Green Blueprints: A Talk With Top Golf Course Designer Jim Engh

   
     Jim Engh burst onto the scene as a top tier golf course architect 20 years ago with his first US design, The Sanctuary, a highly acclaimed, physically radical, and ultra-private course on the edges of Denver, CO. The Sanctuary has no members, and is owned by ReMax real estate co-founder and Chairman Dave Liniger, who originally bought the land for his beloved Arabian stallions. But the site proved too severe for horses, and many thought for golf, until Engh proved them wrong. Perhaps a victim of his own success, he has since been sought after for some especially “difficult” or truly unique sites. His Fossil Trace course in Golden, CO is a former mine, with antique equipment still lining the fairways, along with dinosaur bones and footprints. His private Black Rock in Coeur d’Alene, ID is a top notch Top 100 course full of dramatic elevation changes, exposed rock and waterfalls. Redlands Mesa in western CO plays through buttes like a John Ford western. Whatever challenges the site offers, Engh and his design firm use the same approach. “I get jazzed when I can find really interesting locations on a piece of property.

          I call these ‘hot spots’ and I try to connect them. On a mountain course it could be a beautiful valley. At Awarii Dunes (NE) we found some really cool landforms, and even though quirky, it’s natural. At Black Rock we had this great rock cliff wall and I just had to use it. At Minot (ND) the valley couldn’t fit all 18 holes, so we had to climb the walls. A lot of designers call these ‘difficult’ sites but I love them – every time I face a ‘problem’ I stew on it long enough and come up with a really creative solution. For me adversity is the mother of invention.” “Somewhere along the line someone decided there were ‘rules’ to golf course design. The only rules I have is it has to be playable, even if it’s weird, hidden or quirky, and it has to be fun. If those two factors are involved, it works.” Engh’s very first course was in Thailand in 1991, and ever since he has worked a lot in Asia, with current projects in China, Korea, Vietnam, Thailand – and North Dakota, where he is finishing up the Minot Country Club. The storied club was launched in 1929, but in 2011 they had what he calls a 500-year flood, wiping out the course and clubhouse, and FEMA decided to build levees on the site. So the club is moving across town in Minot, in what is now the oil boom region of the Bakken formation. “The town is just going crazy with oil money,” said Engh.

“The new course in on incredible land, an alluvial valley with all kinds of elevated tee shots.” (Minot CC is opening spring 2015 and now accepting members). What’s the biggest challenge in his work? “The hardest part is the regulations, especially here in the US. I’ve always considered myself a steward of the land, but the assumption is that we are destroyers of the land, and that’s very frustrating.” The rewards? “I have two favorite parts of my job. The first is when I lock myself in the studio and stay up all night, when the phone isn’t ringing, getting creative with my sketchpad, listening to music. That’s a fun time for me. My other favorite is the time I spend onsite doing construction. I spend a lot of time getting my documents accurate and correct but sometimes you see something out there you just have to use. The site, no matter how difficult, is the fun part”