Designing Courses for the Weekend Golfer

“He figured out how to build bunkers attractively in other types of climates. Basically, that set the pattern for what bunkering looks like today,” says Jeff Brauer, president of GolfScapes, Inc., in Arlington, Texas.

After World War II, course design changed dramatically again. Advances in engineering, irrigation, chemistry, and construction enabled developers to build and maintain courses in virtually any location—deserts, wetlands, mountain ranges, or abandoned mines. “That was one of the real heydays of golf course architecture,” Brauer says.

During the next such heyday in the 1990s, golf’s popularity surged substantially. Between 1990 and 2000, the number of golfers in the country (those that played more than eight rounds per year) went from 11.8 million to 14.1 million, according to the National Golf Foundation, a Florida-based organization that tracks and reports on the state of the golf industry. To accommodate the demand, course developers and architects turned out new courses in staggering numbers. In 2000 alone, about 300 new 18-hole courses opened throughout the country.

Meanwhile, new technology, such as titanium clubs and Titleist Pro V1 balls, were helping to fortify the sparsely populated ranks of 300-yard drivers. Golfers started clamoring for longer courses. In 1920, 6,500 yards (the combined distance from the center of the tee to the center of the green on all 18 holes) was regarded as a long course. Players started seeing 7,000-yard courses in the 1970s. In 1990, the length of a championship course was 7,200 yards, and since 2000, courses exceeding 7,500 yards are not uncommon, Brauer says.

Though business boomed throughout the 1990s, Brauer, Gill, and Hurdzan contend that golf course design took an unfortunate turn during that period. Architects became more fixated on challenging the elite few—the 8 percent of golfers who have an average score under 80 strokes—than on attending to the needs of the middle-of-the-road player with an average nearly 20 strokes higher. The majority of courses were being designed for the minority of golfers.

Today, Brauer, Gill, and Hurdzan agree that such an approach is impractical. The golfing ranks have thinned—down to about 12.8 million in 2004, according to the National Golf Foundation. Indeed, the foundation reports that new course openings in 2005 totaled just 124, compared to about 150 the previous year. With less disposable time and income, it seems Americans are spending theirs elsewhere.

“Golf courses don’t compete with other golf courses, necessarily,” Hurdzan says. “Golfing and golf courses compete with every other kind of activity that asks for people’s discretionary time and money—backpacking and fishing and bowling and movie theaters and cruises.”

Hurdzan contends that people are seeking the best leisure-time value and golf “has to become a better value to people. How do you measure that value? Well, you don’t measure it by the number of golf balls you lost or that it took you five-and-a-half hours to play a course. Or that it cost $200 to play.”

Adds Hurdzan, “We need to satisfy the reasons why people play the game.”