OK, so on the topic of “a miserable time”... as a designer – ‘Out of Bounds’. Do you see it as an integral part of the make-upof a course, or is it an unneccesary evil? When you design a course do you try to avoid it?
On the right side of every golf hole, where a lot of players play, I try to balance it by giving a little bit more room for error. Do I believe that every rule that the R&A and USGA have come up with make sense? Stroke and distance really doesn’t make any sense to me versus a lateral, or stroke and drop and play. For one I think it works against the speed of play. Trying to determine where a ball went out of bounds versus a lateral. I don’t think its one of our better rules for time.
I also don’t like people to hit it out of bounds, or hit a fairway and roll out of bounds. I do everything I can to stop that happening. Sometimes I put bunkers there. Then you hit it in the bunker, and say “I hate that bunker”. Well it saved your golf ball and saved you a shot! They serve a purpose.
That is why you see my longer bunkers running up the fairway where there is potentially out of bounds. We call them waste bunkers. They are long and they’re intimidating, and people hit into them two or three times, because you always think you can hit it out of the bunker and into the hole,instead of like with the links-style pot bunkers where you just hit it out and get back on the fairway. When you are in it and you hit it three times you’re not going to likeit, and I really have to teach my children the meaning of “Damn Dye!”.
I like my first holes – they can be intimidating right off the bat, and there it is! Here’s what your day’s going to look like! You really need to let your client or customer know what they are in for and get them to the right tee.
You mentioned the Scottish links style bunkers…
you created the Royal links Golf course in Las Vegas.
You’ve been studying me! Yes I did.
Did you select the holes that you wanted to recreate?
I was always lucky – I’d played them. I played a lot of golf in Scotland. I love the golf courses, the bad weather, I love it all I really do – it’s one of my favourite places. But that particular owner came to me and said “I want you to make 18 holes all from British Opens”.
I did a lot of studying of the British Open Golf Courses. I looked at each one. The most difficult was trying to pick out which holes I could combine into an 18 hole course. I probably would have never done that project unless it was in Las Vegas, where you have New York, the Eiffel tower and the Pyramid. I have respect for the history of the game, but duplicationreally is part of the fantastic architecture of Las Vegas. I think that 2,000 years from now when they uncover Las Vegas from the sands, people will say, “wow these were the most creative architects in the world!’.
So I figured out how to put all those on that piece of ground in Las Vegas. It is one of the funnier things, some people say that I did too good a job replicating the holes! You’re talking about 18 British Open golf holes, I mean those are pretty difficult holes! But a couple of weeks before a British Open you can stop by there and you’ll see about a half a dozen tour pros out practicing, getting ready to go to Europe. So I am really proud of that part of it. It’s as close as you can be in a warmer climate. What surprised me was that there were only about 13 or 14 courses that have held the British Open inits entire history.
You are known for golf courses that are environmentally sensitive.
How important to you is the environment when it comes to golf course design?
I make the statement that in the history of golf we have made some mistakes. It is well publicised in the U.S., but today our golf courses are the keepers of the green. We are in charge of cleaning the environment, cleaning the water and keeping it safe. We now have the technology to do that, and our golfers demand this from us. That is why they are outside, and that’s why they are enjoying being outside… they want to see the birds, they want to see the foxes, that’s what they are there for. That is part of golf. We have taught ourselves how to take care of the environment. We have examples and we’ve shown our government and done testing for 20 years. We know for a fact and have scientifically proved that we are doing a good job. Where we are doing a bad job is with our public relations outside our country.
I now have environmentalists coming to me inside my country and saying, “Perry we want to change this area, and we’re going to work with this habitat, we have come to you because you know how to do it”. That was not true 15 years ago. Environmentalists came to me to say, “We don’t want your golf course”.
I was walking around a piece of ground two weeks ago with a couple of environmentalists who said, “This piece of ground needs a golf course, because it is not taken care of; a vacant piece of ground going downhill”. I dont think that in the history of my career have I ever had environmentalists turn to me and say, “This place needs a golf course”!
Do you think attitudes are changing?
We are working side by side with all creatures of the world including environmentalists, and have proven and have case studies on just about every issue from tourism up to the endangered species. So we’re there with the environmental understanding in the States. Now it is time to export those examples, and to bring them into places like Europe and Vietnam, and other places to show them how it works. So exporting that technology is a key part of what I do. We are so used to doing it in the United States. I was talking to some golfers in Spain recently. I said that it was important for them to talk to their government about their successes. One of the mistakeswe made in the U.S. was where we had successes we didn’t promote them. So now when we go to all these different countries we show how we are helping the environment. We always want to photograph the most beautiful golf course in the world. Its bright green and the sand is bright, but there’s usually birds that are off there to the side that never get photographed. But you can go around early in the morning and you can see birds and all sorts of creatures on the golf course. We need to have more focus on that.
How often do you get to play golf?
When I play I like to play a week at a time, because it takes me a couple of days to get what I consider “my game” back. I play a lot of one time, fun games, but I usually take a couple of weeks off a year and just play golf. It is always difficult to step off an airplane and swing that driver, and especially to open new golf courses. Those are long days as I never know which game is going to show up, or if I left it on the plane. When I hit the opening drive with Seve Ballesteros at San Roque New, we had all the cameras to the right. Seve and I had to tee off at the same time so I said, “I’m going left! We’re not taking out a camera man right here in front of everybody! Swing slow, swing sweet!”
