REES JONES
Attention Cape golfers: The U.S. Open Doctor has arrived.
By Nicholas Smith
Photos by George Peet
Rees Jones designed the latest addition to Cape Cod golf on Route 151 in East Falmouth, adjacent to Ballymeade Country Club. The
new course, appropriately named The Golf Club at Cape Cod, is a private, members-only, 7,000-yard-plus, par-72 course and the first Jones design on the Cape. Architecturally savvy readers will be familiar with Rees Jones courses like Nantucket Golf Club, named Golf Digest’s best new private course in 1998, and also the Jones Course at the Pinehills.
The Golf Club at Cape Cod is a textbook Jones design that holds steady to the Jones philosophy “to create an environment for the game of golf that is challenging, fair, and aesthetically pleasing.”
On a rainy day in early September, Golf on Cape Cod magazine met with Rees Jones on the grounds of The Golf Club at Cape Cod to discuss the new course, his career, and the importance of routing.
“Golf is an escape,” Jones said with a loud chuckle, which we learned quickly is a signature characteristic of the amicable architect.
Indeed, Mr. Jones. Indeed.
Rees Jones has stood on top of the golf course architecture profession for some 30-plus years, and his reputation as one of the great living golf architects is well substantiated. With a B.A. from Yale University and graduate studies in landscape architecture at Harvard, Jones has the background to create great courses.
Golf architecture is not the kind of profession that can be learned in the classroom, Jones assured. “This is one of the professions where the longer you are in the business the better you are.”
Perhaps more important than his schooling, though, Jones was tutored in the golf course design business by his father, the late, world-renowned, prolific golf architect Robert Trent Jones (1906-2000).
“I think being brought up in the business and being tutored has been important to my success,” Jones said.
“This isn’t just a second profession for me like it is for some of the golf pros. Actually, I have seen a lot of golf courses. I have played a lot of golf courses. I look at features, and I learn from what I see. I learn something new every day.”
Shortly after disbanding from his father’s firm in 1974, Jones started his own golf course design company, Rees Jones, Inc., headquartered in Montclair, New Jersey.
Since starting Rees Jones, Inc., he has designed well over 100 courses. Golf Digest hails him as one of the 25 most powerful people in golf today. A number of Jones’ courses are rated among Golf Digest’s and Golf Magazine’s Top 100 courses, and he was recognized by Golf Magazine as Golf Architect of the Year in 1995. His most cherished accolade, however, is that of “U.S. Open Doctor,” a nickname his father wore proudly before him and a legacy Jones intends on continuing with honor.
“I think that [U.S. Open Doctor nickname] was so important to my father. It was like going to Broadway for him. That is the way I feel, like going to Broadway,” said Jones.
Jones earned his reputation as The U.S. Open Doctor after years of restoring America’s most sacred courses for the United States Golf Association: The Country Club in Brookline for the 1988 U.S. Open as well as the Ryder Cup in 1999; Hazeltine National for the ’91 U.S. Open; Pinehurst #2 for the ‘99 Open; Baltusrol, ’93 Open; Congressional Blue, ’97 Open; Bethpage Black, ’02 Open – a course that is well known as the greatest public track in the U.S.; and his recent renovations at Torrey Pines will be utilized in the 2008 U.S. Open.
“The greatest achievement I am having now is I am going back to redo Oakland Hills for the 2008 PGA,” said Jones. “That is where Dad got started. So everything kind of goes full circle. Ben Hogan called it a monster, and now we have to make it more difficult because the equipment is so much better, but Dad was worried about the equipment too, and that is why he lengthened and rebuilt the greens and re-bunkered the whole course.”
Jones discussed some of the challenges of redesigning golf courses compared to building courses from the ground up. “When you do a remodel you are subject to a lot more criticisms than when you do a new course, because there are no pre-conceived ideas on a new course.”
Certainly, golfers’ ideas about how their favorite course should look or be changed can be problematic to the remodeling process. But the real challenge arises when a course needs to be redesigned to challenge the pros of the game for only four days out of the year and then be returned to a manageable level for amateur players.
“We have to consider the average player first, and then we have to tighten it up for the week of the pros,” said Jones. “Then we have to give it back to the members. I think that is what we’ve done successfully with all our major championship courses. We have changed it for the tournament and then brought it back for the members, the public.”
“Adding length has certainly become very important,” Jones added. The question begs to be asked. How much longer can golf holes become before they resemble airport runways?
“We should fluff up the sand,” Jones suggested. “We should speed up the greens. The way they [the pros] are hitting it, we need to make the green more important and I think that is what we do with a lot of our courses. Green contours are a form of hazard, and they are even more important today than they were in the past.”
“These holes, just one after another, on this type of terrain. I think this is going to be an eye-popping golf course,” said Jones about The Golf Club at Cape Cod.
On that same rainy September day, Rees Jones walked with us across the golf course site like Old Tom Morris must have before the days of excavating machines. He looked out from beneath his cap and said humbly, “This site really is rugged.”
