Day 45: Walking the New Royal Pines Course with its Architect Graham Marsh!

What an insightful and extraordinary experience it was to walk the new front nine on Saturday morning with none other than its creator, golf course architect Graham Marsh. An Australian golfing legend turned legendary golf course architect, everyone knows Graham for his 70 worldwide professional wins, including his last two being majors on the Champions Tour. More of a secret to most Americans is his over 30-year Graham Marsh Golf Design business, unless of course, you have played his two gems at Sutton Bay or the Prairie Club in Nebraska; Wild Marsh in Minnesota or Old Silo in Kentucky. With only five of his fifty golf course designs in the United States, the rest of the world, namely Africa, Asia, Australia/Oceania, Europe and the Middle East have come to know Marsh and have enjoyed playing golf on the courses he has designed. We met in the Media Center and headed right out to the first hole as the Robert Allenby, Jun Seok Lee and Mark Brown pairing began their third rounds. An architect, by design, likes to be where the ball lands, whether in the fairway or on the green. This is the moment of impact, the moment of truth, for both the architect and the professional golfer. Armed with hole statistics from the first two rounds, Graham notes that his nine is playing slightly easier than the older, still original back nine. A difference easily rationalized by length, with the front nine being nearly 200 meters shorter. Over the next couple of hours I would be entertained and educated while coming to the realization at how complicated and complex the work is of a golf course architect. After video taping our first segment on the side of the first green, I watched and listened as Graham interacted with Allenby as he headed to the second tee. Allenby had hit it right off the tee and made a nice recovery from the woods to save par. Graham half joked that he was wondering why Allenby played the hole he designed that way. The architect, especially one like Graham with lots of success as a professional golfer, like the on-course television reporter, has an intimate and informal relationship with the golfers. As you will see in the video interviews, Graham is thorough and decisive in his design work, never afraid to challenge the player or make him think his or her way around his courses. We spoke of the angled 'dividing bunker' the golfer faces in the middle of the fairway on their first tee shot. It's the third live rail of golf design—make the golfer think from the get-go, not an easy warmup first at The Old Course or the impossible first at Muirfield. The bunker is placed in the middle of the fairway seemingly splitting it evenly making left and right choices the same and complimented by the layup or carry-over possibilities. Once carried, though, because of the angle, the landing areas are no longer equal. The wider carried right side has a more limited view especially with the flag stick placed behind the mounds on the right side of the green.  These are the hidden calculations the thinking golfer must compute to be successful on a Marsh design. As Graham stated, "let the player learn the golf course, don't show it to him." Even if thinking is critical, as Allenby demonstrated, luck and skill, is a powerful combination too. On the second hole, a 179-meter par-3, one of Graham's favorites, I learned what Allenby suffered, making a bogey. What visually looks like a big green from the tee is anything but easily reached by the tee shot. The numbers in Graham's grasp support the genius of his design with the hole playing over par both of the first two days of competition. The green complex featured a back false edge which reduces the playable size of the green. Also, bumps in the runoff areas to force the player to pitch instead of running the ball back up to the hole. This is a complicated hole and one which Robert was fully aware of as he urged his ball to "get down" immediately after impact. It didn't, the ball ended up in the runoff area and Allenby was forced to pitch, missed the 10-foot par putt and suffered a bogey. All is fair in golf and golf course design with Graham commenting "good shots are not enough, need great shots" on this hole for a par. By this point I realized what a great opportunity this was to see inside of the mind of a gifted player and architect. Graham was generous with his time and responsive to my prompts to capture his design genius on each hole. As I interacted with him, it seemed as he spoke to me with his eyes, an indication to me of how passionate, creative and committed he is to his artwork. For whatever reason, his eyes reminded me of another great guy, though a fierce and focused competitor in golf—Steve Stricker. The third hole is another example and validation that what us amateur golfers see on the face of a golf hole is not what