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Hidden Influence: Dye channeled the work of William Langford, thinking it was Raynor

by Hal Phillips 0 Comments
Langford design
The dramatic par-3 7th at Lawsonia Links, perhaps William Langford’s best known course design. I finally played there in September 2025. But that didn’t keep me from writing this feature for LINKS Magazine, published (on actual glossy stock!), 20 years before.

By HAL PHILLIPS
PINEHURST, N.C. (June 1, 2005) — There’s a famous black & white photo taken at the inaugural meeting of the American Society of Golf Course Architects. Design nerds have surely seen it: Ten founding members, all lined up in front of the clubhouse at Pinehurst, standing rather stiffly in their tweedy, post-war vestments. Not exactly the stuff of Annie Leibowitz, but the image still resonates — for it was here, back 1946, that the modern idea of ‘golf course architect’ was born. Third from left stands a handsome fellow named William Langford.

Midwest-born but Ivy-educated, Langford served as president of ASGCA in 1951 and again in 1963. Yet it was much earlier, over the first half of the 20th Century, that he earned his rightful place beside Ross, Jones, Thompson and Bell. During this heyday, William Boice Langford was perhaps the most prolific course designer in the Midwest, laying out 250 courses and, at one point, employing 80 men to do so.

Several Langford layouts rank right there with the Golden Age greats. Lawsonia Links in Green Hill, Wis., is perhaps the best known, but there are myriad others: Riverside, Butterfield and Ridgemoor country clubs in Greater Chicago; Minnehaha in South Dakota; the original 18 at Greenville CC in South Carolina; and the much-praised old nine at Harrison Hills in Attica, Ind. His renovations of Skokie in Chicago and Wakonda in Des Moines are credited with transforming these courses into the classics we revere today.

At all these venues, Langford displayed a masterful understanding of approach angles. He also deployed a dramatic, steep-sloped bunker philosophy highly reminiscent of Seth Raynor’s work, but it’s not clear that Langford ever played or studied the work of C.B. Macdonald’s famous protégé. Regardless, his style rubbed off on dozens of young midwestern designers, an unwitting Pete Dye among them, and resulted in some of golf’s most striking, strategic green settings.

“Langford’s designs were excellent. I’ve tried to copy him as much as I could,” says 91-year-old Larry Packard, the Chicago-based architect who got his start under Robert Bruce Harris — another Pinehurst attendee — but moonlighted for Langford in the 1950s. “I’ve always felt that Langford did a first-class job, better than the guy I worked for. At that time, [Langford] was beginning to slow down a bit and needed someone to assist him with all the drawing. I used to come over, at night, and I’d help him. When we got tired, we’d go out in the yard and play croquet.

“The thing about Langford was, you could tell he was an excellent player. He knew more closely about where someone would hit a ball than Harris did. After Harris got a layout, he’d just put sand traps in like raisins in a plum pudding. Langford knew exactly how far and where a guy would hit a ball, and which angles would make good players think.”

William Langford: Thrice an NCAA Champion

Yale golf team 1906

Golfing acumen isn’t necessarily a precondition for course architects, but it clearly benefited Langford who suffered from polio as a child and took up the game as part of his rehabilitation. It worked wonders. In New Haven, where his undergraduate studies predated the Macdonald/Raynor design at Yale GC, he played on three consecutive NCAA championship teams (1906-08) and remained a superb amateur player all his life. For the record, the Bulldogs played matches at New Haven GC, then Race Brook CC before moving over to YGC, in 1926.

After earning a master’s degree in mining engineering from Columbia — a discipline that would eventually serve him, and the field of golf course design, extremely well — Langford stayed in New York City and, according to Packard, prepared to take over his father’s sheepskin business. But the tug of golf never dimmed and eventually he went to work laying out courses for Chicago-based American Park Builders.

