PLAYING & BUILDING WHERE THE PROS PLAY

by Will Smith.

THE ELVENTH AT MPCC (SHORE)

I had never understood why recreational golfers got so excited by playing courses that hold PGA Tour events. To me it did not say anything about the quality of the course or the artistry of the design. Sure, the first time I played Pebble, I ambled over to where Tom Watson holed his chip to win the U. S. Open, but I as was far more excited by the spectacular setting than some sense of playing a course that the pros so often play.

A recent experience in that very part of the country has altered my perspective on this a little. I spent some of August just up 17-mile drive working at Monterey Peninsula Country Club’s Shore Course. This Mike Strantz design recently was ranked in Golf Magazine’s Top 100 in U.S. and was selected to replace Poppy Hills as one of the courses in the AT & T Pebble Beach National Pro-Am. I was out there doing some construction work for Gil Hanse and Jim Wagner, who had been brought in by the club for some minor touch-ups- basically making some functional changes to improve safety, traffic flow, and playability.

One day while working away in a waste bunker, it hit me over the head like errant Tiger Woods drive that it was pretty cool that in February some of the best players in the world might have to play out of this hazard. I know it wouldn’t mean that the work we were doing was necessarily good, but it was link to upper echelon of golf- the best at the game that we love. This revelation surprised and inspired me. Maybe because I have for along time been more interested in the architecture of a course than what I score on it, there had never been any allure to playing where the pros play. I can understand that feeling now, but for me that charge comes from building something that the pros will compete on.

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