EarthGolf

In Doug Ferguson’s recent article, he mentions in passing that Tiger Woods Design has hired Beau Welling to be its lead designer. Welling is a former Tom Fazio design associate.

Woods said Bryon Bell, whom he hired as president of Tiger Woods Design, found Welling after looking at the philosophies of various design companies.

“Beau fit what we wanted to have happen,” Woods said.

Tiger also made this statement in Golf Digest regarding design.

Admittedly, Woods, who is designing his first course in Dubai, sees golf courses differently these days.

“Definitely,” Woods said. “I’ve probably started doing that the last five or six years, trying to understand why they would do this, why they would do that and try to get an understanding of it. And then obviously talking to some of the architects over the years and even some of the players who have become architects to get an understanding of how a golf course should be played.”

There’s a lot of depth lacking here. So many questions that are left unanswered. What is the philosophy? What are the “this and that” that he’s been trying to understand? Understanding how a golf course should be played - or a golf course should be designed?

Tiger has said in the past that the Australian sand belt courses are the ones he likes.

“I will not be hiring some guy to design a golf course. I’ll be hands on and involved in it.” He was more forthcoming about his design philosophy. “My tastes are toward the old and traditional. I’m a big fan of the Aussie-built courses in Melbourne, the sand-belt courses. I’m also a tremendous fan of some of the courses in our Northeast.”
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“I’m not one who thoroughly enjoys playing point B to point C to point D golf,” he continued. “The courses I like are the ones where you have the option to play different shots. I enjoy working the ball on the ground and using different avenues.”

Those are fantastic answers - and a design philosophy that I certainly admire and appreciate. I’m curious what Welling could have done at Fazio that would remotely be like this, though. Fazio’s design philosophy doesn’t translate to this type golf course. Look at the changes at Augusta and that’s readily apparent - tree planting is the antithesis of Tiger’s “options” design philosophy. How the course at Dubai turns out will be interesting on many levels - hopefully we’ll get to know more about Tiger the designer through this process and hopefully we’ll see that he holds to his philosophy.

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