In 1918 he had formed his own firm, a partnership with fellow engineer Theodore J. Moreau. By the onset of World War II, the two partners had authored hundreds of golf course projects from the Dakotas to Florida and most places in between.

It’s difficult to ascribe a “style” to any course designer who works so long, on so many different projects, in so many different physical environments. But Langford — who did most of the design work, while Moreau mainly supervised construction — did have a distinct predilection for raised greens with very sharp edges that fell off precipitously into flat-bottomed, remarkably deep bunkers.

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Golf Wallpaper: Home-Screen Takeaways from Royal Lytham & St. Annes

by Hal Phillips 0 Comments

I tend to spend a lot of time at the computer. In 2025, I started collecting fun golf course images to use as wallpaper on my oversized monitor. The better ones stay in place for several weeks, allowing for detailed scrutiny and study. I decided to share some of the most thought-provoking examples here.

1) This one image from Royal Lytham & St. Anne’s shows the better part of four golf holes (7-10). It shows a substantial dune ridge, greats swaths of multi-hued vegetation and a public walking path — all of it tightly surrounded by a densely populated suburban neighborhood. Total course acreage: 90. Perspective: Merion GC is considered a small parcel for golf. It sits on 124 acres. 

2) Still, there is room here for a massive and completely ornamental blowout bunker (top left) that does nothing but looks great. 

3) How do you get 7,118 yards into such a small space? Observe the tournament teeing ground below the blowout bunker. That box serves the mainly off-camera 11th hole. There’s a similar walk back to 8 tee, off-camera bottom right. Of course, most members wouldn’t dream of playing these back tees, so day-to-day safety issues are greatly reduced. 

Golf Wallpaper: Backward & Forward

4) The Old Course at St Andrews famously plays its course backwards once a year, but many GBI clubs do the same. Observe how beautifully these four would play in the opposite direction. To boot: Check out the awesome par-3 from that back tee at 11 to the 8th green. GBI clubs often play so-called “cross-country” tournaments with similarly gerrymandered holes & routings. One can see how easily that could be done at Lytham.

5) This aerial was snapped, by photography guru Gary Lisbon, at exactly the right height. Too many are taken from 30 feet or higher, which tends to flatten out fairway contours especially. Look at the lovely humps and hollows here, even those in the distance. Perfectly captured.  

6) Lytham had sought the 2026 Open to celebrate the centenary of Bobby Jones’ famous victory here. Birkdale will host instead. Championship golf can be accommodated at Royal LSA (as recently as 2012), but it’s getting harder to imagine 30,000 spectators here, too. Or merch tents. This image shows why. 

Fescue Programs: A Roadside Meditation

by Hal Phillips 0 Comments

Driving home from a dreamy golf excursion, author Hal Phillips noticed wispy grasses glistening alongside a newly widened stretch of a busy interstate. Their presence raised questions about the agronomics of incorporating a linksy feature into inland settings.

[Ed. This essay was first published in the November 2026 print edition of Golf Course Industry magazine. It’s posted in its entirety here. And yes: Fescue Program would make a great band name.]

In this Age of Identity, has Augusta National Gone Aussie?

by Hal Phillips 0 Comments

AUGUSTA, Ga. — Is it me, or did the 2024 Masters Tournament concluded last month exude a subtle-but-fascinating Antipodean vibe? I’m not talking about the field itself (though I do think ESPN and CBS could have done with an Aussie Cam, to track the progress of Mssrs. Davis and Smith), but rather the course itself. I came away convinced that the 2024 presentation at Augusta National Golf Club has subtly moved closer to the Sand Belt stylings of Royal Melbourne, as opposed to the iconic American parkland for which ANGC has for many decades served as standard-bearer.

