Playing Golf God

Sunday Business Post

May 07, 2006 - By Ed Micheau

Paul McGinley wears it well

Decked out in a luminous yellow sleeveless jacket and dark wellington boots, one of Ireland’s best-known sportsmen stops his open-top 4x4 jeep and leaps out, ready for work. The garb of the professional golfer, the Taylor Made-Adidas clothing, is not apparent, a pointer that this is not a usual day at the office for the 39-year-old Dubliner.

The setting in Macreddin, overlooking the four star Brook Lodge hotel complex, could hardly be more pictureseque; sheep graze on lush, green Wicklow hills dotted with yellow and purple gorse, which peer down on a winding stream flanked by high trees.

McGinley has spent two hours walking the terrain, making mental notes and suggesting changes and modifications to the 18-hole championship golf course he is co-designing.

A television crew has arrived to shoot a 60-second infomercial on the new golf course that the owners of Brook Lodge will e-mail to several thousand of their best customers and friends.

The golf course, which is set to open in May 2007, is still a work in progress. As McGinley strikes the ‘first’ shot on the new course for the promotional video, the golf ball fizzes above a scorched 13th fairway, as yet comprised only of dirty brown topsoil.

But the outline of his new creation is taking shape, the location of tees, bunkers and greens clearly sculpted into the soil. It is McGinley’s first attempt at designing a golf course and his excitement is palpable.

Macreddin is mature land, trees that are 50, 60 feet high, very dense, lots of pines. And heathland, gorse. