Paul Cowley knelt in the dirt, refusing an offer of pen and paper in favor of scratching out his plan to redesign the 13th hole at Orchard Creek Golf Course in the town of Guilderland with a sharp stone.
“You’re getting twice the fairway area, so you’re eliminating all the hitting into the rough,” he said to Dan Abbruzzese, who owns the course with his three brothers.
Cowley is a world-renowned golf course architect. He designed the Dunes Course at Diamante Cabo San Lucas and the Love Course at Barefoot Resort with Davis Love III, both of which regularly rank as top 100 courses in the world.
He also designed Orchard Creek. Cowley grew up in the area and welcomed the chance to turn the apple orchard into a golf course.
“I've done a top 100 in the world golf course out of 80,000 golf courses; I’d rather play this one day in, day out just because it’s more me,” he said.
At Cowley’s recommendation, Abbruzzese removed some apple trees near the 13th hole’s fairway over the winter.
“They weren’t really healthy and they were a pain to mow,” Cowley said. Golfers would frequently lose their balls in the area, slowing down the pace of play.
One of the biggest challenges of golf course design is balancing the needs of the players who’ll use it, a concern that was on Cowley’s mind as he explained his plan for the 13th hole to Abbruzzese.
With the trees gone, Cowley wants to add another section of fairway with a pot bunker in the middle, by the 300-yard marker.
At that distance, he said, it would be an obstacle for better players, who can drive that far, but not be prohibitively difficult for players who can’t.
Putting the bunker farther up would hinder higher handicap players, so Cowley decided 300 yards was ideal.
“This is the one where the big boys are going to hit into,” he told Abbruzzese.
A course designed to challenge elite professional players has different requirements than the average course. It’s much bigger — 7,500 to 7,800 yards compared to the 6,000 to 6,500 average — and requires more room for crowds and TV cameras. Most courses must accommodate a wide range of experience levels, from the beginners to the high-level amateur.
“It’s very easy to make golf courses very hard,” Cowley said. The challenge is in the balance.
Tripp Davis, who leads his own design firm, said he sometimes gives players more options for how to play a hole, for example by creating more fairway space. That gives golfers a safe place to play, but it also psychs out higher-level players by giving them room to miss the ideal shot.
Ty Butler employs similar strategies for balancing his courses, like Kaluhyat Course at Turning Stone Casino Resort and Sunday River Golf Club in Maine.
He creates more fairway chipping areas around green complexes instead of surrounding the greens with deep rough so players who don’t hit a lot of green don’t spend the whole time in the rough.
Again, giving players more options is key.
A less-experienced player will automatically go to a putter, Butler said, while better players will consider a flop shot or bump-and-run for greater precision.
“As an architect, you have the opportunity to create doubt in their mind,” Butler said.
Gil Hanse, who grew up in the Catskills and now runs his own design firm, said he uses wide fairways to give beginners room to play, but designs the obstacles in such a way that it's still difficult to score well.
"The only way to get that is to have ample width for the golf holes and then to design green complexes or bunker complexes that make those angles relevant for the next shot," he said. “Golfers who have the ability to direct their ball where they want it to go should be asked questions on the tee that will ultimately lead to a reward with the next shot."
Staff can also alter the difficulty of the course themselves by changing the locations of the holes and tee boxes, although that’s mostly done to make sure the course wears evenly.
“We do rotate the tee markers and the hole locations for wear and tear,” Matt Daley, head pro at Schenectady Municipal Golf Course, said. It also “gives players a fresh perspective of the fresh locations of the golf course.”
“If we know we’ve got a potentially slower group, we’ll try to put the pins in a flatter area,” said Jeff Betti, head pro at Orchard Creek.
Players control their own experience by picking the tee distance that best fits their skill level.
Although, as Butler pointed out, sometimes players will challenge themselves unnecessarily.
“Golfers are actually for some reason kind of sadistic and they enjoy getting beat up by a golf course,” he said. “My focus has been in the design work that I do is to create forward tees and encourage players to play those tees.”
Teeing off from too far a distance is a problem because it slows pace of play, affecting other golfers on the course. And a PGA and USGA survey, part of a joint “Tee It Forward” campaign, found that golfers had more fun and were likely to play golf more often when teeing off from a distance that fits their skill level.
More tee boxes also give courses more flexibility. At Orchard Creek, for example, a tee for the eighth hole is sometimes pressed into service during tournaments as a spot for hole No. 2 to add more distance.
But challenge level is just part of what golf architects must consider. Aesthetics, Cowley said, are also important.
“People do react to a well-designed and well-looking golf course,” Cowley said.
Part of that is working with what Cowley calls a course’s “givens” — the natural features that give it character. At Orchard Creek, one of the givens is the Bozenkill Creek, which meanders through the course.
The creek is prominently featured on the eighth hole, where golfers must drive over the Bozenkill onto the fairway.
Variety is another important factor, particularly in Cowley’s style, which he described as “quirky”.
“In my mind, at least, I want every hole to have a story,” he said.
At Orchard Creek, he followed the longest par 4 with the shortest par 4, then the longest par 3 and the longest par 5.
“There’s one thing about Paul’s designs, and I’ve learned this by talking to people, some courses you go, you don’t know what hole you’re on. But every hole that you play here, you remember it,” Abbruzzese said.
Walking the 13th hole, Cowley got a “quirky” idea. What if Abbruzzese put a tall, narrow stone behind the new pot bunker, as Cowley had at the Dunes Course?
“What if they hit that?” Abbruzzese asked.
“That’s fine, it ricochets. It goes left or right, they hit it all the time,” Cowley said. “If you want to be quirky, and you can blame it on me, it’s going to make it a better hole.”
“Can I put on the sign ‘Paul Cowley did this’?” Abbruzzese quipped.
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In golf course design, balance is key - Times Union
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