Southern California's No. 1 Source for Golf
STROKE OF THE DAY |
"Winning isn't everything, but wanting it is. " |
-Arnold Palmer |
SITE
SEARCH
GOLF
CALENDAR
PEOPLE
|
||||
 This year, Clark unveiled Eagle Falls Golf Course, which is part of Fantasy Springs Resort Casino in Indio. Of his three desert courses, Eagle Falls reminds Clark most of home in Britain. Though the back nine includes many water features, including a 45-foot waterfall, the front nine sports many links-style elements. Early reports suggest that although not overly long, Eagle Falls is no pushover. Is that true? If so, how did you make the course challenging without it being monstrously long? From the back tees, Eagle Falls measures 6,715 yards, which is not long by today’s standards. However, the course was not designed for professional tournaments. It is a resort course by definition, which means there will be hotel guests, it’s open to the general public, and eventually there will also be a fractional share residence at Fantasy Springs. Many of these golfers do not get a chance to play on a regular basis. Therefore, the course was designed to accommodate as wide a range of golfers as possible. Those who already have played the course will note that many of the greenside bunkers are withdrawn a number of yards from the edges of the greens, which are open-fronted. So those going in with a long shot will at least have a chance of getting home. As for the scratch golfer, a player who can drive the ball in the region of 270-280 yards, there is still sufficient challenge and there’s nothing wrong with a course that yields a low score. To score low is extremely encouraging and fun. When I design a golf course, I treat “fun” very seriously. How would you describe your golf philosophy? Are you a designer who makes a conscious decision to put a personal stamp on each course, or would you rather design courses that, to the naked eye, are completely different? And where does Eagle Falls fit into your overall design approach? My feeling is that a golf course should reward good shots and be very playable. You will note at Eagle Falls that a lot of the tees are elevated to create a road map in front of the golfer. They can see where they need to go and where risk and reward is involved. They have a chance to sum up the options and then it is up to them to make a decision and execute — like a game of chess. Depending on the terrain, budget and theme of the golf course, I would say the physical look of the golf courses I design vary substantially. They don’t necessarily have trademark stamps, other than the fact that I would like them to be fun to play. I suppose you could say my design style is somewhat like a chameleon and changes with the landscape. For example, you will notice a large difference between playing the course I designed at The Hideaway in La Quinta and Eagle Falls. The Hideaway has masses of water features, vast amounts of colorful banks of wild flowers and flowering shrubs, and in some areas huge splashes of annual color, featuring petunias, begonias, geraniums and the like. Eagle Falls is much more a “links-style” course, and the different look was developed largely due to the circumstances that prevailed on each site. Both started as absolutely flat pieces of desert land. However, The Hideaway is a country club with high-end real estate; Eagle Falls, although it does have a residential component featured on five of the holes, is predominantly a core golf course. When you’re designing a core golf course it gives you the opportunity to move dirt both up into mounds and down into valleys. When you’re doing a residential estate on a flat desert site, you’re largely creating valleys in which the holes run. This is because residents are not very fond of having mounds in their back yard obscuring their views of the golf course. Elaborate on the challenges that will confront high handicappers, and better golfers who might try to challenge Eagle Falls. As I mentioned earlier, this course is designed to cater for the full range of club golfers, rather than for the pro or 2-handicapper. So, if you think about it, that probably includes about 99 percent of the golfers who will ever play Eagle Falls. The fairways are quite generous and, typical of desert courses, the semi-rough is fairly short. However, the penalty is when you go seriously off-line. But for the very good player, there are risk-and-reward holes. The par-5 fourth hole is usually reachable in two for a scratch golfer. However, there is much trouble to carry in order to find this slim green, which perches on a shelf above waste area to the left, and the dreaded fescue-like links-style grass in the dunes on the right. The average golfer will drive short of the large bunker that absorbs a lot of the left side of the longer driving area and they can then play a utility club over the large central bunker, located 130 yards in front of the green. The short par-4 11th hole tempts the longer hitter as it is drivable, but you have to hit over water, sand and all sorts of flora and fauna in order to reach the green. The more conservative-minded or shorter-hitter may lay up to the right side of the fairway and hope to get the ball up and down from 70 yards or so. There are several other holes spread throughout the course that offer these types of options, including the long par-5 seventh, which ends with a green shored up by an old English country wall. Water features largely come into play on the back nine, which concludes at the 18th with one of the largest waterfalls in the desert. It has a drop of some 45 feet and in full flow on a sunny day looks magnificent, as the water literally thunders out of the sky. There is no shortage of golf courses in the Coachella Valley. What do you think separates Eagle Falls from an already impressive list of tracks? It’s true there are many wonderful courses in the Coachella Valley. Many of the very best, of course, are the high-end private clubs where only members and their guests have the opportunity to play. Eagle Falls is for everyone and brings to the Valley’s parade of courses a links-style course, which is unique within this desert. The front nine particularly exhibits much of what you would find on the great Scottish, English and Irish links where the British Open is played. A hole like the fourth, with its massive sand dunes with authentic blowouts, is very reminiscent of golf at Royal Birkdale, the course where Arnold Palmer won his first British Open in 1961. Also, the par-3 sixth hole at Eagle Falls is modeled after the Postage Stamp at Royal Troon, one of the shortest holes you’ll find in the British Open. But the Californian version isn’t as waspish and venomous, as the green is more generously sized at about double the width. The original, at just 9 yards wide, is a remarkably small target with huge penalties for missing, and I felt it was important to incorporate a little civility on the new course at Eagle Falls. |
||||
RSS Subscribe
Digg This Article
