Since forming his own design firm in 1997, Colorado’s Jim Engh has won four “best new course” awards from Golf Digest, been named “Golf Architect of the Year” in 2003 (ahead of such luminaries as Fazio, Dye, Jones and Doak), built a reputation for getting world class work done on time and under budget, landed one gorgeous site after another on which to build yet another epic layout, and has developed a legion of loyal fans not just in Colorado and former home North Dakota, but all around the country.
Yet somehow the golf industry and fans actually underestimate Engh and fail to truly appreciate why he is such solid designer.
You read correctly. Underestimate the winner of multiple best course awards.
Because Engh has had gorgeous canvases on which to work - pristine, unspoiled North Dakota and gorgeous Colorado Canyonlands, and scenic Northern Idaho mountain tops - the uninitiated attribute his success to the superficial. “He’s great because he has the most postcard holes?” queries one player meekly. “It’s really pretty, if a little wild…” he trails off, speaking of Lakota Canyon Ranch, a runner up for Best New Public Course in 2005.
Well Jim Engh is already an epic golf course architect, but not because his courses are “another pretty face.” Fossil Trace Golf Club in Golden, Colorado, routed around 64 million year old fossil monuments might never have become a golf course and archaeological treasure without his tireless efforts to offer concessions to environmentalists. The Golf Club at Redlands Mesa might be far more ordinary instead of a quintessential example of world-class green settings and ingenious routing. The Club at Pradera (on which Engh owns a home adjacent to the 16th fairway with his wife Monie and two kids, Brian (10) and Bailey (8)) may be the best private course designed in 2005 due to its collection of unbelieveably tempting par-5s and Pinehurst-like greenside chipping swales.
Yes, I think Engh will be one for the ages when all is said and done, but his secrets are “lines of charm,” “trapdoors and hidden staircases,” and “muscle bunkers,” not merely virgin North Dakota, pristine Coeur D’Alene, Idaho and incomparable Colorado. The result is fascinating golf courses loaded with options and refreshingly innovative routings (try five par-3s and five par-5s frequently). Only then can you add in the jaw-dropping natural settings especially gorgeous green settings a la Mackenzie and Engh’s penchant for making the most of the routing process and well, we have a monster on our hands. Deciding which Jim Engh course to play is like deciding between a chateaubriand and the double lobster tails.
FROM THE CRADLE TO THE SUMMIT
Jim’s introduction to golf was not pleasant. “I crashed my first golf cart when I was two years old.” Jim’s dad was a John Deere dealer who sold to course builders and helped build a local nine hole course, so Jim was on golf courses since leaving the cradle. “Well, Dad was playing and I hopped behind the wheel and hit the gas. I still don’t know how I could have done it, I was so small. The cart rolled over on top of me.”
It was a frightening crash. The cart crushed one of Jim’s kidneys and his life was in the balance for several days. “I was lucky though. I got up from my deathbed.” To this day, he still only had one kidney, he notes grimly.
Despite this particularly negative introduction to the game, Jim kept playing and studying golf and golf architecture. After all, if there is a wall that feels good against your head, it’s golf. Fellow architect and a buddy since Engh’s college days, Tim Nugent remembers an epic moment shared with his life long-time friend.
“In 1985, my dad hired him out of college and he helped us with Golf Club of Illinois before I had to go back to Arizona State for school. So we took a road trip together that summer to the U.S. Open at Oakland Hills. We jumped in my mom’s black ’79 Biarritz (the Oldsmobile, not the golf hole), blew out some carbon and stood right next to T.C. Chen as he did the infamous double hit” Nugent recalls. But timing was everything and Nugent and Engh grabbed a bit of history as well. “We snagged the divot Chen took before anybody was any the wiser and brought it back to the office in a film canister. We didn’t keep it or sell it. This was waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay before eBay you know.”
Other early memories were comical. Award winning architect Jeff Brauer remembers one colorful moment. “I first met Jim as a summer associate for Bill Kubly. You could tell he was a “gunner” (Kubly’s term for an up and comer) back then, but he was also green as peas. Once he left one of Kubly’s drafting tables in a pickup truck overnight in a rainstorm ruining it!”
Nevertheless, the folksy, humble, stand-up Jim survived the episode, taking it as a learning experience. “Happily, we all have a good laugh about it now.”
Jim worked with a wide variety of excellent designers in these heady, halcyon years. From 1987-1991, he worked for British design firm Cotton Pennick as its Director of Golf Course Design and Construction. The already worldwide presence of the firm (over 300 courses in more than 30 countries) was increased when International Management Group acquired the firm. They sent Engh to many far-flung corners of the globe – from Japan with great Japanese pro Isao Aoki to the European continent with Hall of Fame Golfer Bernhard Langer. From Joe Finger and Pete Dye to the Chinese and the Thai, Jim has designed everywhere across the Northern Hemisphere save Africa. Pretty good for a guy raised in North Dakota with a B.S. in Landscape Architecture from Colorado State. After a few trips to the UK to deeply study the great holes and courses there, Jim decided to form his own firm in 1991.
