How Scotsman David McLay Kidd and His Ragtag Band Built the First New Course on
July 16, 2007
When Scotland’s storied St. Andrews Links Trust decided to build a seventh golf course (due to open in 2008), the well-known golf architect David McLay Kidd was commissioned. Golf journalist Gummer’s authorized account of the construction project is essentially a story of men pushing dirt into small mounds and planting it with grass. But there’s an art to what looks so simple: sculpting both a challenging course and bucolic vistas with a “craggy, ancient, organic” look out of a potato field dominated by a sewage treatment plant; balancing playability with aesthetic, drainage and maintenance considerations; selecting bunker sand; and defending newly seeded turf against trespassers and rabbits. Gummer’s engaging narrative, dotted with Kidd’s hole-by-hole analyses, captures these nuances. Unfortunately, the author trowels on hype worthy of a playoff round. Kidd’s management style is “like a run-and-shoot passing attack,” while his bulldozer crews “possessed the vision, the talent and the balls to lead and not just follow.” Gummer’s inapt sports metaphors segue into business-speak: “DMK Golf Design is no different from a successful sports team... total commitment is paramount.” Readers will have to hack their way out of knee-high clichés to get to the fairway.
September 1, 2007
David Kidd is certainly the only contemporary golf-course architect whose work has been the subject of two books: first came Dream Golf (2006), about the construction of Bandon Dunes, a links-style public course on the Oregon coast, and now this nearly shovel-by-shovel re-creation of the building of the seventh course at St. Andrews (to open in 2008), the first new construction in nearly a century on the hallowed ground where golf was born. Veteran journalist Gummer was there throughout the process, and he succeeds in making a kind of high drama out of bulldozers, dirt-moving, shaping greens, and the near-mystical mix of art and science that goes into routing a golf course. Unlike inStephen Goodwinsaccount of Bandon Dunes, however, there is a little too much of an authorized history tone here, too much selling of Kidds management style.But the storyitself will enthrall those with an interest in golf history and architecture: digging in the dirt of St. Andrewscan never be done casually, and Gummermakesus feel the weight ofthe past on every turn of the soil.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2007, American Library Association.)