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my top ten by greg norman
One of the most influential figures in world golf for more than thirty years, Greg Norman won 88 professional tournaments in a glittering playing career. As a much sought-after designer, the Shark has now opened some 74 courses worldwide with 35 projects in development. In an exclusive article for Golf Vacations, he lists his top ten courses. By Greg Norman.
1 DOONBEG (Ireland)
I have always been passionate about links golf and was really excited to have the opportunity to design the course at Doonbeg, which may be one of the last true links courses to be built in either Ireland or Britain.
The site at Doonbeg sits along 2.4 kilometres of crescent-shaped beach and dunes. I made more than 23 visits to the site and flagged every bunker and green and the ocean is visible from the green, fairway or tee on 16 of the 18 holes.
The sensitivity of this piece of property required a total hands-on approach. You do not get too many opportunities to work on a piece of land like this one. This is a course I want to be identified with. One that I say with pride everywhere I go: ‘I did this one!’
It’s Ireland. It’s Irish golf. It’s links golf: sand dunes like you’ll never see again because golfing land like this is preciously finite. The ball is round and is designed to roll as well as fly. The golfer is required to make his ball do both at Doonbeg. The last thing I wanted to do was Americanise this golf course. I love links golf and Irish links golf is among the best. I wanted to keep it as natural as possible.
2 Ellerston (NSW, Australia)
At Ellerston we were able to create a course that a golfer of my calibre would love to play every day for the rest of his life.
This project was very unique as we were given the directive to build Australia’s toughest and most spectacular golf course by the late Kerry Packer. Kerry showed us 28,000 hectares and said pick the best acreage for the golf course. Something like that may never happen again.
We settled on a track of land that featured Pages Creek which became a central feature of our golf routing. The creek was incorporated into no less than nine holes of the golf course and offers stunning views and good challenging golf.
3 The National Moonah Course (Victoria, Australia)
With breath-taking coastal dune land, this course was another amazing piece of property that had natural golf holes just waiting to be mowed. The biggest challenge on the project was to find as many of these spectacular holes as we could.
4 Cornerstone (Colorado, USA)
When we first looked at this property, it was during the winter of 2004 and I was on a snowmobile. Even in the snow, we could see that this was going to be a fantastic golf course.
We knew that the developers were going to spare no expense on this course and we wanted to make sure we got it right the first time. If you spend time on the site, get to know it in all weather conditions — like the snow, like the summer when it can be 100 degrees, or the fall season and what the wind directions are — you get to know the golf course. So in the end product, you know that you’ve given it your best.
I walked this site too many times to count and I can make this comment right here and now...this is by far the best mountain golf course in the world. It’s easy to throw around the accolades and statements like that, but I’ve played a lot of great golf courses. And when you come and see the end result here at Cornerstone, it’s truly a dream come true.
It’s also no coincidence that this course was named the Best New Private course in the United States by US Golf Magazine in 2009.
5 Red Sky Golf Club (Colorado, USA)
For years my love of the Rockies, along with the natural beauty of the surrounds, has beckoned me to the Vail Valley. Red Sky Golf Club afforded me the chance to create one of the most natural and aesthetically beautiful golf courses in this region.
For all its engineering, the Red Sky course is a marvel. Where the rough ends, a thirsty desert begins, filled with spruce bushes and red, cracked clay.
6 TPC San Antonio (Texas, USA)
This was a challenging course to build as it was a very complex piece of property subsurface wise. In some areas we had rock just below the surface that presented some unique challenges when building the course.
That being said, it also had beautiful specimen oak trees and good terrain that you are looking for in a golf course site. Throw on top of that the fact that the developer allowed us to build the golf course to professional standards requiring high quality shot making in order to accommodate the PGA TOUR event and you have one heck of a golf course.
It’s always fun to build a course when you know that it is going to be used for a PGA tournament and the best players in the world are going to play the course. At the same time we knew the course was going to get resort play throughout the year so it had to be playable for the average golfer from the shorter tees.
7 TPC at Sugarloaf (Georgia, USA)
This place can move you; it is a very special place and I made at least 30 visits when we were working on this course. Some golf courses can really touch a part of you and make you feel energized or inspired. That's how Augusta (National Golf Club) feels and I get the same sensation at Sugarloaf. There's a similar beauty and awe about it.
The initial walk-through of the property told us we had something special. It's a magnificent property...the undulations, streams, pines and the feel of the terrain reminded me very much of Augusta. The land flowed and the corridors were just there, which was probably the most important element to what we wanted to accomplish.
8 Brookwater Golf Club (Qld, Australia)
This site was full of tall, mature gum trees and native vegetation that we strategically used to frame the golf holes. When you play the course, you will feel as though you are on a walk through the woods and each hole is isolated from the others.
The site offered a series of dramatic ridges and we routed the golf holes to take advantage of these ridges and the dramatic elevation changes. We tried to carve the holes out of these vegetation stands and into several valleys on the course. The scenery here is just fantastic.
9 El Camaleon at the Mayakoba Resort (Mexico)
This course has a lot of firsts. It was my first course that featured a cenote (underground limestone cave) and my first course to open in Mexico. It is also the first and only course in Mexico to host a PGA TOUR event, the Mayakoba Golf Classic, that is now entering its fifth year.
This property was very environmentally sensitive and we really focused hard on a least disturbance approach during the design process.
The course layout is really quite unique. The routing meanders along limestone-edged canals and ventures through three distinctly different landscapes. On one hole you’re playing in the jungle, the next you’re surrounded by mangrove swamp forests, and then you’re hitting toward the ocean on seaside dunes. It really is quite spectacular.
We designed the first hole with a cenote directly in the centre of the fairway. You may not see that on any other golf course in the world.
10 The Norman Course at Mission Hills (China)
The Mission Hills project is really quite an amazing undertaking. It’s the world’s largest golf facility with twelve, 18-hole golf courses each designed by a different architect.
We were commissioned to design the course in the second phase of the project, so they already had several courses open for play. At the time, David Chu’s mandate was for my team to design the hardest of all 12 courses on the property.
Anytime there are multiple courses on a property, there is usually going to be one that is of a higher difficulty than the others. We certainly achieved this goal and created China’s most challenging test of golf.
The interesting thing about it is that our course gets more rounds of golf than any other course on the property. The visitors want to play the hardest course to see where their game stacks up. p
For more information, visit www.shark.com
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