Pressure to perform. Golfers feel it. Golf course architects do too.
“If I didn’t, then I’m in the wrong business,” Gil Hanse said the other day. “It would mean I don’t care enough.”
An advertisement
His comments came in conversation with Simon Holt on the Destination Golf podcast, recorded at the end of November at the clubhouse 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 long-term design partner, Jim Wagner, had signed with North Berwick made headlines last month amid a particularly buzzy moment for architecture obsessives. GULF Magazine had just finalized its newest ranking of the Top 100 Courses in the World, and North Berwick was one of the big climbers, jumping five places to No. 25. Not bad for a course that, just a generation ago, flew largely under the radar.
North Berwick ranks 25th in the latest GOLF World Top 100 list. Graylyn Loomis
So much for anonymity. In recent years, North Berwick has gained widespread recognition for what it really is – a living museum of model holes whose DNA runs through designs around the world. As its fame grew, so did the sense that the course was in good hands with Clyde Johnson and Chris Haspell as advisors. 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 clearly doing very well, what exactly can be changed?
An advertisement
As the North Berwick board made clear in its announcement, the mandate is not aimed at reinvention. It is about polishing and preservation. Some stretches of the property are threatened by coastal erosion – the green in Perfection, for example, the famous par-4 14th, sits a few steps from the bluffs. The charge for Hanse and Wagner is to help safeguard and refine what’s there, not to recreate it.
Hanse described this as a welcome kind of pressure. Not the pressure of fear of failure, but the pressure that comes with the chance to get something important right. He and Wagner have gained confidence in this arena with acclaimed work at The Country Club, Los Angeles CC, Seminole and more. Still, as Hanse tells Holt, North Berwick is its own animal. “You could make the case,” he says, “that it is the most consequential 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 storied courses, you can listen to the entire episode here.
The post Gil Hanse’s last gig? The refinement of one of the ‘most consequential courses’ in the world appeared first on Golf.