Golf Course Architecture - Issue 65, July 2021

60 What had been 125 bunkers totaling 125,000 square feet now registers as 103 bunkers totaling 200,000 sq ft. When you looked out across the site of Oakland Hills South you used to see a lot of trees, with sand dotting the landscape. Now you see open, rolling terrain with much larger swaths of sand along a powerful horizontal scale. Much of that is due to Ross’s routing. It makes use of certain nodal points that gather in a kind of golf energy and concentrate one’s attention. That vision starts with the placement of the sprawling Georgian clubhouse on a plateau that enables a view of the entire site; that flat rise also provides a home for the first and tenth tees as well as the ninth and eighteenth greens. The routing works off high points. One of them provides the setting for the eighth green, ninth tee, eleventh green and twelfth tee. Another is home to the sixth green and seventh tee. A third high point anchors the twelfth green, thirteenth tee and sixteenth tee. A final one houses the tenth green, eleventh tee, seventeenth green and eighteenth tee. Because the Jones bunkering was so intent on creating punitive landing areas, Hanse’s restoration process of undoing it required considerable flexibility of interpretation. The main goal was to bring back the more scattered distribution of Ross’s bunkering, much of its arrayed diagonally across the line of play to create strategic angles, hopscotch lines of play and uncertainty of position. Where possible, key bunkers defining targeted landing areas were moved downfield to accord with contemporary ideals of elite carry: a 220-yard carry in Ross’s day translating to 280 or 320 yards today, but only if the landforms supported the move and if it made sense strategically and visually. In two cases, shapers were able to roll back a seam in the existing landform and move an entire cross slope down 20 to 30 yards or so and make it look as if the restored Ross carry bunker were always sitting right there in the upslope traversing the landing area. Even an expert golf architecture buff would not find the evidence in the land that they actually moved the fairway apex on both the par-four fifth and par-four eleventh holes. Sometimes ‘minimalism’ requires sleight of hand. Ever since Jones’ 1951 modernisation, Oakland Hills South has been an aerial attack golf course. No more. Hanse turned back the clock to the time, revealed in that 1929 programme, when most of the putting surfaces allowed for some sort of ground game access. This time, however, the combination of modern mowing heights and firm, fast maintenance conditioning enables a golfer to choose between a vertical approach and a horizontal game. On a dozen holes, comprising a mix of par threes, fours and fives, Hanse peeled back front “ Now you see open, rolling terrain with much larger swaths of sand along a powerful horizontal scale” OAKLAND H I L LS COUNTRY CLUB