PROFILE 37
“Most people play golf to escape from their everyday lives for a while.”
Martin Ebert enjoying his work on a typical sunny and windy day in Kent
cases, we’ve had to look much further afield for our new course projects. Back in the days of working with Donald, we built a golf course in Sri Lanka for $650,000 and we’ve built others in America, Canada and various other places. Recently, we’ve been looking at projects in China and India but what you find wherever you go is you’re up against design businesses from the US and all the other markets. It is tough but you get the feeling that if you get one piece of business, one will probably lead to another. In the meantime, we’ve been fortunate, first through Donald’s contacts, and then thanks to our own reputation, to get a lot of high profile remodelling work which has helped our portfolio greatly.
I suspect that in the majority of cases you have been brought in to remodel courses, the reason was to combat the distance today’s players hit the modern golf ball. Does the whole distance issue cause you, as a designer, concern, or is it more of a problem for developers/owners? (Laughs) As a designer, you could argue it’s good for business because we have a steady stream of remodelling work to do at a time when new projects are thin on the ground. However, looked at in another light, it does seem crazy that we should be looking to build longer and longer courses and lengthen others dramatically. For new courses it means the course owner needs more land, more capital, more water for irrigation, bigger areas to drain and larger areas to maintain. For the player, it requires more time to play so what you are talking about is more cost for less revenue, which can’t be a good thing. One solution is to do something about the modern clubs and balls but it isn’t the only one at our disposal. At Lytham, we had the opportunity to lengthen some of the holes quite considerably but, in
some cases, we didn’t think that was necessarily the correct solution. We wanted to maintain the variety of long and short par-4s, which was something Dr Alister Mackenzie advocated all those years ago. Sheer length is not the only way to create a challenge, as you can see by playing somewhere like Rye. It can also be done by firming up the fairways, adjusting the contouring of the greens and by altering the bunkering to tighten up the fairways. Tat’s what we did with Donald at Hoylake (ahead of the 2006 Open). It was fascinating to see the different strategies different players adopted and Tiger Woods soon worked out the best way to combat the new challenge. He managed to navigate his way round avoiding the bunkers. Length per se isn’t everything. We think we can, in effect, lengthen courses by use of bunkering and other means. Te secret is to ensure that a driver from the tee is not always the best option.
So, if I was a developer, and came to you with a 100-acre plot of land, could you build me a decent golf course on it? Yes, it would be possible, although what might be more of an issue in this day and age is safety. I’m a member at Royal Worlington and Newmarket Golf Club. It’s a lovely little 9-hole
course, built on not much more than 50 acres, but it has got one hole that crosses two others and tees close to greens. Safety-wise, you simply couldn’t design something like that today; although from an environmental point of view it ticks all the boxes.
We have talked a lot about your love of the classic courses but, thanks to modern maintenance practices, the fact is some of the best ones are in danger of becoming pale imitations of their former selves. How important is it to get back to more traditional maintenance methods, both for the sake of the courses and the environment as a whole? Vital, I would say, on both counts. Te constraints on the use of chemicals are becoming tighter all the time and that is not going to change. A much more traditional approach in terms of maintenance is what is required and it’s certainly something Tom and I support. Some of the best greens are the ones with the finest (bent and fescue) grasses on them and they need the least maintenance. Going back to Royal Worlington and Newmarket, there are no sprinklers round the greens, but what you’ve got are some of the best grasses you can possibly find. As a result, they don’t need a lot of chemicals or water but
Pictures of Lytham’s 7th hole. Martin has worked his magic to create a stunning new challenge for professionals and amateurs
Photos by Mark Alexander
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