Most of the tees at The Golf Club at Cape Cod are elevated, providing an honest look at the obstacles, allowing the player to clearly envision a safe route to the pin. The fairways are appropriately layered with classic architectural features, fairway bunkers strategically placed demanding careful course management, mounds and pockets dispersed throughout to make course management more difficult, and contoured greens that reward well-placed approaches while penalizing errant shots.
There are two internal bodies of water that come into play on four different holes, ocean views on two holes, and enough sand placed in cross-bunkers and bunker-laced par 3’s to deliver that quintessential Cape Cod golf course visual. Many holes are bordered with the ever-Cape Cod-prevalent fescues. More noticeably, however, the course is graced with the presence of naturally formed hole divisions and a healthy supply of naturally formed hole definitions.
After the first few walks through the land, even before it was excavated, Jones was enthralled with the acreage on Rte. 151 and knew he had a valuable piece of property on which to build a golf course. And in order to capitalize on such a beautiful piece of land, Jones continued, “Good routing is essential.”
Routing a golf course is both an art and a science. In Routing the Golf Course, a celebrated golf architecture book, author Forrest Richardson commented, “There are 35,000 golf courses across the world, and it is my guess that out of the 50 million golfers who occupy their fairways, it is a rare instance to hear one say something along the lines of ‘Gee, the routing of this course is very interesting.’”
Rees Jones certainly agrees with Richardson and has tried earnestly to draw more attention to the importance of routing as an essential function of the golf architect’s job.
“When you read articles on golf courses, you read about the green contours, the bunkers, the style, the vegetation – whether it be grass or trees. You read about the length of the course. But you never read about how 18 holes come together on one piece of land.”
“It is like spokes on a wheel,” Jones explained. “It all has to work. They all have to fit together.”
“I think you earn your money more when you have a piece of ground like this, where the routing is essential. Here, every hole fits like a glove, and that is where you really earn your keep.”
“When you have a flat site,” added Jones, “you have unlimited options and you can fall back on almost anything you’ve done. Here you can’t. Here the site dictates the design.”
However important Jones considers routing to be, he acknowledged the fact that the process of golf course design continues to be a spontaneous process – even when the holes are so well routed as at The Golf Club at Cape Cod. In other words, the routing of the course doesn’t predetermine all the features of the various holes. “I don’t have preconceived ideas for all the holes,” Jones said.
“What we do is build our first few holes. We create features, and then we make sure we don’t repeat the same thing. We don’t know what we are going to do on the sixth hole or the 10th hole until after we build the first hole.”
Jones considers The Golf Club at Cape Cod to be a course that demands smart play. “It is a wonderful finesse course. Like the 2nd hole and the 7th hole. And then there are holes that you are going to have to think your way around.”
“I think this fits the New England design mode,” said Jones, “because architects like Donald Ross would go and select the best property for the best course. They had choices everywhere. In this case, it is just like an old site, pre-Depression-style. It is like we selected this as the best site with the best holes. I would really like to play this course with a person for the first time.”
Additionally, said Jones, “The Golf Club at Cape Cod is a very walkable course.”
Though the course has yet to be played by any golfer and already looks mature, Charlie Passios, general manager for The Golf Club at Cape Cod, said the course will be ready for play by next summer.
Further excerpts from the conversation:
GOCC: Do you get the same satisfaction designing courses for the pros as you do the average player?
REES: I actually get more satisfaction designing courses for the average player because I am an average player. And they are the ones that pay for the rounds of golf. And I think you have to design courses specifically for them.
GOCC: What do you think the biggest differences are between classic archi-tecture and contemporary architecture?
REES: Well, I think most architects are going back to the pre-Depression-style. For a while we got into this pot bunker phase. Then we got into the emulation
of the British Links. Loxahatchee and Grand Cypress were these really dramatic sort of piles of dirt, and now we are sort of going to more developed uses of the land.
GOCC: What makes for a successful golf course?
REES: I think it is a golf course that you want to play continually. You don’t want it to be too easy so it is boring. You don’t want it to be too hard so that it defeats you before you tee up. I think you have to have a golf course where, when you tee off on the first hole, you can shoot your designated score. You feel you can accomplish your goals.
GOCC: Your noted work includes courses all over the country: desert, inland, coast. How do you stay fresh in your ideas?
REES: Probably because I don’t take too many jobs, and I stay involved with them myself. I am always thinking about the courses.
GOCC: Do you prefer renovations or building a course from the ground up?
REES: I prefer jobs with great clients. The client is the key.
GOCC: What makes a great client?
REES: One that you get on the same wavelength with. I don’t take many jobs. I don’t take bad sites, and so I have many jobs with many good properties: Arizona, Ocean Forest, The Bridge, Long Island, Baker.
GOCC: Silva has done a lot of remodeling...
REES: He has become an expert on Ross.
GOCC: Do you admire Ross as a designer?
