Cut Lines iv: tee box ruminations with TOM DOAK
Yes, TOM DOAK stops by to answer some hard-hitting questions about golf course architecture!
Heeeyyyy. Well, we’ve got a doozy for you: a tonic for tired eyes, an elixir for the endless misery of the human experience. Today, world renowned golf course architect and prolific industry *thought leader*, TOM DOAK, ensconces himself within the cut lines family circle with a kingly interview.
“Connor: That's a lot of questions!” - TOM DOAK
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the tap in
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if you could play one TOM DOAK-designed golf course 25 times at no cost, which would it be?
Alright, onwards to today’s tee box ruminations feat. TOM DOAK.
But first, a moment of venn, as completely inspired by the new Brooklyn Magazine, support local journalism including cut lines bc this takes time and time is money baby, ty!
tee box ruminations with TOM DOAK
TOM DOAK made a name for himself at a young age, largely through his pit-bullish first book, The Confidential Guide to Golf Courses, in which he ripped apart notable golf courses around the world. DOAK took particular umbrage with Rees Jones’ design of Talamore Golf Club, saying the course made him "want to spit."
But he didn’t just talk the talk. Early on, he apprenticed with Pete Dye, before launching his own ship, Renaissance Golf Design. DOAK has become one of the most recognized golf course architects in the world, with 6 of his designs slotting in Golf Digest’s 2021 top-100 world rankings.
DOAK helped popularize the minimalist golf design aesthetic, which emphasizes natural-looking contours and beauty through RUGGEDNESS. The DOAK oeuvre includes seminal classics like Pacific Dunes (about which he has published a new book), Ballyneal (famously one of my favorite golf courses), Tara Iti, Barnbougle Dunes, Cape Kidnappers, Streamsong Blue, and many more.
DOAK was exceedingly generous with his time, and as such now securely resides within the cut lines family circle. Enjoy!
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cut lines: Let's start with the most important bit: who'd win in a bunker shaping competition (judged by me), between Dye, MacKenzie, and yourself?
DOAK: Mr. Dye favored bunkers with flat sand bottoms and grass faces, which doesn't give you as much room for variety as the flashed-sand faces promoted by MacKenzie. I think the bunkers on most modern courses are imitations of the work done by Alex Russell and Mick and Vern Morcom at Royal Melbourne after MacKenzie got them started. My own associates are really good at shaping bunkers, too.
cut lines: I declare you, as influenced by Russell and the Morcoms, as influenced by MacKenzie, the victor.
Royal Melbourne is in Australia, which is sort of close to New Zealand, where you’re holed up for the next two months, working on a construction project. With constant travel being at the center of your work, how do you find comfort and/or familiarity in new places? Do you bring any trinkets, or foods, or have a morning ritual that makes you feel centered?
DOAK: I'm pretty adaptable, and notorious for working on my plans for a new project on any available surface [coffee table, dining room table, bed, floor, etc.]. I don't really bring much with me, but I'm very lucky for this job that my wife agreed to come over with me for an extended stay.
Some places it's McDonald's for breakfast on the way to work; in Mangawhai this morning it was yogurt and fresh fruit from the market. Many times we are living the pioneer life in remote places that aren't very well developed; at Barnbougle or Ballyneal there were only three or four options for going out to dinner. [We rarely cook for ourselves after a 10+ hour workday.] Whereas here, now, the kitchen at Tara Iti turns out exquisite food anytime we want to go up there, so I don't have to rely on the take-out options in Mangawhai.
cut lines: Where are some places you're itching to design a golf course but cannot, for some reason? I believe I've seen you lusting after the Dutch coastline.
DOAK: There are lots of beautiful places in the world but I don't tilt at windmills
(((RECORD-SCRATCHING EDITOR’S NOTE: I need y’all to understand how MF funny and brilliant this is. “Tilting at windmills” is is an English idiom which means "attacking imaginary enemies", originating from Miguel de Cervantes' early 17th century novel Don Quixote. The Netherlands (which is where the Dutch coastline is) is famous for its ubiquitous and very cute WINDMILLS. For yet ANOTHER genius big brain layer, the Dutch coastline has loads of modern wind turbines to harvest clean power, which would surely be sacrificed if he built a golf course there, which is why he can’t build a golf course there. This guy TOM DOAK took my dumbass question and made a niche joke about it while also delivering a thoughtful and relevant answer. I’m shaking. Okay, back to the ruminations.)))
Lots of places are off limits and I'm not going to change that, even if I don't think some of them make sense. The problem is that when people try to envision a golf course in a sand dune setting they don't visualize a course that's adapted to its setting like Tara Iti. The one setting I wish I'd get to build a course in are the heathlands of Northern Europe—I don't think they are all off limits and it is a classic form that we just don't have in America.
cut lines: What's one memory that sticks in your mind from caddying at St Andrews in '82?
DOAK: One of my first days, I caddied for someone and had to aim him 20 degrees left of target on every shot to get his slice to finish where it was supposed to. He was very awkward around the greens, not knowing how to mark his ball or stay out of others' lines, and by the end of the round I guessed that maybe he had only hit balls on the big three-tiered driving ranges and maybe had never actually played 18 holes before! And yet I could still get him around The Old Course at St Andrews, as long as I managed to minimize his interactions with the bunkers.
cut lines: Are you just as persnickety (I mean this as a compliment) about golf course design as you were as a WEE BAIRN? What are some common design features that grind your gears? Famously, I have it out for water features on golf courses, particularly in water-averse environments like Palm Springs or Las Vegas. Are you with me in this crusade?