LINES OF CHARM
The foundations of Engh’s design philosophy are based solidly on the great design features of the great U.K. courses, which he has studied extensively (even though Engh is still a modernist and moves an average of 300,000 – 400,000 cubic yards of earth per design). Like Alistair Mackenzie, Engh eschews the doctrine of framing (where the player is spoon fed what to do on the tee box and responds to the dictatorial will of the architect) and instead keeps the direct line to the hole playable, even tempting, but perilous as well. Like Mackenzie he breaks up the direct line of play to the hole with hazards and creates the line of charm, a perilous but achievable short cut that requires perfect planning and execution. There is a boatload of danger right squarely in the direct line of flight to the target. Meanwhile, the other side of the playing field is wide and welcoming, but a longer way round. The player gets to pick how to play the hole – according to his talent and greed.
Realizing that Mackenzie was right, Engh gleefully delivers fascinating holes that are just as strong in Northern Michigan as they are in Canyonland, Colorado. The results translate best in Engh’s risk-reward par-5s. Many are short – reachable in two by many – but misses are punished mercilessly. “I’ll give a player a shot to reach a green in one shot less than regulation, but I sure won’t help him or make it easy!” he adds with an almost scandalized look as I note the par-5 green at 18 at Fossil Trace is not designed to be overly receptive to a long fairway wood approach. “If they want a putt for eagle, they have to hit two great shots to earn it.”
“I also love short holes” he continues smoothly. “There are a lot more options for all players, regardless of their skill level. I especially like a short par-5 to finish the round.” For example, Engh brings Fossil Trace, Red Hawk Ridge, and his private triumph and home course, The Club at Pradera to a crescendo with short par-5 finales.
“The shorter the hole, the more sex appeal I can add in terms of design features to make the hole interesting. Long par-4s can get dull. The shorter ‘in between-length holes,’ you know, short par-5s and par-4s are short enough for amateurs to have a shot at making par, but there is enough danger lurking that amateurs and experts alike stand as much chance of making six as they do three” he finishes excitedly.
Engh also has some Old Tom Morris and A.W. Tillinghast in him. Speaking of Old Tom’s design Machrihanish, the Good Dr. Mackenzie wrote in The Spirit of St. Andrews, “Some of the natural greens were so undulating that at times one had to putt twenty or thirty yards round to lay dead at the hole five yards away. These greens have all gone and today one loses all the joy of outwitting an opponent by making spectacular putts of this description.”
Well, Old Tom would be heartened to see some of Engh’s creations. Engh, like Morris and A.W. Tillinghast (at places like Winged Foot and Baltusrol) and like Mackenzie (at Pasatiempo and Crystal Downs), incorporated wild green undulations, for example, Fossil Trace and shaved greenside chipping swales instead of rough, most notably at Pradera. Engh’s greens have so many features and unique hazards, the green complexes are often a hole in and of themselves and the hole is frequently only beginning upon reaching the putting surface.
If there is a common theme to many of Jim’s holes, everything is a bowl. Fairways frequently have sidewalls that keep erratic players reasonably in play. With sidewalls at the green complex, there are a lot of player friendly bounces. “That’s where the payoff is” says Engh. “Not only does it keep people in play, but it creates options because there is more than one way to get on the green or get one close.” He is right. Errant shots gather close to the hole and result in a birdie putt instead of a difficult chip or wicked short-sided pitch.
If there is another common theme, Engh builds some of the greatest showstopper par-5s in the business. His three shotters are always filled with options and myriad angles of attack. Yet, like Mackenzie, the direct line of the hole is fraught with peril. Holes are tempting to experts but requiring pinpoint execution, but fair for average players. Like Alistair Mackenzie’s great par-5s, the timid golfer can play the three shotters by taking the long way around, but they lose strokes by avoiding risks.
The result of Engh’s cumulative philosophy is an array of challenging and interesting courses that place heavy emphasis on smart strategic play as well as solid execution. As a result, Engh says more in 311 yards than most architects say in 450.
TRAPDOORS, HIDDEN STAIRCASES AND MUSCLE BUNKERS
Engh also designs with a unique artistic voice. His originality shines through in his trademark bunkering style (called “muscle bunkers” by the team) and in the unexpected twists in his designs that he calls “trapdoors and hidden staircases.”
“I was in Ireland touring Donegal Castle” Engh recalls energetically. “I had done this particular tour once before, so I slipped away from the main group up a back staircase and started exploring on my own. I found all sorts of trapdoors and hidden stairways and secret passages.”
“Golf courses are the same” he continues, his eyes flickering with enthusiasm. “Each time you play a course you learn another secret about it…some way to play avoid a hazard or some bump off which to play a creative shot. You learn something new every time you play a great golf course. So I incorporate the concept in my design and it makes for many exciting playing options. My goal is to create a course that you can play every day and never get bored and play every day and find some new way to attack a hole. Some people get frustrated, but it’s only because they are seeing something new and they haven’t figured out how to successfully play the hole. Most people like the course more with lots of options and interesting windows and trapdoors.”
Take, for example, the par-5 15th at Fossil Trace. The rock wall seen in the distance from the tee box appears to be the end of the fairway:
