Tiger Woods designs hard to find
Tiger Woods Design is now on to its third course – it announced in October that it was designing Punta Brava in Mexico along an ocean side setting. The routing plans for the golf courses are nowhere to be found on Tiger Woods Design’s website.
I wonder why that is? To keep people from discussing them? He doesn’t want anybody to steal his ideas?
There are a few places where we get to see some idea of what the routing looks like for some of these golf courses. Here is the routing for the Cliffs course in High, North Carolina. (Click for larger.)
I’ll be the first to admit that judging any golf course by a routing is unfair – we can’t see the topography, although Tiger said that he wanted the course to be walkable, which means that the topography can’t be too severe, even if the course is in the mountains.. The fairways and greens won’t look exactly like what is shown and bunkers won’t be in the same place. There may even be more or fewer bunkers on each hole.
Now, that being said, we can still get a feel for what the design intent will be. We have returning nines that are segregated from one another – the front nine is on the west side and the back nine is on the east side. The good news is that the course is a “core course” – there is very little housing on the course. It is mostly along holes 5-8, which you can sort of see in this picture. It looks like there might be housing along 16-18 at some point in the future, but it’s difficult to tell with any certainty. Having looked at the routing for a little while, I don’t see anything of particular note. Holes 9 and 17 look somewhat interesting, but the rest look like copies of one another. I’ll be curious to see how the greens and their surrounds turn out – will there be bold green contours in the mold of Augusta or the sand hills of Australia that Tiger has praised in the past? Will more strategic elements be included?
We found out that, even in the current economy, that property sales weren’t too shabby. They sold $40 million worth of real estate in November. With property prices starting at $500,000 and going to over $3 million, that’s a decent haul. Probably enough to cover the cost of construction, land costs and Tiger’s design fee for the course. Maybe even a road or two in the subdivision.
The golf course at Punta Brava is quite different since it’s along the Pacific Ocean. The best I could come up with for a routing is below (that Tiger’s hand in the picture…). (Click for larger version.)
This is a different animal than the Cliffs. We see some pretty dramatic holes in 4, 9, 10, 16, 17 and 18. I’m sure the view on every hole will be spectacular. The internal holes also have some interesting features, like the shared bunkers on holes 3 and 4 and again on holes 14 and 15. The biggest downside I see to this design are all of the parallel holes, but that’s a minor quibble. This is actually a course that should be pretty interesting.
I’m looking forward to seeing some of the actual construction photos from the golf courses as well as how it’s played as a finished product. Hopefully his courses will live up to his playing ability.
Mr. Anderson
I am surprised that you do not know of the tigerwoods.com website. That’s where you have to go. You will then click on the TWD (Tiger Woods Design) menu to get detailed information. Very simple. That is always the start to get to his Foundation (TWF) and other information. Hope this proves helpful.
Thank you for the comment, Ms. Taylor. I actually linked to Tiger Woods’ official design website in this article. (See the second sentence.)
What is hard to find are routings of the golf courses – which is what I was talking about.
Thanks again.
Mr. Anderson,
It is nice to find a Civil Engineer writing about something I really enjoy (golf). I found golf because of being a Civil (Water Resources) Engineer, and now think of golf often when I’m at work. I am fairly confident my bosses don’t read your site because no one at my office plays or has any interest in golf. As you can imagine, my days at work is as desolate a place can be for an avid golf fan during the big tournaments and exciting golf milestones. Keep up the good work, and I’ll do my best not to read your site during work.
Thanks.
i like to play golf and i like to play tiger woods i have play it be for