Golf Course Architecture - Issue 61, July 2020

73 visits too. It will be a full team effort. “It’s tremendously helpful to have the collective wisdom,” says Pont. “That sounds a bit clichéd, but it is. This can be a lonely job if you’re just sitting behind a desk doing all the research. It’s very helpful for somebody to say ‘have you thought of this?’… assuming you’re not defensive. And the good news is, we’re not. That’s why I think our partnership works. “One example from when DeVries and I walked the property a couple of months ago was looking at the way the tees have been built. It used to be very primitive. Old tees were little boxes strewn around. Over time, the boxes became bigger and quite ugly. Mike said, ‘why don’t we go more organic?’. I hadn’t thought of that. And it’s the same with Clayts, when we walked it together it was fun because I wanted to hear what he thought. “I’ve said collaborations should work like a jazz session, an improvisation. They work because people respect each other, because people have different skills. You add value because once in a while you come up with something that really is beyond what a normal firm could come up with. That’s the theory at least, but I think we will.” “We’re really going to put our heart and soul into this,” says Cartwright. “This is the type of project that I think fits CDP like a glove. We love this sort of place – we don’t want to change it, we want to bring it back. Everybody says that, but we’re really serious about wanting to bring it back.” The Addington has perhaps not recently been getting the recognition it deserves. “I saw it didn’t make it into the top 100 in the UK, which is kind of bizarre,” says Clayton. “But in a way that’s a good thing, because it gives us a free hit to kick it a mile up the rankings.” GCA More from our conversation with the CDP team will appear on golfcoursearchitecture.net in the coming months, along with a series of articles from Mike Clayton The par-four sixteenth hole during construction in 1913 Images: courtesy of The Addington