REES: It is funny, but you have to remember that all these architects weren’t totally consistent. Ross did a lot of jobs. His routings are spectacular, but a lot of his courses had to be re-done. His greens sometimes have too much pitch on them. So there was a reason to remodel them, and this restoration craze is overdone. I think you have to think of today’s player, and if you have greens like at Montclair Golf Club that are 8 percent sloped greens, they need to be changed. The faster speeds you just can’t play. So Ross took a high volume of work whereas people like Dr. Alister MacKenzie didn’t. (A.W.) Tillinghast didn’t. Tillinghast is sort of my favorite because he did it like I do it. He takes a few jobs and brings his own people.
GOCC: Look what he did in Westchester, Baltusrol, Winged Foot, Quaker Ridge...
REES: I admire Donald Ross because he had two engineers, McGovern and Hatch, who really were phenomenal. They did phenomenal routings.
GOCC: Is Pinehurst #2 a good test?
REES: That is one great examination.
GOCC: Is length very important, or not?
REES: It has become important because the good young players are hitting the ball a long way. I am going back to some of my old courses and adding length. I am going back to Congressional that I redid for the ‘97 Open for the 2011. I added length to Baltusrol. I am adding length to Bethpage. I am adding length to the Atlanta Athletic Club for the PGA. I am going and adding length to Oakland Hills for the PGA. We just added length to Medinah...
GOCC: These are all long courses anyway. I am surprised you had to add to Baltusrol?
REES: Well, 17 is a great example. Tiger still went for it with an iron – 650 yards. The problem with that is all those bunkers in front of the green. If you hit it short and have a long bunker shot, you might make bogey.
GOCC: With lengthening a course due to equipment technology…is keeping a course walkable that important from a design standpoint?
REES: It isn’t the major factor. The major factor is that every hole fits the land. Then, secondly, make it walkable.
GOCC: The players or the equipment influence this decision?
REES: Both. People want to hit home runs. Young golfers getting into the game want to hit it a long way. They can’t score, but they get a kick out of hitting it a long way with this new equipment, the lighter shafts, the metal head, and the super duper balls. We have to take all this into consideration.
GOCC: How does that work? I thought they were supposed to exercise some sort of control, so beautiful courses could stay the same?
REES: I think there is so much money in R&D for Titleist, Callaway, and Taylor Made that they can work within the rules and still add distance.
GOCC: When you design a course, you add the tee boxes, so
no matter what the technology has done, the handicap still stays the same. What about the longer tees?
REES: What a longer tee does is to allow lots of people to have tees to play from. If you have a 6,500-yard course, everybody has to play from the same tee to have a challenge, but when you have 7,300, 6,900, 6,300, 5,500 – then you have a golf course for everybody. It aids everybody in the game as long as they pick the proper tee.
GOCC: So there is a limit to where the length makes sense?
REES: Yeah, well, you can narrow the fairways and water the rough and not water the fairways so the ball will then go into the rough. It is like the Dodgers did for their bad infielders. They used to water the infield to slow the ball down.
GOCC: Are we over-built?
REES: Absolutely not. We are still finding that we are getting lots of jobs. And there is still a lot of interest in places like Long Island, Cape Cod, Arizona, California, Jackson Hole – where people are just waiting to join.
GOCC: If you take yourself out of this question, what architect of your peers do you admire today?
REES: All the dead ones.
GOCC: Do you have a favorite golf course that you’ve done?
REES: The next one.
GOCC: Do you like to play your own courses?
REES: Yes. Ya know it’s funny; they did an article in U.S. Air Magazine. At the end of the article, they say how I’m almost disappointed when the job ends and the course gets turned over to the players because it is no longer mine anymore, it’s theirs. So, during the construction phase, it is just a few of us that have ownership. When it is transferred over, everybody owns it. That is what is so great about it.
GOCC: I get this excitement from you as you talk. It is like you have this passion that doesn’t ever dull…
REES: Ya, I love what I do. In fact, I went to a cocktail party once and a woman asked me, “Are you retired?” And I answered, “I have never worked a day in my life.” She said, “Oh, I know a lot of people like you.” But she never asked what I meant.
Thanks Rees. The golfers of the world know what you meant.
Rees Jones designed the latest addition to Cape Cod golf on Route 151 in East Falmouth, adjacent to Ballymeade Country Club. The
new course, appropriately named The Golf Club at Cape Cod, is a private, members-only, 7,000-yard-plus, par-72 course and the first Jones design on the Cape. Architecturally savvy readers will be familiar with Rees Jones courses like Nantucket Golf Club, named Golf Digest’s best new private course in 1998, and also the Jones Course at the Pinehills.
Jones discussed some of the challenges of redesigning golf courses compared to building courses from the ground up. “When you do a remodel you are subject to a lot more criticisms than when you do a new course, because there are no pre-conceived ideas on a new course.”
“When you read articles on golf courses, you read about the green contours, the bunkers, the style, the vegetation – whether it be grass or trees. You read about the length of the course. But you never read about how 18 holes come together on one piece of land.”
REES: Well, I think most architects are going back to the pre-Depression-style. For a while we got into this pot bunker phase. Then we got into the emulation