::COURSE DESIGN
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Tony Jacklin was born in Great Britain and known world-wide as the 1969 British Open Champion, 1970 US Open Champion and four-time Captain of the European Ryder Cup Team.

Jacklin has some very strong opinions about golf design. Number one is that a golf course should be expertly engineered, as well as aesthetically and strategically designed. Tony is very aware of potentially high annual operating costs.

He favors the look and play of the traditional courses; the great, grand courses of the game that never go out of style. Combine that with the current knowledge of irrigaton and agronomy, He believes a designer can make a golf course that is environmentally responsible, conserves water resources and requires minimal maintainence to look great.

Jacklin believes that golf course owners appreciate his long-term approach to the golf course with his attempts to engineer a financially feasible product. He will encourage owners to build a course for players not champion golfers noting that even tournament courses are used 350 days out of the year by average players.

He states 'I don't design a course for myself, and then add additional tees for the daily players. I design completely for the daily player. Every shot, from tee to green.'

His vast experience and long career has allowed him to play thousands of golf courses throughout the world. At the end of the day, he feels the ones that stand out are the very traditional courses designed in the 20's and 30's

Jacklin's approach to golf course design is to begin with aerial and topographic surveys of the property. Then, he has 2 simple goals:

• Make the best use of water
• Route to enhance the site's natural features

He believes good design can have large sweeping elevation changes and still work well as far as water and maintainence is concerned, if engineered properly. That means avoiding 'radical' design features, but still producing an exciting course that requires minimal maintainence.

He knows he has succeeded in his design philosphy when the golf course looks as if it has always been there, like it belongs. He will walk the course after the overall routing, looking at every shot from the perspective of the player. His aim is to get play started quickly and let the player gain confidence before meeting the tougher challenges of his course.

The object of his course design is to let the course teach the players as they go and help him help them play better golf.

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