Cart golf is rubbish! You can keep your GPS tracking, complimentary tees, iced water and towels. I prefer to walk. That is the pace at which the game is supposed to be played. You have time to appraise your next shot, take in the scenery and chat to your playing partners. Golf in a cart is an impersonal and hurried affair and heaven forbid you have to stick to the paths, requiring you to haul an armful of clubs on the inevitable trudge to the rough at the far side of the fairway, only to find when you get there that you don’t have the right one! Carts? Not if I can help it.

However, I have a guilty secret. I actually enjoy the design challenge of routing and specifying the cart roads. Does that make me a hypocrite? When I was a young kid I used to scribble down made up grand prix tracks on paper and repeatedly do laps with my stubby HB pencil until I had worn a hole in the paper. I guess laying out cart paths is my outlet for these juvenile doodles. Single or double track? Where should we put the kerbs and parking bays? How about a turning circle, or a nicely cambered corner? How are we going to snake down that steep hill? What should we make it with? Asphalt, concrete, block paving? All these decisions and more are part of the design process. Love ‘em or loathe ‘em, carts are here to stay and its our responsibility as architects to make the cart tracks work as best as we can.

The reasons for having a formal path are numerous, but they will include several of the following. If the site topography is quite severe, a cart is going to be a big help in getting you up, down and around the inclines. There are now plenty of sites that have only been developed for golf because golf carts exist. Whether courses should be developed for that reason is a discussion for another time. Climate can play a big factor. Having worked on a course in Bahrain, it is very much the exception to see somebody walking. It is uncomfortably hot for golf and the cart minimises the physical strain. Resort and real estate courses can be quite strung out between holes and a cart undoubtedly speeds up the transit times between holes. Transit times are one of the main reasons why golf takes longer now. If you average only 3 minutes between putting out and teeing off, you add an hour to the round. Often, it is quite a bit longer than that. Finally, and most pertinently, is the commercial aspects of having carts. Operators will charge you for having a cart and it is a lucrative add-on for them. Taking the above factors into consideration, it is also clear that access to a cart extends the time span and the variety of courses that a golfer with restricted physical movement can play. For that, they are a good thing.

On both projects that I have completed for European Golf Design, we have built a partial cart track system. That is where the path alongside the fairways on par 4’s and 5’s is omitted, ostensibly because the carts will run down the fairways all the time, so there was little point in going to the extra expense of building the road. The first one, in the Czech Republic, was on a course with such limited play that turf wear was never going to be a problem, and the second, in Bahrain, was on a course where the carts were fitted with GPS systems, so they too would be on the grass generally.

Cart tracks never add positively to the landscape, so it is a matter of trying to minimise the detrimental aesthetic impact whilst maximising the functional demands. This isn’t so easy to achieve, as generally the path will be running directly in the line of sight from the tee, where it will be closest to the point of play. I try to route the path to the outside of a doglegged hole, even if this means that the path has to cross the line of play, as it is far easier to obscure and less of a factor in play on the far side of play. Clearly, on straight holes other factor come into play, such as the direction of slope and how the path links in from the previous and to the next holes.

The surface and width of the paths is very important. I used to prefer concrete to tarmac, but a well made tarmac path is usually more visually discrete, unless you’re tying the path into the desert. Our path in the Czech Republic was formed of block paving. It looks great, but having seen it recently, is very susceptible to weed infestation between the blocks. The path should be a minimum of 8-feet (2.4m wide). Less than this and cart drivers will tend to nip across the corners and wear the turf away. Passing bays and two-way traffic requires a 12-foot (3.65m wide path). Paths are also really useful for the maintenance crew, so a good, wide track will contain most, if not all of their vehicles. We’ll put kerbs in on the inside of some corners, or where we want to contain the carts on the path, such as besides tees. One has to be careful with kerbing, because they can easily act as dams if surface water is allowed to collect on the path. It doesn’t even have to be raining. Overspray from the irrigation system can quickly turn a path into a muddy mess if the drainage is wrong.

