Putting a Little Spin on It: The Design's the Thing!

But where would they be without the course superintendents — men and women who groom these playing fields?

In this Volume 1, author Mark Leslie gleans the best from 25 years of interviews with the cream of the architects crop: people with the class of Arnold Palmer and Gene Sarazen … the wit of the late Patty Berg, Jeff Brauer and John LaFoy … the downright “good guyness” of Ben Crenshaw and Keith Foster … the creative genius of Pete Dye, Jack Nicklaus and, well, scores of their colleagues.

For instance:
• “Pete’s saddest day is the day he has to grass the golf hole.” — Bobby Weed
• Take Cypress Point off that property and put it somewhere else, it’s just another golf course.” — Jack Nicklaus
• “You can play in a 400-yard room with wooden walls, floor and ceiling straight away with a washtub at the end and somebody’s going to make a 6.” — Ed Seay, the late president of Arnold Palmer Course Design
• “The guy who pays the freight [plays the course every day] can’t play these hard courses that have been built the last few years. The deep traps and gullies, the 175-yard carries over canyons scare him to death.” — Sam Snead
• “There are a lot of great holes on the Stadium Course at PGA West. It’s a great course. But ask yourself, ‘How would I like to play the Road Hole [at St. Andrews] 18 times in a round of golf?’” — Brit Clive Clark
• “Anybody can lop off an arm, but these guys [golf course shapers] can do delicate facial stuff.” — Lester George
• “Playing tournament golf is a wisp-of-the-will existence. When you win a tournament, it is soon forgotten by the general public. Whereas when a golf course is finished and is being played, it is there for a long, long time and is in living memory for a long time.” — Tom Weiskopf
• “Minimalism is a movement in art. Unless it is very strong and well executed, there is a yawning emptiness to a golf course designed with minimalism as a goal—somewhat like a stripped-down Chevrolet. By the same token, I think the excesses of the 1980s, which required 14 men on Flymos to maintain the bunker slopes, are on their way out.” — the late Desmond Muirhead
• “I think what happened for awhile was that the frame became more important than the painting. And now we’re getting back to making sure the painting is what we’re designing.” — Rees Jones
• “North American golf tends to be played, like yard darts, through the air. You hit it from spot to spot.” — Dr. Michael Hurdzan
• “I avoid sharp doglegs in only two situations: where there are trees bordering the fairway, and where there aren’t!” — Jeff Brauer
• “I could never put [Donald] Ross and [A.W.] Tillinghast over [Alister] Mackenzie and [C.B.] Macdonald. Can you do a composite?” — Ben Crenshaw, when asked who he would hire to design a course.
• “I get a little ornery when people speak of the great work Mackenzie and Ross did. They had the pick of a candy store!” — Robert von Hagge
• “We call ourselves the Dead Architects Society.” — Ed Connor of Golforms, Inc., course architect who works to preserve, via GPS technology, the classic courses by saving their data on computer

In the companion work: The Grooming’s the Thing!, Leslie reveals hundreds of insights, tips, buffs and rebuffs from turfgrass experts in all points of the country — from Tim Hiers in Florida to Ted Horton in California.