A common quibble here at GCA, and one that perhaps has some legs, is that the projects we cover don’t represent the real world of golf. “You only write about huge, expensive projects, not the kind of courses ordinary golfers play,” people sometimes tell us, and, when I reflect on this, I realise there is a bit of justice in those comments.

Big projects on famous courses by well-known golf architects certainly make up a fair proportion of our content. Journalistically speaking, it’s not too difficult to figure out why – when something is big, famous and bold, it is already newsworthy. When we report a smaller project on a course not many have heard of, then we have to explain to readers why it’s significant and why we feel they should spend time reading about it. In the six or seven years since Donald Trump first announced plans for his Aberdeenshire course, we have carried any number of Trump stories, to the extent that we have sometimes become a little bored of them. But it’s news, and as a news-driven outfit, naturally we want to cover it. Similarly, Mike Keiser’s many projects get reported on here, as they do in the rest of the worldwide golf press. But Keiser’s track record, from Bandon through Barnbougle and now Cabot and Sand Valley is so strong that no-one interested in golf architecture could afford to ignore it.

Here, then, so as to level the playing field a little, is a story about an ongoing renovation project on a not-too-well known members club in a small European country.

Danish architect Caspar Grauballe has seen both sides of the coin in the last five years or so. Caspar worked for Martin Hawtree for many years, and served as chief associate to Hawtree on the design and build of Trump’s Aberdeen course, outside the Rio Olympic course without doubt the world’s most high-profile, and perhaps also the most controversial golf development of recent years. At Trump Aberdeen, from day one, the challenge for the architects, as well as for construction and grow in teams, was to live up to the grandiose statements made by the owner, who announced his intention to build the world’s greatest golf course before a single spade was put into the ground. Although few observers, apart from Trump himself, have anointed the course as world number one, equally the course has been extremely well received, and, with the recent announcement that it is to hold the Scottish Open for three consecutive years, the developer’s additional goal – of being a venue for top championships – is also on the way to being fulfilled.

But Caspar left Hawtree straight after the Trump job was finished, and began the process of building up his own design practice based in his native Denmark.

As we have repeated over and over again in these pages, becoming established as a golf architect in your own name, rather than as an employee of someone else, has always been difficult, but in these days of tight golf markets, it must surely be harder now than it has ever been. Caspar is helped by a strong reputation in his native Scandinavia – he worked on a number of significant projects there during his Hawtree years. And therefore, it has proved convenient for both parties that he should, on some jobs, continue to work on behalf of his old boss.

One such job is the renovation of the Zuid Limburgse course in the far south-east of the Netherlands. Nine holes were originally designed by Martin Hawtree’s father Fred back in the 1960s, and nine more were added by Belgian architect Paul Rolin in the 1980s. Situated only a few kilometres from both the German and Belgian borders, Zuid Limburgse (South Limburg), is a pretty successful, quite nice members’ club, nothing out of the ordinary. Aachen in Germany and Maastricht in the Netherlands are the nearest cities, and the course occupies an appealing piece of property in an area that is, for one of the Low Countries, quite hilly and undulating.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, given its design history, Zuid Limburgse is a course of two halves. One nine occupies mature woodland, while the other is mostly located in pretty open former agricultural land. Part of Caspar’s task at the club is to make the two nines feel a little more compatible. He has, for example, already reworked the downhill second hole, the first in the open field, with the aim of making the green site sit more comfortably in its surroundings. Also on his list is the long uphill par three eleventh, which, although it occupies some quite interesting ground, now feels like a mostly blind bash of almost 200 metres across a field that slopes from high right to low left. The possibility exists to reshape and extend fairway on the high side of the green, in the process opening up a route for golfer to hit a long, running approach to the hole, which would suit the ground, but alternative solutions also exist, including a substantial shortening of the hole. This work will be carried out as part of the next phase.

Hawtree’s routing returns to the clubhouse at both ninth and eighteenth, the two holes being sat on a straight access, though playing in opposite directions to each other. There is perhaps fifty or sixty metres of ground between the two, and Caspar has cleverly reshaped the greens, and the dead ground between, to create the impression that the two greens back onto each other. It’s a very well done optical illusion; coming down the eighteenth hole, or indeed up the ninth, and you would swear you were playing to a very long double green. It’s only when you get close to either putting surface you realise the gaps in between.

Another interesting hole out in the field is the par four twelfth, which, at 340m from the back tees, is relatively short. The downhill drive must avoid a pond at the bottom of the slope; the hole then switchbacks steeply uphill to a green cut high in the hillside. It is, as it stands, an unsatisfactory hole, with no great reward for a bold drive, but it occupies quite dramatic terrain and gives the architect an opportunity to create an exciting risk and reward short four; it will be interesting to return in a year or two and see what solution was chosen.

Like most young architects of today, Caspar is a hands-on designer. While, unlike some, he’s not inclined to climb on a bulldozer or excavator and shape his features, when GCA visited, he decided that the contours of the new fourth green – a very short dogleg par four in the forest – were not quite to his liking, and spent a considerable amount of time raking the sand to add a small hump in the rear of the new surface, protecting a back pin. It’s pleasing to see such attention to detail from an architect, but it is typical of Caspar’s dedication to his craft.

It’s also pleasing to see an architect who has managed to leave his previous firm to set up on his own without burning his bridges. There is something about the GCA profession that tends to see leaving as a personal matter, with once strong relationships being shattered by either redundancy or the desire to be one’s own boss. Both Caspar and Martin Hawtree seem to have managed to be more mature and retain a strong working relationship despite no longer being colleagues. I am sure this will help the Danish designer as he builds up his own company.

This article first appeared in Golf Course Architecture - Issue 41