The Good Doctor, Alister MacKenzie, laid out all 18 holes at ANGC (with Robert Tyre Jones) and all 36 at RMGC (with Alex Russell) some 90 years ago. In Georgia, architect George Cobb subsequently authored several changes during the 1950s and ’60s. Yet most golf fans recognize that, between major championships, this golf course is routinely renovated and tweaked. Last week’s telecast revealed a few new cupping areas, enabled by reworked contours on and around the putting surfaces. A few loblolly pines have also gone missing, some by design, some due to old age, and some out of an abundance of caution, due to the massive tree limb that fell to earth during last year’s tournament.

Augusta National rarely comments on any of these adjustments, as we’ve come to expect. What’s more, its broadcaster partners scrupulously (some would say obsequiously) follow the club’s lead in this regard. As do the course design and construction professionals who carry out this annual off-season adjustment work.

Still, I noticed a few things that felt new, and all of them struck me as rather Australian.

Bunker Edges Thick and Hearty

First, the bunker edges at Augusta National are looking more and more like something we’d see at Royal Melbourne, Kingston Heath or Metropolitan. I’m not sure when this edging practice actually started, in Augusta, but this year I noticed for the first time just how much of the soil profile is visible at the top of the greenside bunkers especially. Either way, this is very much a stylistic flourish associated with the top courses in Australia, especially those in the famed Sand Belt region south of Melbourne.

The modifier design nerds like to deploy when describing this style of bunker edge is “sharp”. The definition of said edge is indeed very neat and clean, and balls don’t trickle down a collar or embankent into these bunkers: They drop in, directly. To be clear, I’m not about to claim that this style was instituted course-wide this past winter. More likely, it’s been introduced already, perhaps in a few spots, and expanded to include most every green complex, save 14, where no bunkers exist.

Aussie/Sand Belt bunkers and those at Augusta National have long shared two more qualities: steep faces and flat bottoms. This shared characteristic typically means a ball hits the face, doesn’t embed, and rolls back down to a fairly level bunker floor. This architectural choice has a competitive aspect (anything buried in the face would result in a terrifically difficult recovery shot) and an ease-of-maintenance aspect. It also looks smart.

We can agree Augusta National’s bunkers have presented and played this way for years. It seems to me the club has finally added this soil-forward edging presentation to fully complement the effect.

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Developers Gonna Develop, So Let’s get Real about Golf Course Flexibility

by Hal Phillips 0 Comments

This story in The New York Times, published mid-February 2024, struck a chord. Not because I’m a golfer, but because I’ve written quite a lot about abandoned golf courses, the re-wilding of courses, even the resuscitation of courses gone fallow. As long ago as 1994, the NYT has even seen fit to quote me on the subject of how many golf courses is enough, and how many legitimately eco-friendly credentials an operative golf course can claim.

This recent Times piece proved a solid piece of reporting, and the comments section was chock full of even more examples of golf course flexibility: layouts that have been returned, in full and in part, to open space. In each case, everyone appreciated the fact that here was a gorgeous piece land where the public could now hike, walk their dogs, bird-watch, etc.

In a golf economy where 150 courses were shuttered annually — a culling the U.S. golf market endured every year from 2008 to 2021 — what to do with former course properties proved a fairly pressing issue. But that market correction appears to have stabilized. There were approximately 90 golf course closures in the U.S. last year (as measured in 18-hole equivalents), according to the National Golf Foundation. There were also more new course openings in 2023 than at any time since 2010: 24 18-HEQ.

For a variety of reasons, the golf establishment will always be expected argue for just how sustainable golf courses should be, as golf courses, and how many of them (and what sort of facilities) we really need, full stop. But it’s important to think about these issues in two different ways:

U.S. Golf Has an Access Problem

First, the issue actually hinges in critical respects on access. The real problem, in America, is that private clubs here are so very private. The idea that non-members in a particular community might use a private golf course property as open space is pretty much anathema. Whereas, in the U.K. and Australia, and across Europe, it’s common place. There, even the most exclusive clubs often double as places where non-members can play golf — but also walk their dogs, cross-country ski, even hike. More important, this ethos trickles down to all courses, where golfers treat the property as a playground, while an even larger population of non-golfing locals treat them as quasi-public spaces.

