The following first appeared in Golf Course Architecture in 2006. Forrest Richardson shares lessons learned while devising the routing plan for The Links at Las Palomas in Sonora, Mexico. Mike had seated himself at the end of the long table. From my vantage point I could see that he was on his third — maybe fourth — tequila shot. His first shots — that is, the very first tastes of tequila to ever cascade their way into his belly — had come just an hour earlier. Mike was from Kansas. Rural Kansas is not much on tequila so I am told. This is equitable however. For [...]

The following is excerpted from Bunkers, Pits & Other Hazards, by Forrest Richardson & Mark Fine (©John Wiley & Sons, 2006) The hazard lives primarily for intrigue, to create strategy, to penalize, and to suggest to the golfer, however subtle or strong, to think about choosing a different route. These are the core of the reasons for hazards. Today, as golf courses have become big business, the driving force behind hazards has grown. We now hear of bunkers being placed "as an aid in aiming," water and sand created for "aesthetic qualities," hazards conceived to direct balls away from adjacent land uses, [...]

The following is excerpted from Bunkers, Pits & Other Hazards, by Forrest Richardson & Mark Fine (©John Wiley & Sons, 2006) When the game of golf was first played the term hazard was surely not an actual thing or object. It was a "concept," a situation a player got himself into. A problem not avoided caused your ball to be in trouble and the outcome was not known until you performed. Only as time progressed did these perilous situations became known as "hazards." The concept became a defined term: "Your ball is in a hazard." The definition of a "hazard" varied over [...]

The following is excerpted from Bunkers, Pits & Other Hazards, by Forrest Richardson & Mark Fine (©John Wiley & Sons, 2006) Ideally every golf course should have "a golf course architect." It amazes us how often we find this not to be the case. If there ever were a type of facility within our built environment that truly needs and deserves the continual advice of a design professional, it is the golf course. Our encouragement to clubs, committees and greenkeepers is to develop an on-going relationship with a qualified golf course architect. You would be surprised how easy it is to find [...]

The following was adapted from writing in Routing the Golf Course, by Forrest Richardson (©John Wiley & Sons, 2002) It is true that some golfers are hitting the ball farther these days. I suspect that the term these days will apply no matter the year in which this paragraph is read. As equipment improves, it increases the likelihood of a golf ball traveling farther down a fairway. What has not necessarily improved is the golfer. I know this because the last group I was paired with had a healthy investment in golf clubs but no investment in improvement. They hit the ball [...]

The following is a Short Story about Bureaucracy. It was excerpted from Routing the Golf Course, by Forrest Richardson (©John Wiley & Sons, 2002) "Hello, this is Professor Glückinspell. Is this Forrest?" Professor Glückinspell had only called once before, and it was a strange time for him to call. It was considerably earlier in Hawaii. The professor said that up near the sixth hole, off to the left of the green near an outcropping of lava, he had found some plants that needed further study. This addition brought the total of protected species of plants to three at this mountainside site undergoing [...]

The following is excerpted from Routing the Golf Course, by Forrest Richardson (©John Wiley & Sons, 2002) Programming outlines can be used to establish budgets, or they may be used to prove established budgets are right or wrong. Either way, the need to arrive at budgets, at least for a vast majority of projects, is essential. The viability of a project is determined when the budget is held up to the light and a realistic return on the investment is calculated. There are as many ways to make this comparison as there are to hit a sand shot. One of the best [...]

The following is excerpted from Routing the Golf Course, by Forrest Richardson (©John Wiley & Sons, 2002) Rhythm. Balance. Sequence. A routing plan must give careful attention to each. Without these qualities, the golf course might as well be an ordinary maze and the golfer a rat looking for cheese. The idea of rhythm, balance, and sequence was articulated by golf architect Desmond Muirhead while I was writing this book. Muirhead's distinguished career began in urban planning and migrated to golf course design, when out of necessity, he began having to solve golf course routing assignments.. Although many golf course architects are [...]

Here I am in my backyard (c. 1970) playing at one of my early courses. The following originally appeared in Peek, a publication of Potlach Corporation When I was four my uncle "Mo" introduced me to miniature golf at a hand-crafted Hawaiian-themed course, appropriately, called "Hana-Lea" (Hawaiian for "Small Work".) There, amongst the wave-like, felt-covered fairways and the small scale thatched huts where balls would enter and then drop magically onto greens ringed with real lava rock, there were miniature lagoons, bamboo bridges and the occasional "island" to be reached via winding paths perched alongside cascading waterfalls. In the eyes of a [...]

The following is excerpted from Routing the Golf Course, by Forrest Richardson (©John Wiley & Sons, 2002) Accuracy, carry, and then length. This, according to golf architect William Flynn (among the youngest — age 19 — ever to be asked to design a golf course, as he was in 1909), is the order of importance in designing individual golf holes. It should be noted that Flynn did not say this at 19 but rather when he had a bit more experience in his later years. When you combine these ingredients into different recipes — maybe a little more accuracy here but not [...]