Blue Monster Ready for its Closeup

The golf world has turned its eyes to Doral, and the newly-enhansed Blue Monster.  Let's let Brad Klein set the table:

Act II of Kaskel’s Folly turns out to be a whole lot better than the original ever was. 

Just over a half-century ago, aspiring hoteliers Doris and Al Kaskel hired architect Dick Wilson, brought him 13 miles northwest of downtown Miami, and asked him to turn a field of muck into paradise. 

When he was sober, Wilson was among the country’s finest golf course designers – a master of diagonal greens, placing hazards close to the ideal line, and building fairways with the dirt scooped out of what would become lakes. There was a lot of strategic ingenuity in his original plans on paper for the Doral Resort & Spa, but most of it was never realized in the ground. 

Until now.

Didn't know that Wilson had a bottle problem, though per Klein he was the anti-Tillinghast.  In my long ago review of Sleepy Hollow Country Club, I included this quote from Gil Hanse (who had restored SHCC) about Tilly:

With Tillinghast, the outcome of his work came down to whether or not he was drinking at the time. If he was, the result would be complex and imaginative course design. At the time Tillie worked on Sleepy Hollow, he must have been on the wagon.

Klein is extremely complimentary of the changes, noting also that the fairways were raised to provide for better drainage.  Though the Versailles fountain does come in for justifiable ridicule.

Next up, and this will shock you, is Mr. Shackelford, who has been a blogging dervish on da Monster.  He had this item in Local Knowledge about the 15th hole:

The Donald wanted to make this an island green and Gil Hanse mercifully talked Trump out of building a longer, less interesting hole. Far more multidimensional than most island greens, Doral's new-look 15th is a hybrid of TPC Sawgrass's 17th and Augusta National's 16th. It's also one of the most fascinating greens my friend Gil and associate Jim Wagner have built. (Full disclosure: we've worked together).

The peninsula 15th green, with the short Par 4 16th providing the backdrop.

Shack neglects only to tell us the direction of the prevailing winds. The green is actually three different greens, applying the C.B. Macdonald "Short" (think Sleepy Hollow No. 16) template to South Florida. There have been comparisons to Augusta's 16th, of which I'm not the biggest fan, but Shack allays our (my) concern:

However, unlike the 16th at Augusta National, where the annual front right hole and back right upper tier hole locations only reward the most perfect shot, Doral's new-look 15th offers just enough margin for error that we'll see plenty of easy bogeys but also some artistic par-saves and birdies for great shots.

 Today Shack turns his attention to the Par 4 16th assessing whether it's worth the risk to attempt to drive it. As Shack reminds us, the 16th was one of a small number of holes that had gotten more interesting in recent years, a group in which I include Pebble's 18th.  Because of the failure to control the golf ball all the time players spend in the gym, the hole became driveable for the big hitters.  Here's his view of the revisions:

At the revamped Doral, Gil Hanse and Jim Wagner have taken out trees to the left of the fairway, expanded a lake, elevated the fairway and redesigned the green. At 340 yards, with plenty of tee space to go forward, the 16th should be driveable again, though the reward for having a go is debatable. 

Playing into the prevailing wind, there are two lay-up options, but most players will use a long iron or hybrid to set up a full wedge shot. The newly elevated landing area is beautifully shaped to add character and also to drain infinitely better than the old one. Mudballs were a big part of playing the 16th.

It looks like a visually-challenging tee shot to lay up, even if it's only with a long iron.  Geoff doesn't see the reward in going for the green, but a second shot from a greenside bunker will be hard to resist for today's bomb-and-gougers.

The rendering of the 16th above was taken from this WGC gallery of images.  It covers all 18 holes and includes Hanse's commentary of the changes made.  

Shack includes this in an earlier post:

What Dick Wilson first designed wasn't what was actually built.

"I have no idea why," Hanse says. "[But] what his plans showed were much more interesting and more exciting." 

Rather than have fairway bunkers positioned down the left and right sides of holes, as they ultimately evolved into, Wilson wanted them positioned more diagonally to force players to shape shots into landing areas. In turn, being in the right spot off the tee would set up a better angles to approach the greens. Hanse reapplied this idea, but modernized the strategy by positioning the bunkers farther down the fairways to take into account the added length of modern tour pros. 

Hanse noticed as well that Wilson's original greens were "more eccentric in their shape." In many cases he attempted to restore them while also adding more contour.

"We might have some pros shaking their heads about a putt," Hanse says. "Obviously guys like Tiger and Phil have played there for 15 or 20 years, they have a knowledge bank about what the greens are going to do. But these are brand new greens, so they're going to have figure out how to putt them."

That's quite interesting, at least to those of us enabled with the golf architecture dweeb gene.

Luckiest man of the week is Brian Wacker, who got to play the course recently with Gil (but thankfully without the Donald), though his opening is not promising:

There are no waterfalls on the redesigned Blue Monster at Trump National Doral, though changes to the site of the World Golf Championships-Cadillac Championship are no less dramatic.

That's setting the bar pretty low, and ignores this tasteful detail:

The Tsar called and wants his fountain back.

Trump may not have joined them for the 18, but Wacker did pay a price for his plum gig.  Early in the piece, Trump shares this valuable architectural insight with us:

“We could have just put up a couple of palm trees and it would have been acceptable, but it would not be the right thing to do,” Trump said. “Do we just fix it up for $2, or do we do it really right?”

Got it.  later in the piece, Donald shows that he's become quite the student of course design with this "first principles" quote:

When we bought it, we decided to do it right. We just stood out there and looked at the land and decided we were going to do the whole thing right.”

OK,  I'm new at this golf-blogging thing, but it seems the key concept might be to "do it right."  But I am comforted that he took the time to look at the land...

And lest you thin it's wall-to-wall praise, John Strege did find one dissenter.  Ted Scott, Bubba's caddy, tweeted the following:

ted scott @jtedscott: They asked me "How do u like the changes?" My reply "I preferred when caddy parking was on site" #Doral #worldgolfchampionships12:28 PM - 3 Mar 2014

Well, not sure we can lay that one at Gil's feet.

We'll give Gil the last word, in response to the lavish praise from players:

Hanse nodded, but he knows how this needs to be played out. “It’s fine and it’s nice to hear,” he said, “but we have to let them play and then see, don’t we?”

That will be fun, as the old Blue Monster was dreadfully boring.

UPDATE:  This Morning Drive video is long but worthy of a look (sorry, video is back to not embedding).  I like when they superimpose the old bunkering and greens over the new aerial views.  I had not previously been familiar with the term counter holes, meaning a hole where the two shots require opposite shapes.