Designing Courses for the Weekend Golfer

“Green” Greens

Before an architect even starts work on a design, he or she must account for an array of engineering questions: Where will patrons enter the property? Are the essential utilities—water, electricity, and sewage—available? Where can they be situated on the property? What are the zoning issues—does a county line run through the property?

“None of these things has anything to do with golf, but they are all very real factors that determine so much of where major elements have to be, like the clubhouse, the parking, the entrance roads,” Hurdzan says.

Liability issues also influence today’s course layouts. “We say that golf architects decide whether golf holes will be long or short, and the lawyers decide how wide they are,” Hurdzan quips.

Indeed, architects now routinely include so-called safety corridors in their designs, thereby providing extra “padding” between golf holes and between the course and adjacent property. The goal is to protect golfers on the course—and people and structures nearby from stray golf balls.

“I use the phrase, ‘Bad things happen on good golf courses,’” says Michael Kraker, a St. Paul attorney who specializes in golf course liability. His Web site, www.golflawyer.com, provides a tour of golf course safety hazards, including danger from stray balls, golf-car accidents, and more.

Kraker notes that safety should be considered in the design phase. “Once the golf course is built, it’s either too late or very expensive to change it,” Kraker says.

Stricter environmental regulations have also altered the ways in which architects can manipulate the landscape. A few decades back, for example, golf course architects could routinely fill in wetlands or level woodlands. Today, however, “there are a lot of ‘no touch’ areas out there,” Brauer says.

In short, golf courses are becoming “greener.” Facility owners are increasingly requesting sustainable designs that can be maintained by smaller staffs with fewer inputs. Audubon International, a New York–based nonprofit, has developed standards for sustainable golf course design and offers certification for courses that comply. Audubon International’s standards encourage designers to connect areas that will form natural habitats; specify varieties of turf grass and other vegetation that require less water and are less dependent on fertilizers and pesticides; and include methods of catching and retaining ground water. Gill’s Highland Park redesign, for example, includes low-input hybrid bluegrasses that require less nitrogen than previous species of bluegrass. Gill also devised an irrigation system that relies mostly on captured ground water.

“I think this whole idea of golf and sustainability is for the good,” Gill says. “I think golf architecture has been vastly improved by the fact that we now recognize wetlands, for example, as unique, form-giving constraints that make for exciting, beautiful golf holes.”