we need to know before playing it. Here is seemingly an easy hole with no fairway bunkers. But the creator and the professional golfer knows (or should know) that if played aggressively and the fairway missed, there is a penalty to be paid. Landing in the heavily roughed grassy hollow and being forced to escape by playing an 8- or 9-iron versus a 5-iron recovery from a  fairway bunker. We spoke of Graham's work as a commentator, with his conclusion that "to put something in the ground that will last for 50 or 60 years" is more meaningful than words that become yesterday's old news. Here is a dynamic, young, interactive sort of spirit, that will be preserved forever, was my thought. We arrived at the first dogleg, one to the right on the par-4 fourth hole. Atypically, Graham placed a bunker on the inside of the dogleg to steer the golfer's thinking and his golf ball away from boundary residences. This was only a tidbit of the community awareness and responsibility of this golf course architect. We spoke at length of the constraints of the property being in a flood plain. Generally, no ground could be added to the property, as it would displace possible flood water capacity and threaten adjacent property and buildings. Not only is golf course design about water flow, for the RACV Royal Pines project, it is about water retaining capacity in the event of a flood. Detailed surveys before and after construction work, on a hole-by-hole basis, are part of the normal course of business. Only 16,000 cubic meters of dirt was moved in the redesign of the front nine.If a mound is to be built up for spectator viewing, a swale or a hollow must be dug to compensate. Golf course design and construction is more complicated than previously thought by this arm-chair amateur architect. Graham readily credits the original architect, Japan's Tomojiro Maruyama, for the course routing which he has not altered in any significant manner. Constrained by the flood plain stipulations and by time itself, as the redesign could only start after the completion of the Ladies European Tour Sanctioned RACV Ladies Masters in February, Marsh has germinated the miraculous golfing baby in only nine months time. Its twin to be duplicated and born in another year's time. I met Jim Norfolk, Golf Business Manager for McMahons, a golf course construction company with over 20 years of experience. Diversified outside of golf, McMahons constructed the surface of Stadium Australia, the home for the 2000 Olympic Games. I was fascinated to learn from Jim and read of the continually emerging technology on their website. They implement a proposed design at a remarkable level of accuracy, with shaping to a tolerance of +/- 5 to 10mm, without using a single survey peg in the construction. Traditional methods of construction, even when it comes to golf courses, are no longer traditional but high-tech. To date, Jim and McMahons have worked side-by-side with Graham Marsh Golf Design on three grassroots full-construction courses in Australia—the Growling Frog Golf Course and the Eynesbury Golf Club in Victoria and  Twin Creeks in New South Wales. Day 3 of competitive golf upon the new Graham Marsh-designed front nine revealed its potential bite. The field averaged 37.1 on the first nine and 35.6 on the second nine, even with the length differential. Maybe it was Graham meeting with the PGA of Australia officials and giving input as to hole locations? Allenby and Senden each shot a 2-over par 38 on Moving Day. The trio of third round leaders— Adam Scott, Scott Strange and Wade Ormsby shot 35,35, and 36 respectively. Something tells me the PGA Championship this year at RACV Royal Pines Resort begins on the front nine on Sunday morning! Walking the new nine at RACV Royal Pine Resort with its designer was an experience I did not want to end. I captured as much of Graham's brilliance as I could in the video interview segments. We watched even the long hitting John Senden lay up on the shortened to 252-meters par-4 8th hole. Senden was able to reach the 495-meter par-5 fifth hole in two shots, albeit he was wide right, though he pitched and made the putt for a birdie. I wondered why the new nine was not the finishing nine this year with an exciting short par-4 and reachable par-5 finish. Likely, the reason was space for corporate hospitality around the final green. No worries as this time next year the entire 18 holes will be Graham Marsh-designed and spectacular, like the resort, for sure. As he says, "the best is yet to come," and it will come to the Championship Course at the RACV Royal Pines Resort, the new long-term home of the Australian PGA Championship. Saturday was Moving Day for me as I walked the new front nine with golf legend and legendary golf course architect Graham Marsh at the Australian PGA Championship at the RACV Royal Pines Resort...   (Facebook Link, Andy Reistetter, 12/13/14)