Golf is a walking game and so it must remain. Whilst I strive to accommodate cart traffic as best as possible, my focus will always be on trying to make the course as user-friendly as possible for the golfer prepared to sling a bag over their shoulder and burn some calories whilst they feel the design under their feet. That is how we want you to experience our work.

Brick paver cart path in construction at Casa Serena

We found a left handed 9-iron by the 10th green, so we went onto the 11th fairway and found the most difficult approach shot possible to the 11th green. This is Scott Warren from the Daily Mail playing, who’d just won the media day tournament. You can hear Adam and Stuart Burridge, the course superintendent. We all went in the drink and then we went for a drink!

Recently, it was my great privilege to be in Madrid to participate in the 2-day presentation ceremony for Spain’s 2018 Ryder Cup bid. We are designing the new course proposed for the event on a magnificent site at Tres Cantos, about 25 kilometres north of the city centre. It was exciting to be an active participant in such a high profile event. Think of the bid presentations you have seen for either the Olympics or the World Cup and you’ll have an idea of the extent of the trouble that the proud city of Madrid went to, to make the Ryder Cup committee of Richard Hills, Scott Kelly, David Maclaren, Edward Kitson and Gordon Simpson feel welcome. It was red carpet treatment from arrival to departure.

My event started on Wednesday morning, where I was picked up from Madrid airport by Juan Jose Abaitua, Madrid’s Bid Director. We went straight to the site at Tres Cantos, where we met Julián de Zulueta from the Spanish Golf Federation. Our task was to locate the greens and tees of the proposed course and put in flags and tee markers, in preparation for a site visit by the Ryder Cup committee the following morning. Followed closely by a troop of greenkeepers armed with strimmers, I marked the locations and within a couple of hours we had cut out all of the greens and tees we needed for the site tour. It is amazing how the addition of a solitary flag can suddenly give a site context and scale. No need to point vaguely into the distance. It was crystal clear what the course routing would be.

Then it was into Madrid to meet up with the bid team for a run through of the formal presentation to be made the following morning. After that it was time for a late dinner and a beer in the bar watching Fulham’s unsuccessful Europa league final against Atletico Madrid. As you can imagine, the locals were pleased with the result and the celebratory rasp of car horns split the cool night air from far and wide across the city until long after midnight.

Early next morning it was time to meet the Ryder Cup committee for the first time and to commence the formal bid presentation. Amongst others, I gave a short talk about the design project and introduced the brilliant computer generated fly through that navyblue had created from our design plans. We were off to a good start, but there was no time to dwell, as we were on a tight schedule. Into the official cars and off to Nuevos Ministerios station, where we all got onto the train to Tres Cantos. They had bedecked a carriage in the official livery of the bid, so we had to be on the right train! Just 25 minutes later and we were in Tres Cantos to be met by the town mayor. The site is just 500 metres from the station, so within minutes I was starting my main task of the event, which was to host the site tour. I gathered the group of 18 guests and officials in a semi-circle at the magnificent clubhouse site and talked them through the concept behind the course. We only had 45 minutes for the site tour, so I had pre-selected several key spots where we all got out of the fleet of 4×4’s and I explained further important features of the site. To be honest, we could have done with another half hour, but we all had to be back in Madrid by noon for the press launch.

I had to break off from the main group, to reprise the earlier introductory presentation for the benefit of the media, before rejoining the main congregation for the official presentation of the bid document, which was attended by several bid ambassadors, led by Seve Ballesteros, Miguel-Angel Jiminez, Miguel Martin and Iker Casillas, of Real Madrid. Whilst the Ryder Cup committee went to a formal lunch, myself and Juan Jose accompanied CNN back to Tres Cantos for a filmed interview. Whilst the Ryder Cup committee’s agenda continued into the evening with a tour of the Bernabeu Stadium and attendance of the Madrid Tennis Masters, myself and some of the bid team went out for a well deserved meal.

After breakfast the following morning, I joined the main party for a tour of the Torre Espacio, (the Space Tower), one of the tallest skyscrapers in Spain. The building is owned by OHL, the Spanish civil engineering and construction company, who hosted a presentation on the 52nd floor attended by Madrid’s private enterprise partners in support of the bid. To conclude, we all clambered up to the roof of the building, some 774-feet above the ground, for an incredible panorama of the city. For me, that was it. I went back to the airport, whilst the Ryder Cup committee’s visit continued with a trip to the Royal Palace for an audience with HRH The Prince of Asturius.

