By this time next year, disconsolate gamblers in Larchwood, Iowa, on the South Dakota state line, may be taking out their frustrations on a browner than usual, Rees Jones-designed golf course. The 18-hole track, an amenity for Grand Falls Casino Resort, will play firm and fast, Jones told the Sioux Falls Argus Leader, partly due to the drying winds that blow across the Great Plains and partly due to turf that won’t get even a drop more water than it needs.
“It’s going to be a prairie golf course,” Jones explained. “It’s going to change every day.” Is this the sound of an old-school architect embracing minimalist ideals?
• This fall, after at least four years in the entitlement process, Leonhard Astl hopes to finally break ground on his 18-hole golf course in Walchsee, Austria. Moarhof Golf Club will take shape in a grassy mountain valley roughly 40 miles west of Salzburg, on property leased from farmers. Scot Sherman, one of the course’s co-designers, has called the site “one of the most beautiful I have ever seen anywhere,” and he believes the course can be built without moving a lot of earth.
“We are lucky to work with land where many golf holes are just there,” he noted in a press release. Sherman and his design partner, Swedish golf pro Anders Forsbrand, expect the construction to stretch over several seasons.
Some information in the preceding post first appeared in the April 2013 issue of the World Edition of the Golf Course Report.