La Cala was you’re first project alone...

Certainly it was in Spain, though I had re-modelled the Royal Golf d’Evian in France. I don’t remember the exact timings, but when I left Mr. Jones in ‘87 I got a call within a week from a lawyer in town who wanted me to meet the then promoter. So yes, that was my first project under my own name here in Spain. The one in Evian came about more-or-less the same time, but La Cala was a completely new course. I remember standing up on the hill the day before the machines started, and looking at this very difficult piece of land and thinking ‘I hope I know what I’m doing!’

But I’d worked on some difficult sites in the States and seen a lot of Robert Trent Jones’s work, and was pretty confident that I could handle it. I’d be the first to admit that I made some mistakes there that I wouldn’t have made today, but I’m still extremely proud of the course because I think at that time a lot of other designers would have made a real mess of the piece of land. By and large I’ve always been reasonably proud of what I created as my first job.

How do you start the design process on such a site?
Does it enable you to put your stamp on the course?

I don’t know that I ever really look at a site with a type of course that I want to design in mind. On a difficult piece of land it is important that I have first choice over how it is used in order to make a playable golf course. I was allowed this freedom at La Cala, but I didn’t approach it with any preconceived ideas about the type of course I wanted to create. I had been working for twenty years or so with Mr. Jones, and I was sub consciously, or consciously, trying to do the same type of course I would have done for him. Apart from that I’ve rarely gone into a site where I say for example ‘I’m gonna do a desert type course’, because I’ve never really had a desert type piece of land.


What is the secret to making a successful course?

Marketing seems to play a big part in whether a course is successful, at least initially. I think that eventually the courses kind of speak for themselves, but I think that the problem we have now is ‘name’ designers. If a course is good it’s going to stay good, regardless of the designer who created it. The designers name has some historic importance, but less overall importance because everyone is always looking for the newest, greatest thing.

To me one example is the Middle East. I’ve done work and am doing work in Cyprus, but I’ve never done any over in the Middle East: Dubai, Abu Dhabi etc. But I think that virtually every course being done over there has a big name golfer associated with it. I’m never quite sure what I think of that - I’m sort of comfortable in my own situation. I’d love to do some work over there, but doubt that I’ll ever be asked to because I don’t have the name of a pro.

I’ve often thought that if I were an extremely wealthy promoter I would be very tempted to get a big name pro for the simple reason that I could rub shoulders with them and maybe play a few holes with them. I could tell my friends that I played golf with Jack or Ernie or Gary... whoever.

I understand it from that point of view, but I’ve lost some jobs in the past to name pros because the marketing people pushed the client to go down that route.

I also have problems with some courses trying to push a course into being a par 72 when it should be a par 71. I try to explain that it just doesn’t matter. This is again something that I learnt from Mr. Jones who said that the sign of a good course is creating 18 good golf holes, not how long it is. We have some wonderful courses in the States that are par 70, 6,000 meters. Merion Golf and Country Club is a short course, and has held the US Open, the most important and prestigious tournament in golf along with The Open, it’s hard to tell which is more important. But it’s held the US Open four times because it is recognised as one of America’s great golf courses, even though it’s not that long!