China GOLF Magazine - Interview with Darius Oliver

Extracts of this interview were published in the April 2011 issue of GOLF Magazine in China.

 

Interview with Golf Consultant Darius Oliver

GOLF Magazine - What motivated you to establish Global Golf Group, and to make 'Raise Golfing Standards Across the Globe’ as your aim?

Darius Oliver - After studying more than 1,000 golf courses around the world I was concerned that despite all our increased golfing knowledge, the standard of new golf courses was not improving. The reasons for this are many and varied, but essentially the rise of signature design and the fact that it is now much more difficult for the really talented and passionate golf designers to separate themselves from the crowd was a concern for me.

I have visited all of the great golf courses in the world, and every time I see a poor modern course I think it is a wasted opportunity and it frustrates me greatly. So my aim is to help developers and golf investors to make sure their golf course is built to the highest possible standards. This doesn’t mean I design golf courses myself, it means I look at the three key factors – the land, the budget and the ambition of the client – and suggest the best architects to help them achieve their goals. Every new project is an opportunity for a great golf course, but the most crucial decision is who will design the course and most developers unfortunately get this wrong.

 

GM - You know more than 140 designers, among them, who impressed you most?

DO - This is a difficult question to answer, because all designers have their strengths and weaknesses. Bill Coore from Coore and Crenshaw has the best portfolio of modern courses in the world, but he only works on one or two projects at a time and is very selective about the courses he designs. The same is true of Tom Doak. So I look at other architects with more diverse portfolios and who are capable of working on a range of different and difficult sites, and I think someone like Bob Harrison from Australia has enormous design skill considering he has built wonderful courses on the ocean, in the mountains and on flood plains. He is also very experienced at creating successful residential subdivisions within his golf properties. Others I admire include Pete Dye, Mike DeVries, Gil Hanse, Kyle Phillips, Dana Fry, Michael Hurdzan and my good friend Mike Clayton, who has done wonderful work in Australia and is now partnering with US Open Champion Geoff Ogilvy and hoping to work more across Asia. I also think a guy like Brian Curley is talented, and he would hate me saying this but he is probably a little too busy at the moment to do his best work on every project. It’s a very delicate balance between design, construction supervision, devotion to the project and support from the client. These are all important factors, and so while I admire ten or fifteen architects worldwide there are none that I know who suit every single new course project.

 

GM - As for yourself, which kind of golf course philosophy do you recommend most？

DO - There is no doubt that the classic golf courses teach us the most about how golf courses should be arranged. They are unfortunately also the most often overlooked. My philosophy is very simple, and mirrors the ideals and beliefs of the great architects of the 1920s and 1930s. Golf should first and foremost be fun, and holes should be arranged to ensure that they not only test and challenge good players, they also excite and entertain the beginners. Where most golf designers go wrong is they make their holes so difficult that they challenge good players but destroy the fun of the game for the novice or beginner. The genius of the greatest courses in the world, is that they are actually quite simple for poor players but very challenging for the better golfer. The likes of St Andrews, Royal Melbourne, Cypress Point and Sand Hills are wide enough that everyone can play without losing a ball, but crucially for good players hoping to make birdies they have to flirt with danger and hazards. This is what makes golf fun, being able to choose your own path and determining yourself how much you gamble on each shot. Poor courses usually dictate how you HAVE to play, by having narrow fairways or greens that are not angled to favour one side of the fairway over the other.

The biggest mistake people make in golf, is to assume that a difficult course is a challenging course. They are very different, and I would like to see more Chinese courses built in the future that do not torture beginner golfers but instead encourage them to have fun and fall in love with our great game.

 

GM - Planet Golf USA was ranked No1 golf book in 2009 by Golf Magazine, what’s the secret for success?

DO - To be perfectly honest, the secret to both those Planet Golf books was to self-publish them, because there were so many areas where a regular book publisher could have cut corners and produced the book much more cheaply. I wanted my books on the best golf courses in the world to feature the best photographs available, and I didn’t cut corners on the pictures, or the paper stock or the design quality or any of the areas that affect quality. I also made sure that my research was exhaustive, so I didn’t leave out any hidden gems. For Planet Golf USA I managed to personally visit every single course in the Top 100, which is quite an achievement considering how private American clubs are. I also try to write passionately and from a very neutral perspective, and to give my readers a true sense of the quality of the golf course in question. Most people look at the whole golf package when they review a golf course, but I ignore the clubhouse, the history, the grass, the service and the food and focus exclusively on the golf holes and how good they are. I think people enjoy the honesty of my writing.

 

GM - You worked with photographer David Scaletti during the making of Planet Golf, anything of interest you can share with us？

DO - David Scaletti is a true perfectionist, and spends the early morning and late afternoon hours on the golf course looking for the best places to take his pictures in the best possible light. He doesn’t take as many images as other photographers, and he focuses very much on quality over quantity. One funny story I recall of David at Royal Aberdeen Golf Club, is the brilliant shot he took of the 4^th hole with dark, ominous clouds looming in the horizon. It was one of my favourite pictures in Planet Golf, and when I asked David about it he said that he took the photo and then ran all the way back to the car, about 1.5km. It was right as he got into the car and slammed the door shut that the rain started to pour down. If he hadn’t run so fast he would have been drenched and probably ruined his US $60,000 camera.

