46 into a sandstone escarpment, and we had to dispose of the material taken out – about 70,000 cubic metres – on the golf course. Nine of the new holes are on land the club owns, and the other three are on leased land that previously held four and a half holes.” As well as the complications of land tenure, and the need to dispose of the fill, which was crushed and spread across seven holes, to an average depth of between one and two metres, though the deepest fill measures seven metres, Crafter says the drainage patterns across the site were very complicated, and there were a number of existing sewer lines running across it. He says: “The fill had to be kept on site, as the local council was unhappy with the idea of thousands of trucks running through neighbouring residential streets and having it dumped elsewhere.” The course – now known as Newgreens Chatswood – is a par 45 of 3,303 yards. Another current project that represents the architects’ greatest challenge is the Plover Cove course in Hong Kong, which is under construction and designed by the team of Dana Fry and Jason Straka. The fourth-most densely populated region on Earth, Hong Kong is obviously a phenomenally difficult place to find land for and build golf; Plover Cove is only happening because the course is being constructed on top of the Shuen Wan landfill site, which was used to dispose of the territory’s waste for many years until it was closed in 1995. A number of courses have previously been constructed on closed landfill sites, such as the Ferry Point course in New York and Harborside in Chicago. As those two locations might suggest, the difficulty and expense of building on such sites is likely only to be worthwhile in highly populated areas where other sites are simply not available. Straka says: “We’ve worked on restored landfill sites before and, generally, we don’t recommend golf courses to be placed on them simply because it is extraordinarily complex and expensive. However, in Hong Kong, where there is little land available that is not earmarked for development or preservation, it can make sense. “There are literally dozens upon dozens of restrictions and challenges when building on a landfill, even one as old as this. The site is small to begin with at around 130 acres. Couple that with very steep side slopes (think of it as a big dome) and it was a work of art and engineering to simply fit a golf course on the property. “There is a soil cap over the trash which cannot be cut into. So, in a few spots we had perhaps a metre of cut that we were allowed to make, but in most areas we could only fill. The fill is being brought in over time from building excavations around the city. To create flattish fairways, we can only fill the low side of the holes, recalling that we cannot cut and fill on any hole to make the necessary cross-slopes for the golf holes. “Every significant fill had to be analysed for compression of the trash under it. So, to meet the elevations we were seeking, compression tests were required so that we could overfill the areas to meet the grades we needed. That means that careful pre-analysis CHALLENGING SITES “ The reality of golf architecture is that most courses are built to serve a local market, and the quality of the site is not the only consideration”
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