innovative ideas suddenly have
a chance to emerge. The same
goes for golf development, where
there’s been a long-term slide
in the number of new courses
opening, but no falloff when
it comes to innovation.
As our 2008-09 Golfweek’s
Best New Courses list attests,
there’s a wide range of talent out
there and plenty of opportunity
to make a mark.
Golf architecture traditionalist Tom Doak
has struck a responsive chord in the scrubland
of southern Montana with Rock Creek Cattle Co.,
our No. 1-rated new course to have opened
in the past two years. Our team of raters was
impressed by the scruffy look, the wide-open
sensibility of the place and a land plan that
has seen homesites pulled away from the
golf course.
Legendary powerhouse Jack Nicklaus leads
the list with four new designs, including his
high-profile Ritz-Carlton Golf Club at Dove
Mountain (Saguaro and Tortolita nines) in
Marana, Ariz., No. 11 on our list and home to
the PGA Tour’s WGC-Accenture Match Play
COURTES Y OF WINE VALLEY GOLF CLUB
Championship. Twenty-five states placed courses
on the list; California and Florida lead with five
each, followed by Montana with three.
Of the two new courses in Maryland, one
of them, TPC Potomac, at No. 12, actually is
a “blow up and start over” of the much-criticized
TPC Avenel.
Our No. 2 layout, Palouse Ridge Golf Club
in Pullman, Wash., stands a good chance of
being architect John Harbottle’s breakthrough
layout in terms of national acclaim.
Jack Frost National Golf Club in Blakeslee, Pa.,
No. 20 on our list, will, by contrast, serve as a
powerful memorial to co-designer Mark Brown,
who died in 2006 before his collaboration
with Terry LaGree could be finished. ❍
HO W WE DID IT: Golfweek defines new courses as those having opened in the past two calendar years (2008-2009).
This is done to give the Golfweek’s Best panel of raters time to visit courses, thereby making the ratings statistically valid.
Rock Creek Cattle Co.