 

GM - In your book, what is the standard to rank different golf course? When you get to a golf course, what point do you pay attention first？

DO - This is a great and crucial question, because people often assume that golf course rating and reviewing is a very subjective business. I don’t think it should be. Essentially what I do is look at hole 1, then hole 2 all the way through to hole 18 and determine how good they all are individually. I then factor in all the general elements that make a golf course, such as the routing, the variety of holes, the type of grasses used, the ambience and aesthetics of the setting and the quality and diversity of things like greens, bunkers etc. I completely ignore peripheral elements like the size or quality of the clubhouse, or how exclusive the golf course is, because these don’t influence the quality of the golf course at all.

The reason golf rankings are so messy and easy to criticize is because too many of my peers will simply look at the history, prestige and amenities of a golf club, or how well they were treated, and use that as a basis to rank or rate the actual golf course. I try to apply a much more scientific and, I think, common sense approach to golf courses. Some of the best courses in the world are inexpensive, or have modest clubhouses or don’t serve nice meals. It’s the quality of the golf course that matters, the rest is completely subjective.

 

GM - What is unique 3-Flag rating system employed to rate the quality of hundreds of golf courses around the world?

DO - Basically what I wanted to do was create a simple, broad based rating system that could be accurately applied to any golf course in the world to give golfers a true indication of its quality. This means, instead of ranking course A higher than course B we are saying that both are 3-Flag courses, and therefore at the same high standard. Like the Michelin star rating for restaurants, some golfers will prefer one 3-Flag course to another but each should be recognized as being outstanding.

So this is about the general quality of the golf course, and where it can get controversial is when you slide down the scale to 2-Flag, 1-Flag or even zero-Flag rated golf courses. People can get cross when they aren’t awarded 3-Flags, but these are the greatest golf courses in the world, and if you don’t have perfect golf land or world-class design it’s going to be very difficult to be considered alongside the best in the business.

The truth is that no course is perfect, and the level of imperfection ultimately determines how good a golf course is. 3-Flag courses are the closest the game comes to reaching perfection, but they each have small flaws. 2-Flag courses have more obvious flaws, but they are still fantastic golf courses. They are generally superbly routed across quality golf land and boast both fine construction and a number of great golf holes. Some are prevented from ever reaching 3-Flag status because of inferior golfing ground, but most are rated only marginally beneath the standard of the world’s premier layouts. 1-Flag courses can be either well routed and well designed layouts on moderate golf land, or moderately designed courses on great land. The golf connoisseur will only be disappointed with these courses if they regard design as the only important consideration of quality. Many of the 1-Flag courses could easily be improved to acquire 2 or 3-Flag status.

By far, most of the world’s courses don’t receive a flag at all, which isn’t to say that they are all poor or have no value to the game. It just means that most courses have major flaws that prevent them from reaching their true potential.

As mentioned earlier, our ratings are based entirely on the quality of the golf course, and ignore periphery elements like exclusivity, price, value, amenities, history, celebrity, conditioning and clubhouse facilities.

 

GM - To design a good golf course or golf related project, what qualifications do you think a designer should have?

DO - This is another great question, but it’s important to point out here that golf design is different to golf architecture. Building golf courses and designing them are different, and each team should have suitably qualified people able to both arrange holes in an appropriate manner and then help build them.

But lets look at design, and I think the most essential qualification a golf designer can have is passion for the subject of golf design, and experience studying the very best golf courses in the world. Most people think this means professional players are a good fit, but it’s the opposite. Most professionals are completely absorbed by their own game, and don’t study or care much about great golf architecture. Also while they play the occasional tournament on a great course, they rarely experience 3-Flag courses like Royal Dornoch, Ballybunion, Ballyneal, Pine Valley, Cypress Point, Crystal Downs, Sand Hills and Pacific Dunes. By contrast, talk to the greatest golf course designers and they have not only been to all these places, they remember every feature and every hole, they have read every book on the subject and can talk for hours about what makes an outstanding golf course.

So passion is important, but so too is commonsense and a genuine feel for the game and how it is played by all standard of golfer. It’s often been remarked that signature designers tend to create hard courses, and this is because most do not understand where the poorer players hit, or how they feel when faced with certain situations. It’s no great surprise that the best architects in the history of golf have only been average players – with the exception of someone like Harry Colt, who was a very fine amateur player.

 

GM - More and more world class pros are getting into the field of golf course design, while most are just signature ones, what is your point of view?

