Should you suggest that it’s a homecoming of sorts in Scotland for a Long Island kid who calls the Philadelphia area home, curious stares are offered and so an explanation is required.
It involves the intriguing history of Gil Hanse, whose ability to visualize and conceptualize a golf course from a piece of land is uncanny, though to know him is to argue that humility is his greatest strength.
To study the remarkable portfolio of Gil Hanse and his longtime design partner, Jim Wagner – from Boston Golf Club to Streamsong Black to LA Country Club South to the Ohoopee Match Club to The Olympic Course in Brazil, not to overlook all the brilliant restoration work at classics such as The Country Club, Oakmont, Merion, LA North, Winged Foot, Oakland Hills, and Sleepy Hollow – is to understand why administrators at a world-renowned classic would turn to them for future work.
It's just that when the club in question – North Berwick GC – is an iconic centerpiece to Scotland’s golf landscape, a sense of curiosity might wonder how it is that an American got the call. The answer might rest in Hanse’s background; his passport might say he’s American but his golf soul is rooted in links.
“It’s a great way of putting it,” said Hanse, when told that his connection to North Berwick feels like a reunion. “In a way, I’m returning to where basically everything I believe golf should be – play fast, walk, conduct yourself on the course and in the clubhouse with dignity – was reinforced by my time over here.”
From August of 1987 to July of 1988, Hanse lived in Scotland with his wife, Tracy, having been given the Frederick Dreer Award at Cornell University. Eventually awarded a Masters in landscape architecture, Hanse’s time was spent studying golf course architecture and his classrooms were legendary – the Old Course in St. Andrews and North Berwick some 20 miles away.
To spend hours every day observing the game being played on quintessential links, as Hanse did, was to truly ignite his passion. “I truly believe that the game doesn’t start till the ball hits the ground,” said Hanse. “And links has such a reliance on the ground game.”
Though it was 38 years ago, Hanse can remember his introduction to the Old Course like it was yesterday. Exhausted and weary from the long journey, Hanse at about 4 p.m. walked to the starter’s hut and asked, “What are the chances?”
There’s still a sense a joy in his voice when Hanse recounts the starter’s reply: “He said, ‘Go get your clubs.’ It truly was one of those magical days.”
Equally unforgettable is a walk Hanse took one Sunday, that day of the week when there is no golf played as the Old Course reverts to a public park. To be among the citizenry, just walking on, and soaking in, such historic turf was awe-inspiring for Hanse, who found himself pacing off the bunkers and at times walking in them.
“A (fellow walker) asked if I was going to rake the bunkers (I walked in),” said Hanse. “I started to say that there was no golf being played, but he told me that it didn’t seem very nice so I went back, got a rake and cleaned up.”
What that did was convince Hanse that he had done well to visit Scotland, that he was where golfers have great reverence for the game. “It’s always stuck with me,” he said. “There’s such a proper respect for golf in Scotland.”
His days at the Old Course, then at North Berwick, offered a routine that he never tired of. Hanse had spent hours inside Cornell’s library reading periodicals about the great golf courses of the British Isles, devouring any story by Bernard Darwin. “But nothing prepared me for how beautiful it really is,” he said. Indeed, Hanse concedes that links “can be quirky, but they take that as a badge of honor.”
Hanse would spend hours walking the course in the morning, then play in the afternoon – or he’d play in the morning and walk in the afternoon. He’d also put aside time to speak with the superintendents, the greenkeepers, the pros, players.
In Steve MacQuarrie's book "A Triumph In Craftsmanship," the history of The Boston Golf Club is chronicled and much room is devoted to Gil Hanse, included these photos on Page 39 -- top left, with Tom Doak; bottom left, with John Mineck and Bill Coore; and right, with one of his beloved bulldozers.
“At night I would go over my notes – no typewriter, mind you; these were hand-written notes.”
The Old Course, which historians like to say was designed by Mother Nature, has been used as golf course as far back as the 15th century. It is arguably the most important golf course in the world, but when it came to his classroom work in Scotland, Hanse came away with equally deep appreciations for North Berwick and Prestwick (the course that hosted the first Open Championship in 1860).
“To me, they were the three touchstone courses that re-invigorated me. It was eye-opening how links was played at these courses. It was not only acceptable it was exceptional.”
North Berwick, which dates to 1830, is especially remarkable and Hanse immersed himself in all corners of it. The design is never owed to one architect, but when you talk about golf courses that offer templates to be borrowed and used around the world, North Berwick arguably stands at the front of the line.
“To study North Berwick was to understand how you could expand creatively,” said Hanse. And perhaps no stretch of golf leaves you in awe as the five-hole stretch that begins at “Pit,” the par-4 13th. That is when you encounter a second shot to a flagstick in a green that is tucked behind a wall.
Onward to No. 14, “Perfection,” a par-4 that lives up to its name, then you play “Redan,” the par-3 15th where the putting surface slopes sharply right-to-left and demands you use the contours. No. 16 is “Gate” for the aiming point through a stone wall, though the hole is unforgettable for its green. It was not modeled after the original Biarritz in France, though this one at North Berwick greatly influenced C.B. Macdonald and Seth Raynor in their similar greens in America (a gully cuts through the putting surface so it is two distinct halves).
By the time you reach “Point Gary In,” the par-4 17th and a wildly entertaining punch bowl green, “you have played as breathless a stretch of holes as there is in the world,” said Hanse.
Hanse, who graduated from Cornell in 1989, began his own design company in 1993 and in 1995 he brought in Jim Wagner. Their design philosophies are in tandem, forged around a desire to create a variety of options for the golfers, many of which can be played on the ground.
Having created a bustling design company and won multiple plaudits for so many designs, Hanse still embraces the Scottish roots that he planted nearly 40 years ago. In some of his brilliant designs in the U.S. (i.e., Boston Golf Club’s 12th, 15th and 16th holes) have strong Scottish links features and he and Wagner designed gems at Castle Stuart (on the way to Royal Dornoch) and Crail Craighead (outside of St. Andrews) that avid golfers flock to while visiting Scotland.
So, yes, that appointment to his position at North Berwick is quite fitting and Hanse understandably takes great pride. “The consulting golf architect” is the title used by administrators at North Berwick’s West Links. Hanse sees his responsibility to create a master plan to move forward, not to re-do anything, “but to protect it” because the forces of nature are capable of inflicting much damage.
“It is an assignment that is a great honor,” he said. “It involves refining; it’s not an overhaul” and should you want a deeper appreciation for the respect and care that Hanse has for historical properties, know this: He and Tracy are in the process of moving out of a home that was built in 1831 and into one built in 1708.
“We’re moving back in time,” he laughed. “It’s very, very cool.”
What is similarly very, very cool is the love and care Gil Hanse puts into golf courses to help them stand the test of time.
