47 practice putting green we had was overshadowed by a mature tree, so it was very difficult to have good turf. With my bigger picture thinking, I was able to show that the club could have a larger putting green, a decent chipping green and a better practice range. The putting green was the first USGA green on the course. I brought more contours into that, and the chipping green, so that players would be stretched a bit more. I did bits there on and off for about 15 years. I tried to encourage the club to stop looking at projects in an ad hoc way and have a masterplan to take the course in the right direction for the future. I prepared a preliminary plan for the club but eventually the club decided it needed a proper one, and I wrote to the board and said, ‘Don’t consider me; this isn’t something a member should be involved with’, and they went with another architect in the end. The course has been under reconstruction since 2013, it’s finally getting there, and it’s looking good.” Morrison says that, although her knowledge of the course as a longtime member was the basis of her work there, she had to keep her own opinion at arm’s length throughout. “It takes discipline,” she explains. “I had a perception of the course from my young eyes, but as their architect, I had to look at the course more broadly and figure out what was best for the course from an architectural perspective. Take the pot bunkers and mounds – I didn’t like them personally, but they were part of the course. We improved things – better access, better sand – but if it had been left entirely to me, I would have started again. When I was a kid, I really loved the sweeping views of the course, but over time trees grow, and captains want to beautify. I would have preferred it with fewer ornamentals, but you can’t dictate as an architect – you have to work with the people who are there.” One of the inevitable consequences of the massive number of mixed-use golf and housing developments is that there are bound to be quite a few golf architects who live on golf courses! And surely, if a club knows it has a resident architect, the temptation to ask them first if there is course work needed must, on occasion, be impossible to resist. Architect Kevin Atkinson has lived on the development surrounding the Red Rocks Country Club to the southwest of Denver for over 20 years. “They hired me as their golf architect, Photo: Lyne Morrison Photo: Kevin Atkinson Kevin Atkinson, left, with friends and neighbours at the Red Rock community
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