55 Photo: Richardson/Danner crescents, tiers, valleys and buried elephants. But it was all surface moulding – variations to contouring the surface. Nothing like the Riviera bunker or the great wall of the Pit at North Berwick. At Promontory in Park City, Utah, Jeff Danner and I had the fortune of creating 18 par-three holes. While we’ve designed several nine-, twelve- and fifteen-hole layouts, the eighteenhole format remains the one that resonates with players, and it is nearly always more financially rewarding for the owner. So, at Promontory – to join their existing Dye and Nicklaus regulation courses – we set out to create 18 greens with different characteristics. One in particular, the ‘New Moon’, is innovative – if not outright unique. The New Moon hole is an 80-yard par three with a 15-foot elevation drop from tee to green. The green is our largest on the course, at about 15,000 square feet. We always had the notion to create something very special within the green surface. We tried several designs, ranging from a sculpted outcrop of carefully stacked native stone, to a ‘hairy’ bump similar to what Tillinghast sketched with tall grass. Nothing really resonated until considering a deep revetted bunker. That’s when we landed on the idea to omit the sand, opting for a simple crescent ledge of stacked turf. We used EcoBunker, and it didn’t take At Promontory Club in Utah, the ninth hole, ‘New Moon’, has a crescent-shaped turf ridge in the green “ The concept at New Moon requires the golfer to carefully plan a short wedge, avoiding the crescent ‘shelf’ at whatever cost”
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