A confession: I cannot stop thinking about TGL course architecture.<\/p>\n
Just the other day I sketched out some thoughts<\/a> on the brilliance of Stinger (as well as Cenote), two mind-bending additions to this season\u2019s repertoire of mega-simulator holes that have pros out-doing each other in Full-Swing-measured, low-launch competitions and sending drivers flying 30 yards over the green on a par-3 on purpose. Those two were designed by Agustin Piz\u00e1, a visionary architect who seems to have found his calling in a golf world without boundaries, taking the opportunity to ask questions about playing golf in four dimensions, playing holes that go forwards and backwards plus other inspired brain teasers.<\/p>\n Advertisement<\/p>\n Until, on Thursday, another shocking drop arrived.<\/p>\n The anti-Piz\u00e1, in my mind, was Gil Hanse –\u00a0arguably the hottest golf course architect in the real world and a TGL addition for Season 2. I don\u2019t say anti-Piz\u00e1 because Hanse is some sort of wet blanket; he has talked about \u201cfun\u201d in course architecture literally his entire career and was game for this hilarious SoFi Center walkout<\/a>. But he\u2019s undeniably more of a traditionalist; in addition to his original designs he\u2019s an expert in real-life restorations, and in his introductory comments as part of this TGL experiment he shouted out some Golden-Age designers as inspiration.<\/p>\n “On a few of our TGL holes, we decided to honor the concepts, thoughts, and styles of some of the greatest designers from golf history like A. W. Tillinghast, Alister MacKenzie, Donald Ross, etc.,\u201d Hanse said.<\/p>\n Advertisement<\/p>\n His debut design, \u201cStone and Steeple,\u201d followed that ethos. The 590-yard par-5 looked a believable addition to a country club in a bucolic New England town.<\/p>\n It did feature a graveyard down the left side –\u00a0every TGL match is a reminder of our ultimate mortality –\u00a0but Hanse referenced Taconic Golf Club<\/a> as inspiration (where he led a restoration in Williamstown, Mass., arguably the greatest place on earth<\/a>) and a press release compared the hole\u2019s fairway bunkering to Hanse\u2019s work at Baltusrol\u2019s Lower course in New Jersey; that\u2019s a Tillinghast restoration. This was a Golden-Age tribute on the big screen.<\/p>\n Advertisement<\/p>\n Then came this one.<\/p>\n \u201cThe Last Toll\u201d is a 241-yard window into a future where a massive city has decayed but a brave greenskeeper presses on. Its centerpiece is a giant section of bridge, still standing even as everything around it has broken, that you\u2019ll have to navigate to land anywhere near the green. \u201cIn a world that fell apart, this bridge still decides who gets through,\u201d TGL\u2019s release reads.<\/p>\n Old Tom Morris has his \u201cRoad Hole\u201d at St. Andrews. Now Hanse has his \u201cThe Road\u201d hole at TGL. Beginning next week we\u2019ll all bear witness as teams take on an unprecedented challenge in an unforgiving landscape –\u00a0the type of hole that would make Cormac McCarthy proud.<\/p>\n Advertisement<\/p>\n Hanse\u2019s video explanation<\/a> is remarkably deadpan. While hearing the hole name out loud adds another dimension –\u00a0The Last Toll is a clever homophone for The Last Hole –\u00a0he casually mentions that his team \u201ctried to look into a dystopian, post-apocalyptic version of the future\u201d even though no team in course-design history has ever used that as a North Star.<\/p>\n \u201cThese vertical hazards have always been of interest to us,\u201d he says, downplaying the fact that this \u201cvertical hazard\u201d looks suspiciously like a zombified Brooklyn Bridge. (It\u2019s unclear if this is any sort of commentary on congestion pricing<\/a>.)<\/p>\n His Tillinghast homage already seems like a distant memory.<\/p>\n Advertisement<\/p>\n I drew some Golden-Tee parallels<\/a> to the Piza holes, which immediately stretched our conceptions of what a golf hole can be. Now Hanse is taking a step further into the fantasy realm; he\u2019s plunging us into the middle of a story. What happened to make the cityscape look like this? Who or what is responsible? Are the members of Jupiter Links and L.A. Golf Club the last six humans on earth? And seriously, who\u2019s watering the green? Hanse is sending a message with this design: I can adapt to this weird alternate reality, too.<\/p>\n (There may be another question worth asking: After a graveyard opener and a post-apocalyptic follow-up, should we be worried about you, Gil?)<\/p>\n This is all ridiculous, of course. And TGL still doesn\u2019t have to be for you<\/a>. But it\u2019s fun to see some of golf\u2019s brightest and most creative minds pushed outside their day-to-days to be more and more creative. The designers are pushing boundaries and then the players are, too. It\u2019s not real golf. It\u2019s something different.<\/p>\n Advertisement<\/p>\n Let\u2019s see what\u2019s next.<\/p>\n The post TGL\u2019s new post-apocalyptic golf hole comes with a message<\/a> appeared first on Golf<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A confession: I cannot stop thinking about TGL course architecture. Just the other day I sketched out some…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":414540,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[443],"tags":[174253,49,48,174250,174249,622,174251,118075,76647,174252,82,112391],"class_list":["post-414539","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-golf","tag-a-w-tillinghast","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-course-architecture","tag-gil-hanse","tag-golf","tag-golf-course-architect","tag-golf-world","tag-hole","tag-post-apocalyptic","tag-sports","tag-tgl"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/414539","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=414539"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/414539\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/414540"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=414539"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=414539"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=414539"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}