DO - As I’ve indicated here already, I don’t think signature golf is healthy for the Chinese industry and I don’t think any developer anywhere in the world gets good value by employing a signature design team to build them a golf course. The reason for this is quite simple – where a proper golf architect has studied and worked hard at his profession, and learned on the job and devoted his life to the creation of great golf courses, the signature pro has simply won a few tournaments and is now expected to have an understanding of how to create a golf course. It simply doesn’t happen that way – mostly the signature name doesn’t actually do any of the design work himself, so what you are getting is a junior design associate with limited talent, or a talented design associate with limited ambition. Neither is a recipe for success when it comes to an art form like golf design.

Because I understand the realities of the modern world, what I try to encourage clients consider is appointing a ‘proper’ golf course architect to design their layout, and then using a celebrity professional to act as a co-designer or ambassador for the project. This usually works quite well, as the standard of the golf course is much higher and the client still has the marketing advantages of the famous name. They could use IMG or another signature design firm, but the quality would never be as high and if you want an interesting, original golf course then you wouldn’t shop for it at a design factory.

I hope that one day in China the golf market will be sophisticated enough to realize that a Phil Mickelson or a Jack Nicklaus or a Greg Norman or a Paul Casey or a Rory McIlroy course is not actually designed by the person in question, and that they will look at golf courses and assess them based on the quality of the finished product, rather than how famous the so-called ‘designer’ is.

 

GM - Which golf course (s) is (are) your favorite(s) worldwide and in China? Why?

DO - This is always a tricky question, and I need to first point out the difference between my favourite courses and those I think are the best courses. Pine Valley, for instance, has the best collection of holes anywhere on earth, but my personal favourites are places like Royal County Down in Northern Ireland, Cypress Point in America and Royal Melbourne West in Australia, which I think are more fun to play. Sand Hills, St Andrews, Shinnecock Hills and Royal Dornoch are also near the top of my list. I’m a huge fan of quirky, original courses too and count North Berwick, Ballyneal, Royal Aberdeen, St George’s Hill, Swinley Forest, Bandon Trails, Lahinch and Prestwick among my absolute favourites.

In Asia I still think the best courses are the oldies in Japan, like Hirono and Kawana Fuji, but fortunately the standard of design has improved in China since my first visit in 2005 and there are a few courses I now enjoy playing. The new Lava Fields course at Mission Hills Haikou is probably my favourite, followed by the likes of Shenzhou Peninsula, Tiger Beach and Blackstone (Mission Hills Haikou). Spring City is a beautiful resort destination, but I feel both courses could have been better designed. Perhaps the most exciting new course in China will be Shanqin Bay near Boao on Hainan Island. I’ve seen this course under construction and it looks really cool, and very different to the other courses built thus far in China.

 

GM - Golf course construction in China is booming! And you have been to China several times, any suggestions you have for the golf course or golf-related development in China?

DO - I’ve been coming to China since 2005, and have been amazed at the speed of golf course development during this period. Part of the reason to establish my consulting business and focus on China has been because of my concern for what type of courses are being built here, and how I feel that some developers are being exploited by international golf architects looking to make money.

If we look at other golf booms, in Japan in the 1980s and America in the 1980s and 90s, or smaller growth trends like Spain and South Africa of the last 20 years, there are patterns that emerged that caused some of the issues we see today. In Japan and America more courses close than open each year, and partly this is because of the type of course that was built during the boom. The same thing will happen in China if we are not careful. It seems every developer wants a tournament course, but this doesn’t necessarily mean all courses have to look, play and feel the same. Part of golf’s attraction is that our venues differ so greatly from one course to another, and we will lose the originality and charm of golf design if too many courses are built the same way.

So to answer your question, I’ll simply plug my business and urge anyone interested in golf course development to seek expert, and independent, advice on who should design your course, and how it should be built. Much of the time in China I see courses with huge budgets that would have been much better had less money been spent, or a more appropriate design appointment been made at the beginning of the project. We try to stay involved with projects as ongoing design consultants, but our initial project assessment and design advice service doesn’t cost the developer any money at all. For peace of mind or a fresh perspective from someone who has seen every single great course in the world, I ask that you please consider contacting the Global Golf Group so we can help you make sure that you don’t make the same mistakes others in this business have made. Every new golf course project is an opportunity to create something outstanding, and we hope to raise the expectations of golf developers and encourage them to try to create world-class golf courses.

 

GM - You have worked as a golf commentator? What’s your next book?

DO - My next book will be Planet Golf – Modern Masterpieces, and it will be translated into Chinese and feature around 15-20 of China’s best golf courses. As the name suggests the book will review all of the great golf courses of the past 20 years, and in total cover around 100 courses across the planet. We expect it to be released next year, and for it to be published to the same high standards as the previous books, with wonderful photography and comprehensive golf course reviews.

Hopefully in a few years there will be enough great course in China for a separate Planet Golf – China edition. That’s my aim anyway – I just need some more golf developers to contact me so I can help them build the best golf courses!

 

Darius Oliver is a golf course design consultant and the author of Planet Golf and Planet Golf USA. For design recommendations, testimonials or advice on how to make your golf course internationally regarded, please contact the Global Golf Group

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