We don’t do that here in the United States. Our private clubs are very exclusive in comparison — and this attitude trickles down, too. One doesn’t see walking paths for non golfers (and their dogs) even at public and municipal courses in the U.S. Why not? This is something the golf course industry can and should work to address. Why not build community walking and biking trails through public courses, which account for some 90 percent of the golf course facilities in America?

Read all those comments on the Feb. 2024 NYT story above: Folks just want to walk these properties with their dogs, maybe hike a bit, or ride their bikes on these decommissioned course properties. If this is what the community seeks, and these activities can be enjoyed inside and beside operative golf courses, why not be a better neighbor? Who knows, you might sell more food & drink in your grille room, or find new customers for your banquet facility.

It’s About Golf Course Flexibility

Second, it’s critical that golfers and non-golfer alike recognize that courses offer a level of flexibility that other development categories do not. As February’s NYT story illustrates, even golf courses that viably served a golf population for decades can pivot to other public services quite quickly and easily.

I’m not sure that I agree with the subhead above: that most courses are in some way “paved over”. Many of the golf courses closed down the last 20 years were decommissioned to make room for housing, something desperately needed in this country. If that’s what we mean by “paving,” that’s another outcome I can live with. Yet here again, not all developments allow for such repurposing, not with such relative ease.

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What’s a Design Nerd to Think, “When Nines Don’t Match”?

by Hal Phillips 0 Comments

[Ed. This piece appeared 25 years ago in a magazine called TravelGolf Maine founded by a fellow named Park Morrison. It didn’t last long (1998-2001) and, sadly, Park passed away last year, in 2023. I’m including the story here because surely it never made it online — and because it appeared, in print, under a favorite pen name of mine. Another serendipitous fact: When I traveled to Lovell, Maine to “research” the story, the course ranger, found lounging in a cart parked by the first tee at Lake Kezar CC, was none other than Bill Bissett, retired athletic director at Hudson (Mass.) High, one of the schools covered by The Hudson Daily Sun, where I served sports editor from 1989-90.]

By Henry Choi
Opinions differ when it comes to appraising so-called schizo layouts, those courses where one nine barely resembles the other. In northern New England — where scads of nines were laid out in the 1920s and ‘30s, only to be expanded many decades later by different architects — the issue is more salient than perhaps anywhere in America. Because there are just so many cases where the nines don’t match, the question remains: Does one decry the stylistic divergence or applaud the diversity?

Two courses in the border regions of Maine and New Hampshire inform the debate. North Conway Country Club and Lake Kezar CC are separated by 20 miles. And yet, the nines on each course feel even further apart, light years in fact, when it comes to style, terrain and vintage. That both tracks remains such good fun tips our fledgling debate toward applause.

This part of New England is remote but hardly underdeveloped. The resort nature of North Conway, N.H., cannot be lost on first-time visitors to its eponymous, semi-private country club, where the 1st tee is set back just 50 yards from a bustling main drag replete with myriad factory outlets, hotels and restaurants. Indeed, the clubhouse at NCCC sits directly beside the Conway Scenic Railway Station, a massive, red-roofed, Victorian-era structure painted a vivid shade of yellow.

It’s quite a sight, but nothing like the vista next door. The 1st at NCCC (the image above) is one of the great opening holes in all of New England, a 418-yard par-4 with long views of Cathedral Rock in the distance and, of more pressing concern, O.B. all along the left side. It takes some real concentration to block it all out and belt one — right over the train tracks! — to a fairway 70 feet (!) below.

Beside the Scenic Saco

Don’t get the wrong idea, however. The remaining golf at North Conway CC isn’t about dramatic elevation changes. At all. After this inaugural plunge, the course plays entirely in the subtly contoured flood plain of the Saco River. It’s scenic — with the river running through it and White Mountains surrounding it — but it’s relatively flat and eminently walkable.

