A confession: I cannot stop thinking about TGL course architecture.
Just the other day I sketched out some thoughts on the brilliance of Stinger (as well as Cenote), two mind-bending additions to this season’s repertoire of mega-simulator holes that have pros out-doing each other in Full-Swing-measured, low-launch competitions and sending drivers flying 30 yards over the green on a par-3 on purpose. Those two were designed by Agustin Pizá, a visionary architect who seems to have found his calling in a golf world without boundaries, taking the opportunity to ask questions about playing golf in four dimensions, playing holes that go forwards and backwards plus other inspired brain teasers.
Until, on Thursday, another shocking drop arrived.
The anti-Pizá, in my mind, was Gil Hanse — arguably the hottest golf course architect in the real world and a TGL addition for Season 2. I don’t say anti-Pizá because Hanse is some sort of wet blanket; he has talked about “fun” in course architecture literally his entire career and was game for this hilarious SoFi Center walkout. But he’s undeniably more of a traditionalist; in addition to his original designs he’s an expert in real-life restorations, and in his introductory comments as part of this TGL experiment he shouted out some Golden-Age designers as inspiration.
(Editor’s note: My TGL fixation comes in part from our recent visit, on YouTube or below)
“On a few of our TGL holes, we decided to honor the concepts, thoughts, and styles of some of the greatest designers from golf history like A. W. Tillinghast, Alister MacKenzie, Donald Ross, etc.,” Hanse said.
His debut design, “Stone and Steeple,” followed that ethos. The 590-yard par-5 looked a believable addition to a country club in a bucolic New England town.
It did feature a graveyard down the left side — every TGL match is a reminder of our ultimate mortality — but Hanse referenced Taconic Golf Club as inspiration (where he led a restoration in Williamstown, Mass., arguably the greatest place on earth) and a press release compared the hole’s fairway bunkering to Hanse’s work at Baltusrol’s Lower course in New Jersey; that’s a Tillinghast restoration. This was a Golden-Age tribute on the big screen.
Then came this one.
