Taking Aim

Putting your architectural hat on for a moment, your firm, Ogilvy Clayton, appears to be going from strength to strength in Australia and overseas. How do you balance this bourgeoning interest with being in the US for most of the year?

I can’t go to as many golf courses and do the walking around which is the fun part, being out there and doing it. I can’t do that in Australia as much at this point. I’m in all the conversations about everything but the stuff that’s overseas I might be more involved in.

I really, really like it. I’m very lucky to be associated with the people at Ogilvy Clayton, who are just incredible, very talented. I’m just along for the ride with the talent really, it’s amazing. I’m learning a lot and am really enjoying it.

It’s an interesting period in the industry. In the golf-developed countries like Australia and the United States, they probably have about the right amount of courses that they can sustain. I don’t think there’s any ‘boom’ period to come in these countries. I can’t see hundreds of courses needing to be built in the US, for example.

There’s a whole new frontier of full restorations and ‘re-dos’, putting in new holes or new courses on old ones, that’s probably the next frontier in Australia and America. Mike Clayton and the crew have done some great stuff on the restorations in Australia and are very, very good at that. So there will be two fronts to the industry for us. I’ve always loved the golf courses. To me, it’s the most un-talked about reason why golf is so loved.

There’s probably one redesign that's currently underway that you probably wish wasn’t done – the Old Course at St Andrews ...

It’s disappointing in that the whole point of it is to make us shoot a slightly higher score every five years [at The Open], and it’s embarrassing – disgusting – that they’re doing it for that reason. I mean .. it’s hard to have the words to describe the arrogance of doing something like that, it’s incredible.

It’s like, ‘The Mona Lisa is fading a little so let’s put some colour into her face, people will enjoy it more.’ Or ‘The Sistine Chapel is a bit small now for the number of people who want to go through it, let’s make it bigger.’ That’s probably a better analogy really because that’s what it is.

The reason the sport is what it is, is because of St Andrews. It didn’t evolve to the point where it’s at because of people doing what they’re doing right now. It evolved, it didn’t get designed. It came because of nature, all the balls finishing in one place so there were lots of divots and that spot became a bunker. It’s the first place that anyone should ever study when they think about golf course architecture.