Atlanta Athletic Club (Highlands Course)

For Rees Jones, A Golf Course Is A Canvas of Green

Designing A Course Is A Tricky Art of Strokes and Balance

Courtesy of Mike Tierney
The New York Times

JOHNS CREEK, Ga. -- Golf course architects hold a special place in the fraternity of those who design sports playing fields.

Tennis allows for a few options on the type of surface. Baseball grants leeway on the distance of fences from home plate. In football, go ahead and paint the artificial turf blue.

Still, inventiveness is limited for those designers. By comparison, those who create golf courses are handed a blank canvas, with instructions only to stick with 18 holes and keep par in the low 70s.

Criticism is inevitable, doubly so for courses that must accommodate birdie-bingeing professionals one week a year and double-bogeying duffers on the others.

Rees Jones, whose signature is affixed to several original or restored courses on the United States Open-P.G.A. Championship circuit (including the Atlanta Athletic Club's Highlands layout at this weekend's P.G.A.), recalled Friday the first and most enduring advice from his father.

"You better have thick skin," said Robert Trent Jones Sr., the patriarch not only of the Jones boys but of American course designers.

As Rees -- whose brother, Robert Jr., chose the same career path -- said: "When they do criticize me, I think it's a compliment. It lets me know we've gotten into their heads."

Rees is similarly guided by an etched-in-rough quotation from another Jones, no relation. Bobby Jones was the most esteemed amateur player when hobbyists ruled the sport in the early 20th century, and Atlanta Athletic Club was his home grounds.

"He used to say golf is played on a six-inch course in your cranium," Rees Jones said. "Our job is to get inside that space. Remember, these are exams."

Go for the green or play it safe by laying up? Hit a wood or an iron? Those are the questions that Jones would like his courses to prompt.

Like athletes in most sports, golfers are forever improving. Jones draws up his courses to keep pace, often by adding or repositioning bunkers and lakes and sketching out increasingly contoured greens. (Other variables, like tee locations and pin placements, are someone else's call.)

"You want to crown the proper champion," he said. "We really are not trying to please the best players. We are just trying to identify them."

Halfway through the P.G.A. Championship, the Atlanta course had prompted few gripes. Players have approved of the fairways and greens, even if they might prefer lower speed limits for struck balls. Some have pointed out that despite menacing sand and water, avenues to putting surfaces are available around the hazards.

The course architect Rees Jones redesigned the Atlanta Athletic Club layout, the site of this week's 93rd P.G.A. Championship.

"I haven't heard one negative comment," said Larry Nelson, 63, the field's elder statesman and a club member.

There was the latest zinger from the longtime nemesis Phil Mickelson, who assesses some of Jones's works as an art lover would the poker-playing dogs.

Mickelson attempted Thursday to pin blame for the decline of golf rounds in the United States partly on Jones and his colleagues who whip up nasty courses for the pros, then turn them over to amateurs who are afraid to tread on them.

"I think he's still upset about Torrey Pines," said Jones, referring to his redo of the course in San Diego where Mickelson played as a teenager. "I took his home-field advantage away."

To Jones, victories on his courses by Mickelson and other golf A-listers validate the efforts. Conversely, in his mind, lesser lights reaching the winner's circle devalues them.

"My courses have crowned some pretty good champions," he said. "The last thing you want out of a golf course is to let them bomb it and not think" on their shots.

He nearly spat with disgust at the memory of a recent nonmajor with scores in the low 60s and players close enough to reach greens with a wedge.

"I'm a big fan of Phil," he said. "I root for him, believe it or not. He is what I'm trying to achieve. It's credibility we are looking for. I'm not offended by his opinion."

At the same time, Jones dismissed Mickelson's contention that the Highlands turns off Atlanta Athletic Club dues payers.

"Every course I do, I design for the members," he said.

Of course, Jones was all in with what he said were the club's desires for a more challenging layout after the 2001 P.G.A. Championship winner here had a record 15 under par. The higher degree of difficulty was affirmed by statistics from Thursday's opening round. The average score was 73.11, nearly two shots higher than a decade ago.

Jones went so far as to nominate the Highlands, with its billiards-table fairways, punishing rough and insistence on precise tee shots, as a template for high-level tournaments.

Besides, he pointed out, come Monday, the length can be shortened and the tiered bunkers adjusted so members and guests can shoot scores that undercut the temperatures on a warm August day.

"This place will change the face of golf," he said.

And if this weekend yields higher scores for the pros? Jones indicated that he was braced for any carping.

"I expect players who don't play well to criticize," he said. "Having a championship is like being on Broadway."

As they say about Broadway, everybody's a critic.