The opening nine here dates to 1928, when Ralph Barton, a protégé of Seth Raynor, reworked a older, rudimentary loop. The charm of these opening holes lies in the subtleties of their small, steeply pitched greens guarded closely by deep bunkers. The 4th is a wonderful short hole, a make-or-break 140-yard pitch to a putting surface that falls away steeply on all sides. Every so often the land here does move with surprising drama. The 354-yard 5th plays right along the river; the back tee calls for a drive across a bend in the Saco to a swaled landing area, which is then crossed by a stream at 240 yards. The green looks harmless enough, until you look over the back side and see the ground fall away steeply some 20 feet.

The second nine at North Conway arrived much later, in the mid-1960s, courtesy of New Hamster-based architect Phil Wogan, and no — the two loops do not go together stylistically. The front side putting surfaces are set mostly at grade, while the bulk of Wogan’s greens are raised up in mid-century mode made fashionable by Robert Trent Jones, Sr. Yet the backside putting surfaces are quite cool and challenging in their own right, especially the saddle job at the par-3 13th — and the epic volcano that sits at the business end of the sublime-but-potentially-cruel, 434-yard, par-4 14th.

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Return of the Missing Links: Ponky Revised and Revisited

by Hal Phillips 0 Comments
Ponky municipal
Ponkapoag Golf

[Ed. This feature was published by McKellar magazine in the spring of 2019, under the headline, “Return of the Missing Links.” Apropos of its motto — “a golf companion” — McKellar exists entirely as an analog/print entity. It maintains no online incarnation. Accordingly, please see below at PDF version of the story, to read here at halphillips.net, or via download in your own good time.]

McKellar-ponky-PDFDownload

The Seats of Golf Power Continue to Move West. It’s Been Ever Thus

by Hal Phillips 0 Comments

[Ed. The fine folks at Global Golf Post saw fit to publish this column of mine re. the shifting Seats of Golf Power back in June of 2023, when the PGA Tour’s partnership/merger with the Saudi Public Investment Fund took everyone by surprise. You can find the full text here. Several complementary ideas re. golf’s historical migration can be found in a longer essay of mine, here.]

golfer silhouette

If Augusta National Pine Trees should fall (or fall ill), Would They Make a Sound?

by Hal Phillips 5 Comments
Masters pine trees

Ed. I’ve contributed dozens of stories to GOLF Magazine and golf.com through the years (I’ve served on the mag’s world top 100 course-rating panel since 1997). But none landed with such a thud as this one about Augusta National pine trees, published in the March 1999 print edition. In 24 years, I’d heard nothing re. the ill-health or subsequent removal of diseased loblolly pines at Augusta National GC — not until April 7, 2023, when a massive pine broke apart during the second round of Masters Tournament play. Suddenly the piece had new life. See comments below… Of course, trees are removed, tees are added, and the course of rivers change at ANGC and we hear nothing about those events, either — not until the club issues an official statement, or we see it on television the second weekend in April. The place is leak-proof. For the record, The Eisenhower Tree pictured above was a loblolly pine. It was taken down in 2014, because it was hit by lightening. Or so reads the party line.

•••

AUGUSTA, Ga. (April 1999) — Overlooking each fairway like a glowering gallery of green giants, the stately Georgia pines here at Augusta National Golf Club represent arguably the most recognizable feature at a course replete with recognizable features. Because The Masters is the lone major championship played at the same venue year after year, competitors, spectators and television viewers have established an unrivaled connection with and affection for Augusta National. Where else could a slow-moving stream and a few magnolia beds take on such mythic, eye-moistening qualities? Of course, fabled Rae’s Creek comes into play on just three holes whereas the towering pines frame nearly every shot. Their lower limbs pruned up to 100 feet, these majestic loblollies stand silent, like so many Doric columns, quietly lining the verdant corridors of America’s foremost golfing shrine.

