"Old courses aren't always the best, Fazio says"

I'm shocked no one emailed to point out Tom Fazio's latest wisdom on why his generation (well, and really, him personally) is the best. I suppose you can only hear the same old broken record skip around so much. Nonetheless... 

Lorne Rubenstein writes:

There's a tendency in course architecture circles to sanctify the past while discrediting the present. The top 10 courses in Golf Digest's most recent ranking of the top 100 U.S. courses were built before 1935. Can this be an accurate reflection of the truly "great" courses?

No, says Tom Fazio, probably golf's most successful architect in the past 30 years.

"That is fact," Fazio, 63, said the other day of modern rankings, "not that they are the best, but that that's the way people automatically think. Golf is a traditional game, and people like to go to Scotland and Ireland. They want to visit the home of golf. But imagine if somebody designed a course like St. Andrews today with blind shots. Golfers would wonder what's going on."

I know, can you imagine, blind shots? All that strategy too, minus framing and aiming bunkers? Frankly, it's just so wrong that they don't update the Old Course for today's discerning golfer.

Fazio was speaking in his headquarters here, in a house backing onto the Intracoastal Waterway. He'd flown in from Spain the night before, and had watched the film Casablanca on the plane. The famous film was made in 1942 and starred Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman. Many people think of it as the best film ever made. Fazio loves the movie.

"It's wonderful," he said. "But I was watching it and wondering what people would say today. You accept that it's the best. That's what people say. It's like when golfers talk about a Donald Ross course. But they never say just that they played a Donald Ross course. They played a 'great old' Donald Ross course."

And the point of this brilliant analogy, besides the fact that we shoud be grateful Tom Fazio isn't a film editor charged with restoring Casablanca?

None of Fazio's impressive body of work is in the Golf Digest's top 10 in the United States, of course.

Of course! Why would it be? Oh sorry, continue...

He breaks into the top 100 with Wade Hampton (1987) in Cashiers, N.C. at No. 15, and next is No. 22, his Victoria National (1998) in Newburgh, Ind. But he didn't seem concerned.

"I'm always telling clients that it's very hard to break into the Golf Digest list," Fazio said. "I hammer the people who run the magazines about the rankings, because it's such a controversial subject. I would have a top 100 for every decade. What's wrong with that? I happen to think the nineties were the best decade. Others say the twenties.

"The decade of the twenties was great," Fazio continued. "There was money around then, before the Depression."

Because after all, money=great design.

"Golf changes," Fazio said. "You wouldn't want to go back to the equipment that my uncle used, or to the way they built courses."

Nor will anyone want to go back and build courses the way Tom Fazio does!

Imagine today, the travesty of producing the graceful lines and gentle character like the old guys did. Or those green complexes that rest so nicely in the landscape and have all those cute little bumps and things that are lost with modern USGA green construction.

Here's a reminder that there is one architect who loves the equipment revolution. After all, it creates more chances to bulldoze the work of those pesky old and overrated guys!

"I've been listening to these discussions forever," Fazio said, "whether they're about equipment and how far the ball goes or about courses. I think the modern equipment is great for golf. It's kept us in the game longer. People in their sixties and seventies are hitting the ball as far as they ever did. They love that."

Not all players love it. Jack Nicklaus, for one, is adamant that the powers-that-be should roll back the distance a ball can go.

Fazio doesn't agree. He also pointed out that the best classic courses are always changing. Pine Valley, No. 1 on Golf Digest's most recent list, had seven new back tees and three rebuilt greens. Then there's Augusta National, No. 3, where Fazio is the design consultant.

"You go to Augusta National, and you might not notice the changes," Fazio said because the club works in alterations seamlessly. "But they're making changes all the time."

Nope, it is so hard to detect those changes at Augusta. Because they've been so discreetly carried out. And  yet, so well received.