GCA editor Adam Lawrence and producer Vaughn Halyard to create multi-platform project about the legendary designers
By Richard Humphreys |
A new project that will include books and a documentary series will celebrate the careers of Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw.
To be produced by Golf Course Architecture editor Adam Lawrence and StoryLounge producer and former Sony Music executive Vaughn Halyard, who is also the current president of the Donald Ross Society, the project was conceived during a telephone conversation.
“While on a call with Bill for a GCA article, from nowhere, I asked him why no-one had ever done a book on them,” said Lawrence. “He laughed and said that their business manager Scotty Sayers had been trying to persuade them to do a book for more than 20 years, but the time had never seemed right. I decided to send them a pitch, and, while conversing with my friend Vaughn about it, he said, ‘That’s a brilliant idea, but it’s also an iconic 360-degree project’. Over the next few months, we crafted a proposal with commensurate depth and pitched it to Bill, Ben and Scotty. They initially showed reluctance, so we fine-tuned the package in a manner that enabled Coore & Crenshaw to say yes. We are truly humbled that they have chosen to partner with us.”
Bill Coore and GCA editor Adam Lawrence (Photo: Vaughn Halyard)
“This is one of the greatest stories in golf,” said Halyard. “It’s not an understatement to say that Coore & Crenshaw changed the direction in which the game was heading. When they built the Sand Hills course in Nebraska, they started a movement to return to the classic values of golf design, and so many great courses that have been built since then draw their lineage from Sand Hills. I first met and began filming with Bill and Ben during the earliest days of Sand Valley. They were still cutting trees for the first course. Golf was paramount. The C&C course was completed before the rooms were built and operations were being conducted from a modified shipping container. That was a revelation. Adam and I met at the opening of Sand Valley – our first collaboration was a search for late evening drinks, before the Lodge had been completed.”
Sand Hills in Nebraska, the course Halyard says started a movement in golf course design to return to classic values of architecture (Photo: Vaughn Halyard)
Scotty Sayers, Coore & Crenshaw partner and business manager, said: “Over the years, we have heard a multitude of book pitches; this one struck the right note. Trust is essential to our team and families. As such we spent a long time pondering this proposal. We feel this is the right time to tell our story and are very much looking forward to working with Adam and Vaughn.”
Halyard has recruited longtime friend Ken Hertz, a media and tech entrepreneur, to advise on the media project. “I was in before the end of the pitch,” said Hertz.
“This will be a long road – a story this big is going to take time to tell properly – but we are honoured, thrilled and humbled to be going on so fantastic a ride,” said Lawrence.