Madrid put on a tremendous show for the Ryder Cup committee. The support for the bid from Royalty, the government, private enterprise and the sporting authorities is rock solid and Seve’s leadership of the bid ambassadors is a great boost. It was good to see him looking so well. Add to this a fantastic site for the course, what we think is a great design, textbook event staging facilities and transport links and Madrid has a very compelling case to be awarded the 2018 Ryder Cup. We’ll be working hard to make sure that our part of the bargain is of the very highest quality. Exciting times ahead.

In 2001, long before employment with EGD appeared on the horizon, I used to write articles for the national golf magazines.  One of these, for the Scottish golf mag, ‘Bunkered’, dealt with the impact of modern technology on the design of our historic golf courses.  To highlight the point I devised an apocalyptic scenario, whereby the R&A were compelled to abandon The Old Course as an Open venue. I  described the last act of its humiliating demise at the hands of a brash, teenage prodigy, who upon receiving the Claret Jug, promptly declares that he is quitting ‘real’ golf to concentrate on the more profitable ‘Virtual Golf World Series’.  The article is reproduced below, so you can read it for yourselves, but in summary, it forecasted the gradual distortion and stretching of The Old Course to match the relentless march of equipment technology, until it is decreed that professional golf has outgrown the Old Course and must move on.

Bunkered Magazine – June 2001 (Click to view PDF)

And so we come to the issue of the day; the extension of the Road Hole by building a new tee on the driving range.  Taken in isolation, it’s a good idea.  It’ll bring the driving zone back by 35 yards and hence make the challenge of the second shot more like it was in ‘the old days™’.  Great!  Problem solved!  Well…hang on a mo.  Is this measure correcting the problem, or merely accommodating it?  We all know that today’s pro golfers are blazing the ball much further than they used to.  A quick scan of the official European Tour driving stats will tell you that 156 golfers average more than 280 yards with their tee shots and 11 top an average of 300 yards!  That is an immense distance to hit a golf ball.  Yet the governing bodies will present statistics that supposedly prove that the golf ball is going only marginally further than it did 20 years ago.  Well, maybe Iron Byron needs to head down to the gym, because that is where the top pro’s are going.  Their better conditioning and swing techniques, combined with better balls, clubheads and shafts are beginning to make the forecast mockery of the Old Course a distinct reality.  Tacking on the odd tee here and there is not tackling the issue that is insidiously corroding the foundations of golf’s most cherished venue.

Back in 1984, Uwe Hohn trotted up to the plate and hurled a javelin into the air. 104.80 metres away, it came back to Earth.  In that time and distance the history of javelin competition changed forever.  The IAAF officials looked at each other and concluded that if they didn’t do something pretty damn fast, they were going to face the possibility of a steeplechase competitor, or even worse, a member of the crowd being speared.  So they changed the technical specification of the competition javelin and at a stroke knocked 15-20 metres off the throws.  The winner remained the competitor who threw it the furthest.  The value of victory was not diminished by the rule change and the sport continues, 25 years on, to be contained safely within the infield perimeter of a 400-metre track. 

Golf’s governing bodies could learn a lot from this example…

The first EGD twilight golf match of the year saw Alex, Dave, Gary and Robin take on the majestic Woking Golf Club, one of the acknowledged classics of golf course architecture. Despite an extremely murky and drizzly evening, it was clear enough to see that anyone with a professional interest in golf course design should be making a beeline to this outstanding heathland course. It is an object lesson in thoughtful, economic, strategic design, topped off by a simply wonderfully conceived set of greens. I have no doubt that we will be making several return trips as the summer progresses.

As for the golf, it was Gary who came away with the honours, with a very impressive 40 stableford points off a scarcely credible 12 handicap. So scarce is his credibility off that handicap that he is forthwith cut to 10 for EGD matches! Dave and Robin scratched around the 30 point mark and as for Alex….well let’s say he enjoyed the scenery.