Pressure to perform. Golfers feel it. Golf course architects do too.
“If I haven’t, then I’m in the wrong business,” Gil Hanse said the other day. “It means I don’t care enough.”
His comments came in a chat with Simon Holt on Destination golf podcast, recorded at the end of November at the club in North Berwick. The famous Scottish club is Holt’s home course and, as it happens, Hanse’s latest high-profile commission.
Listen to Gil Hanse on the Destinatrion Golf podcast here.
Word that Hanse and his longtime design partner, Jim Wagner, had signed on with North Berwick made headlines last month amid a particularly tumultuous time for architecture obsessives. GOLF Magazine had just finalized its newest ranking of Top 100 courses in the worldand North Berwick was one of the big climbers, jumping five spots to No. 25. Not bad for a course that, just a generation ago, flew largely under the radar.
;)
Graylyn Loomis
So much for anonymity. In recent years, North Berwick has gained wide recognition for what it really is – a living museum of stencil holes whose DNA runs through designs around the globe. As its fame has grown, so has the sense that the course has been in good hands with Clyde Johnson and Chris Haspell as consultants. This is partly why the club’s decision to bring in Hanse and Wagner caught the attention of the industry. In a club that is doing so well, what exactly can there be to change?
As the North Berwick board made clear in its announcement, the mandate is not about reinvention. It’s about polishing and preservation. Parts of the property are under threat from coastal erosion – the green at Perfection, for example, the famous par-4 14th, sits a short distance from the bluffs. The task for Hanse and Wagner is to help preserve and refine what is there, not redraw it.
Hanse described it as a welcome kind of pressure. Not the pressure of fear of failure, but the pressure that comes with a chance to get something important right. He and Wagner have earned confidence in this arena with their acclaimed work at The Country Club. Los Angeles CCSeminole and more. However, as Hanse tells Holt, North Berwick is his pet. “You could make the case,” he says, “that it’s the most important piece of golf course architecture in the world.”
For more from Hanse on the wonders of North Berwick and his approach to restoration work on history courses, you can listen to the whole episode here.
