Elite Traveler Summer 2021

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OHOOPEE MATCH CLUB GEORGIA, USA

In its earliest days, golf was a sport defined by matches. Over time, handicap systems were developed; with them came a fixation and a focus on individual scores relative to par. But for the better part of at least a century, match play was the recognized format for a competitive round of golf. At Ohoopee Match Club in rural Georgia, which opened in 2018, match play defines the experience. The inception of the club was focused on a course where only match play would take place. For that reason, the course wasn’t rated by any governing body, which means players have no way of posting their scores for handicap purposes. But Gil Hanse, who designed the course, created it specifically with that in mind, which means many holes are defined by their risk-reward nature. The outcome is a course that allows players to focus on their shots rather than their scores. “It’s liberating for people to come out and just have a match,” says Todd Sapere, Ohoopee Match Club’s head golf pro. “Our members understand the culture. They’ve ended up here because they understand it and they embrace it when they’re here. Gil built a golf course that you can play every day and thoroughly enjoy yourself.” ohoopeematchclub.com

STREAMSONG RESORT FLORIDA, USA

Thanks to the naturally flat terrain and ubiquitous tropical vegetation, the vast majority of golf courses in Florida all look and feel remarkably similar. The trio of courses at Streamsong Resort, however, resoundingly break that mold. Built upon land that was previously mined for phosphate, Streamsong’s topography is unnatural. Yet, because the land was undeveloped for years after the mining ended, the stacked mounds and trenches naturally revegetated, giving the entire site a more organic look. Equally important, those post-mining landforms produce dynamic elevation changes not found anywhere else in the state. “If you brought me in blindfolded,” says Tom Doak, who designed the resort’s Blue course (opened in 2013), “Florida would’ve been the last state that I would’ve guessed I was in.” The resort’s Red course was designed and built by Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw at the same time as the Blue course. In fact, the two courses are routed in such a way that they intersect and abut each other numerous times. In the process, they both take advantage of similar landscape features, but each course looks and plays independently thanks to the architects’ distinctive philosophies. “It wasn’t a traditional chess game because we weren’t playing against each other,” Coore says, acknowledging that they worked together to create both 18-hole layouts. “It was a team chess game.” In 2017, Gil Hanse created a third layout at the resort, the Black course, which successfully introduced links-style architecture to the property. “The landscape at Streamsong is simply like nothing we’ve experienced,” Hanse said at the time of the Black course’s construction.

“It’s one of the very best.” streamsongresort.com

THE LOOP, FOREST DUNES MICHIGAN, USA Forty years ago, Tom Doak, then a 20-year-old aspiring golf course architect, read The Architectural Side of Golf , which introduced him to a short, three-hole reversible layout. Captivated, Doak spent the better part of the next three decades pondering the idea, always wanting to create a routing like that but never finding the right developer or the right topographical site to make it work. The stars aligned about eight years ago when Doak met Lew Thompson, who was then the owner of Forest Dunes in Roscommon, Michigan. Once Doak visited the site, he saw that the gently undulating, sandy parcel of land was the ideal stage for a reversible, 18-hole layout. The uniqueness of the proposed course also aligned with Thompson’s motivations. “I wanted something that would wow people,” Thompson says. “Something that would attract golfers.” Comprised of the Black and Red courses, The Loop boasts classic elements of golf architecture like Redan and Biarritz greens; however, the course’s most striking accomplishment is how it can change a golfer’s perception of one piece of land as they play it clockwise one day and counter-clockwise the next. The Loop proved that it’s possible to create an engaging and easily playable reversible layout and, for that reason, Doak believes similar courses will be commissioned in the future. “Even before we had built the golf course, I must’ve heard from half a dozen architects who had said that they had wanted to do that for a long time,” he says. forestdunesgolf.com

Photos Bandon Dunes Resort, Streamsong Resort, Evan Schiller