DOAK: When I started out, I figured I would have to build an irrigation pond on every course, and if I was going to do that, the client would want me to use it as a feature of one or two golf holes. But I quickly grew to detest man-made ponds, so when we got to Apache Stronghold in the Arizona desert, I built the pond out of sight and was much happier. Since then, I have built several courses with no water in play at all, although when it's naturally there, like the big lakes at Streamsong or the cliff at Pacific Dunes, I will use it just as much as I can.
The other feature that really grinds my gears is symmetry in bunkering—either bunkers paired on both sides of the fairway or green, or even a single central bunker in front of a green. I much prefer a feature which visually gets the golfer leaning to one side or the other. You don't find much symmetry in natural landscapes.
cut lines: On God. Will you ever completely flip the script on your design style? Move away from minimalism and just build the most audacious golf course we've ever seen? Point being, does your design aesthetic ever noticeably shift, or do you bring similar principles to every project?
DOAK: I reserve the right to change my style for a particular project, but for the most part, the principles don't change. Unless the client is very specific about wanting a course that only very good players can handle, my primary mission is to make the course playable and enjoyable for all classes of golfers, and that principle does have an effect on making the courses look somewhat similar.
Thinking more about Tour players at Memorial Park was an interesting exercise, and so was designing The Loop, which can be played forward and backward—in both situations, it caused us to build fewer features, not more. I have a project in California where, if it gets going, our goal will be to make the golf course look as little like a golf course as we can. Reducing or even eliminating bunkers would be the biggest step. They may look entirely natural in the sand dunes here in New Zealand, but in most places, they're a dead giveaway that the golf course is an artificial landscape.
cut lines: Who in golf course design and architecture are you excited by right now?
DOAK: There is a ton of young talent in this business right now and I'm excited to see what they can all do, if they manage to get a new job with a client who turns them loose. That certainly includes more than just my own former interns and associates, but they are the ones I am most excited to watch, because I remember them when they were newbies.
The common mistake for a young architect is to try to blow everybody away with their genius, and wind up with something that's too busy visually and too difficult to stay fun.
cut lines: As a leading figure in golf course design, how do you ensure that more people from diverse backgrounds, specifically women and people of color, are considered for design/architecture projects, or get into the field in the first place? On this, is it possible for the barriers to entry for the design industry to be lowered?
DOAK: Ultimately, clients do the hiring, so my efforts have been toward giving young people a chance to see what the business is about by working on the construction of one of our projects, through our internship program. Often I am choosing candidates pretty much blindly because we may not get a chance to interview them in person, but we have had three women on our team over the years, and a fourth will be an intern for us this summer.
cut lines: What are some of your favorite golf smells?
DOAK: Interesting question, but it's just not the way I think. My sense of smell is not as good as most people's.
cut lines: Shoot. Where do you find artistic and practical inspiration from, *outside of golf*?
DOAK: I enjoy seeing anything that's well designed, from a house to a town to a piece of furniture or clothing. The most beautiful things are practical and do what they are meant to do without a lot of ornamentation or fuss.
cut lines: This isn't a question, but feel free to respond: Ballyneal is one of those designs that I daydream and spend time thinking about *often*. Thanks for that.
DOAK: People ask me what is my own best work about ten different ways, but when they ask about which is my most fun course to play, Ballyneal is right at the top of that list. We had a blast building it, too.
cut lines: Has there been a restoration project that you've worked on that felt particularly surreal? Getting to work on Pasatiempo and restoring the work of MacKenzie, for example.
DOAK: I've had more than my share of surreal moments in this business. We have done a fair amount of consulting in Australia, and as part of that we have stripped the turf off the three most iconic greens in the country—the 5th and 6th at Royal Melbourne (West) and the 6th at New South Wales! Building the 9th hole at Sebonack in the shadow of the windmill at the National Golf Links of America was also pretty surreal. Most recently, I had the chance to restore Perry Maxwell's first course, Dornick Hills, which he built on his own farm in Ardmore, Oklahoma—and it was his descendants who provided most of the funds for the restoration.
cut lines: Do you wish more "common" golfers had better education about the nuances of golf course design? Or, is there something cool or romantic about people having to work and dig for that knowledge?
DOAK: Well, everything I've written over the past 40 years has had the goal of educating people about the craft of golf course design, and I've written a LOT—I think I'm up to nine books if you count the volumes of The Confidential Guide separately, and I must be up over 100 magazine articles.
But at the same time, I hate when people want me to tell them all the secrets of how to play the holes I've built. They're meant to be puzzles for golfers to enjoy and figure out for themselves! You don't have to know where the Redan hole came from to understand that it's an interesting hole to play, but the more people talk about it, the more limited their thinking is.
cut lines: If we were to co-author a book together (the public has been clamoring for it), what would you like to write about with me?
DOAK: I have co-authored a book before and it is even harder than collaborating on the design of a golf course, for me. I am quite precise about my choice of words and it's meant spending way more time than I would like on interviews and yardage books, because I don't want to see someone else say it wrong! In other aspects of my life I've been able to tamp down my tendencies toward perfectionism. [Being not a great golfer helps! ] We do have to think about every little detail of our golf courses, but often choose to leave a feature alone and work with it, rather than "improve" it.
cut lines: damn, that sounds like a no.
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TOM DOAK’S entire discography can be found here, and his instagram is here. Very grateful to speak with a legend of the game, and hope to play a round with DOAK at Tara Iti or Ballyneal or Pacific Dunes sometime in the future.
~CL
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