Okay, reality check: Nothing lives forever. The patrician powers-that-be at Augusta National may have kept commercialism at relative bay and held the price of a chicken salad sandwich under $3, but they can’t fight Mother Nature. Trees are organic. They die, and a number of Augusta’s trademark loblolly pine are doing just that; some allege before their time.

Loblolly pine (Pinus taeda), which comprise 90 percent of the trees at the National, can be felled by myriad “stress factors,” as arborists like to call them: lightning strikes, disease, root pathogens, even the dreaded southern pine beetle. They can also whither and die following long, healthy lives of some 300 years in their natural, forest environment. Yet some of Augusta’s prized loblolly aren’t so healthy and may not witness their second century of shot-making — or so say certain tree-savvy visitors to Augusta who have noticed a change. Robust loblollies sport needles so darkly green they appear almost black from a distance. However, a disturbing jaundice has afflicted the relatively young pines that stand hard along Augusta’s 18th fairway — a clear sign of ill health, the experts say. Last year, during his first trip back to Augusta in a quarter century, architect Desmond Muirhead was floored by their lack of vitality. Other veteran observers of Augusta, most of whom insist on anonymity, believe there is a problem in paradise.

Golf, Money and Power

In his forthcoming book, “The Masters: Golf, Money and Power in Augusta, Georgia” (published by Villard, a division of Random House), author Curt Sampson isn’t nearly so discrete. He alleges that many more loblolly pine, especially those positioned along Augusta’s fairways, are suffering from poor health — a matter not unrelated, he says, to the club’s obsession with Edenic course conditions. Tipped off to the pine problem by his friend Muirhead, Sampson maintains misplaced fertilizer and overzealous irrigation practices have wrought considerable havoc with the loblollies, which are xerophytes — a fancy word for plants accustomed to dryer conditions. Further, for many years Augusta National maintained turfgrass well into wooded areas off the fairways. Today, this practice is an acknowledged horticultural no-no, as experts agree that trees and grass compete for the same nutrients.

Sampson — who claims to have consulted “an arborist who worked with Augusta National” but won’t name him — asserts the ailing loblollies, overfed for too long, have been living too fast and will die young. “If you stand on a promontory like the 10th tee,” Sampson says, “you can see the difference between the interior trees and those along the fairway; it’s like new denim compared to faded blue jeans. The pine lining certain fairways are saggy and yellowish. The difference is striking.”

There are significant factors to ponder when considering anything at Augusta National Golf Club, especially an unauthorized book alleging what amounts to horticultural malpractice. First, only Chairman Jack Stephens can speak for the club, meaning horticulturist Tom Crenshaw and consulting arborist Ken Knox cannot publicly address Sampson’s assertions. Second, while Augusta employees are allowed to share pertinent research information with colleagues, few people in the golf industry care to speak “on the record” regarding the National, so extensive and powerful is the club’s reach. Arborists enthusiastic about discussing golf courses issues tend to become quite concerned with anonymity when the course is Augusta National.

For August National Pine Trees: An adverse setting

That said, there are some meaningful distinctions to draw when discussing the health and life expectancy of trees on any golf course. First and foremost, experts agree they simply don’t live as long on golf courses as they might in a natural forested environment. Indeed, trees don’t live as long in any man-made setting, as it’s impossible to duplicate the complexity of any tree’s natural ecosystem — the ecosystem most conducive to maximum life expectancy.

“A tree living outside its natural environment — on a golf course, a city street or a suburban lawn — is far more likely to encounter stress factors incited by humans,” explains Dr. Jay Stipes, a plant pathologist at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Va. “For example, soil compaction: Feet and tires compact the soil, reducing pore space for oxygen. Too much compaction and roots get oxygen deprivation, and they begin to die.”

