To the list of life’s great certainties—death, taxes, my pad under pressure—we could add this: Pine Valley’s position in the rankings.
Since 1985, when GOLF first tallied the votes for the Top 100 Golf Courses in the World, the famed New Jersey club has held firmly to its No. 1 position. In fact, the votes have been something of a landslide, with the closest contenders not exactly close. Next Wednesday, when GOLF releases its latest rankings, it will take a bump on the scale of YE Yang over Tiger Woods for Pine Valley to be ousted.
Enter Jim Wagner, our guest on the latest Destination Golf podcast. If you take course design, you know the name. Wagner has been Gil Hanse’s design partner for many years. He is a designer and deeply thoughtful architect whose work, along with Hanse, ranges from original courses such as Ohoopee Match Club and Castle Stuart to restorations at Los Angeles Country Club, Fishers Island, Sleepy Hollow and beyond. And with a new Top 100 on the way, his view on what makes a world-class course couldn’t be more timely.
So what does someone like that think is the best course in the world?
Not Pine Valley.
Wagner acknowledges it’s a special place, but if you had him voting, he’d probably lean toward Merion. Part of what fascinates him about Merion is how much has been accomplished on such a compact parcel. And that is the natural bridge to another course he values: Kingston Heath in Australia, built on relatively flat terrain and a small site that required a very different kind of creativity.
On the podcast, Wagner talks about how the route at Kingston Heath reflects a special imagination, different from what was needed to conjure compelling golf from the dramatic landforms that underlie Pine Valley. The constraints were different, he says, and so was the talent required to make the course sing.
That’s just a sampling of where the conversation is going. In the full conversation, Wagner ranges widely, touching on everything from the Grateful Dead to the importance of three-dimensional thinking when sketching golf holes. He also offers candid looks at other big-name courses. Spoiler alert: he’s not exactly optimistic about Bethpage Black as it stands now.
You can listen to the full episode below, and hear more from Wagner about Pine Valley in the video above.
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