Water everywhere and TV images of recent sporting history drives hundreds of thousands of us to follow in the footsteps of the Tour Champions, and the Major winners, only venues and actual hole designs have become comparable to the musical repertoire of mainstream radio artists. The well publicised and promoted (and successful) sounds that are playlisted from Radio 2 downwards are nearly always hyped through pre-release, their performers splattered across the gossip pages to augment the promotion then just weeks later, that ingrained hallicinatory tune will appear as part of an advert to finally drive you wild - about 2 weeks after release .... terribly sad. We seem to want to buy an artist's album to enjoy the hits but is the quality consistent through an hour of music rather than the few minutes of what makes us buy the recording?
Its mass marketing developed in the 80's and refined year on year. For modern golf, the 'feature' hole is a similar and key tool in a course's success. It is becoming an irrelvance for a player to even think about their final score. They are much more likely to be concerned about what they claim on just a handful of holes, the ones designed for drama, for visual impact, the TV and magazine fodder.
The very best recording artists may include the odd 'blip' in their musical output but once they establish a style and an image people like, they can go on to give enjoyment for year on year before reviving their fan base with Greatest Hits complilations. Those who keep working and having continued success tend more and more to be artists from the 60s 70s and into the 80's. They have been allowed a reputation.
Compare this with our sport and again its reputation that really makes a golf course, no matter how much PR is thrown at golfers, places where year on year people walk away from a course and remember that day, no matter what they scored for the full 18. Time is the perfect antidote for promotional flam and fluster and those places where the 'supporting act' dominates (in numbers) a course or sometimes even finishes a round, they are built, publicised and then take up the cabaret circuit of courses to visit.
To create a chart star needs style makeovers, image manufacturing and brand placement and it seems for most, produces a career that gets ever shorter. The music industry doesn't give artists a second thought if they cannot satisfy the sterility of the music market. The industries answer to this - to promote anything 'new' with abandon, and 'new' often means lesser quality. Finding good land for golf courses is much harder than it was. The supposed natural quality is not there yet the tools an architect now has are incredible - at least the machanical ability to shift earth, to build ponds, lakes, rivers and the like. It is possible to take any piece of land and create any sort of conditions for golf - all bar for the subject of this review.
There are many more architects now than years gone by. In their armoury they have diggers and excavators, stronger grasses and the best construction techniques, and the marvel of marvel's the computer. The latter should be, needs to be binned. Its hardly possible to play some of the great courses in person though for a few pounds, its something anyone can 'do' with the help of an electronic game. However, there is a problem with a screen and the way that software tries its best to create both a true reflection of both something real and what could be, with a little bit of 'design'.
There is no nature on a built image. Golf course architects don't paint what they think a hole should look like - the world would be a better place if some of them possibly could apply one media to another. A computer just doesn't have the nuances (or the memory) to represent what takes hundreds of years to just happen. If you want 18 statements of why a stab at pressing some keys or playing with a mouse pen has any possibility of being real, this paragraph would be of biblical length. Fact - no computer game gets to 1% of the realism of actually being there and if you want art, you can trawl the world and you will not find it on a modern golf course. Try an art gallery - don't even consider buying a cd.
So where are we going this Summer, for a very special course review? When you leave Kinsale and head south, it takes just a couple of miles before the countryside changes. You are going towards the Oceans but the horizon just doesn't want to give you glimpse of what is to come. The road to Old Head feels Roman (though they were probably the only ancient civilisation not to come to these lands), you look right and left and can hardly appreciate the topography of this place. Even when the gates of the club are passed, the drama is still not presented to you in full - you have a glimpse down to your left, miles down to the sea and a walk round the front of the clubhouse you shows you the modern lighthouse (1853) but you don't really notice the 17th off to your right. You'll see later.
Nine holes are built in the centre of this diamond shaped piece of land. Nine run alongside the cliffs. This is the most direct way to describe the Old Head Links but it is completely inappropriate. 'This piece of land' took thousands of years for Nature to produce. Like coastline anywhere, its a link between the land and the sea only for Old Head, the land is set up towards the skies. Think the grandest old Opera House with boxes tiered ever upwards and onwards and you are sitting in the 'Gods'. You are going to play golf with the seas stretching way away into the distance whatever hole you are playing, and on the 'inland' holes where the landing areas are slightly elevated you are left with approach shots literally played into the sky with nothing behind.
Old Head is not a true links. When you step on the 2nd tee though, you are playing to one of many green sites which would not be out of place on an Open Championship course. Its on that short walk front the 1st that your golf game will face its most special test of you mental game.
You can miss the second left and have time to reload before your ball hits the ocean. The 'trouble' is left (for the next three holes) and with this tee shot, you will have to trust in your golf game (and the lessons from your golf pro) or face trying to protect your score by going right time after time, to face up to recovery after recovery from the rough. You are going to be truly intimidated left - its why Old Head is so spectacular because even if you want to grab you climbing gear, you are not allowed to even think about the huge cliffs and holding up play whilst you search for your ball.
The 4th green is very special. Year after year we are told, by the TV commentators, that hitting the 11th green at Augusta is a poor shot (according to the best players from years gone by). There is (was) too much risk of finding the water left and the hole was not one to think about birdieing. Come 50 yards on drives and golf balls that just do not deviate as much as they used to and the modern tour pro now throws a nine iron into the skies at Augusta and only worries about how fast the put they have left is. If there ever were a Tour event at Old Head, no player would even consider going for this green with anything over a wedge. Its sits, perched into the oceans, with nothing behind or to the left and with any sort of wind defies description of just how nerve racking a shot it presents.
The front nine winds it way inland until the 7th, a par three with the oceans to the right and a view of history way down amongst the rocks. The steps where people landed at Old Head over 400 years ago are still visible - its a view that you think will not be bettered.
8 and 9 take you back to the clubhouse. This is 'side one' of this 'album' and keep that anology because you have played a classic 'outward' nine holes, not a run through of a CD. There have been feature holes but you can only add up what your game has given you and prepare for the final nine. This course is barely 10 years old but forget about a formula. It apparently took some time to decide on the routing of the holes and this care shows. Old Head is an 'old' golf course built on a very old piece of land. Its nuances are that it was built at championship length, it is there for modern equipment and because it is so spectacular, its ability to be described as a links is not there. There are no pot bunkers with rivetted faces (deliberately so because of maintenance requirements), nor does the course hide its challenges. This is all a modern design ethic, principles though which have ignored the sterility of other innovation. You simply feel special.
The back nine - you will just have to wait unless you want to go and play Old Head before our actual course review this Summer. It was a cold and windy March day when we went to find out something about Old Head and play doesn't start until April/May - we cannot wait. Think of this feature as a download from a music web site, a taster for what you can buy when this artiste releases the finished CD. Old Head is one of the most expensive course you can play in Europe (up with the Belfry and Wentworth) but its green fee pales with the cost of similar stature course in the US.
To contact Old Head GC -
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