“Golf course trees simply do not live as long as forest trees, all things being equal,” said one arborist who is familiar with the situation at Augusta National but requested anonymity. “Only a fool would say no trees are unhealthy at Augusta. It’s not a magical place. God isn’t treating Augusta any differently. But it would be very unfair to say they’re dying prematurely… Of the 20, 30 or 40 things that play a role in tree health, water and fertilization play relatively minor roles. Augusta isn’t different from any other golf course; they have problems. But, if anything, the life span of these trees has been enhanced by the work being done there. That’s for sure.”

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Late-Nineties Flashback: The Great Maine Golf Development Binge

by Hal Phillips 0 Comments
Maine Island greens

[Ed. This piece from 1998 was assigned and purchased by, but to my knowledge never appeared in, Downeast Magazine. At that time, the U.S. was opening 400 new golf facilities every year. Maine golf development was equally madcap. When I moved to New Gloucester that same year, only Fairlawn GC and Poland Spring existed nearby. In 2-3 years, Fox Ridge in Auburn (pictured above), Spring Meadow in Gray, and Toddy Brook in North Yarmouth had all opened for play. Heady times, as the story below relates. The correction arrived in 2008, when the U.S. golf course stock began to suffer a net loss of some 150 golf facilities each year. Since 2008, 11 Maine tracks have shuttered, including a favorite of mine, Sable Oaks GC in South Portland. I eulogize her here.]

By Hal Phillips
Maine Golf Development is booming, and it’s not clear exactly why. Developers of water parks don’t venture into the amusement industry because they’re particularly enamored of sharing flume boats shaped like giant logs. Nor do hoteliers invest in that business because they “have a thing” for walking down antiseptic hallways looking for ice machines. It’s understood these business decisions are calculated — based on demographics, market niches, the potential for profit and perhaps a paucity of existing competitors. Romantic notions or pure avocation don’t enter into these commercial equations.

Golf is a different animal. It’s an arena where the line between work and play has always been blurred. While “business” conducted on the golf course remains a genteel hybrid of recreation and vocation, data gatherers at the National Golf Foundation (NGF) — the industry’s research and information organization based in Jupiter, Fla. — are continually amazed at the scads of starry-eyed golf devotees who fund/build their own facilities because it’s always been their dream. “It’s sort of like, What do I want to do when I grow up?” said Barry Frank, a vice president at NGF. “Unfortunately, a great number of shirts have been lost in this process.”

Even so, new golf construction continues to boom nationally and Maine’s dreamers have proved no less fanciful in their ambitions. An astounding number of golf course projects, many spearheaded by first-time golf developers, are now underway here in Vacationland. A dozen new 18-hole layouts have just opened or remain in some phase of construction while another 10 facilities are adding nine. When Point Sebago Golf and Beach Resort opened for play in 1996, it was Maine’s first new 18-hole course since 1988. This sort of inactivity won’t characterize the next eight years.

“As a former banker, I know golf construction in Maine has lagged in past years, especially compared with national growth patterns,” said Arnold Roy, a Turner resident whose development syndicate, Fox Ridge Partners, will soon break ground on an 18-hole course in Harmon’s Corner, on Auburn’s south side. “We know there’s another golf course going in 15 miles down the road in Gray, but in the last 20 years there have been no new golf holes built within 20 miles of our site. And the interest in golfing has never been higher, as far as I can tell.”

Farms Give Way to Fairways

Following another national trend, Fox Ridge will be laid out on former farm land — so will the Gray course [Spring Meadows], a project developed by the owners of Cole Farms Restaurant on a fallow parcel directly across the street. Agricultural pursuits have also given way to golf down in Berwick; father and son Tim and Tom Flynn obviously believe their 160-acre parcel will prove more fertile when Outlook Farm Golf Club opens for play there next summer.

“I think what we’re seeing is pent-up demand,” said Brian Silva, the course architect who designed Outlook Farm. “Maine has been underdeveloped, in terms of golf for some time now. And the state certainly has its share of farmland which has seen better, more productive days.”

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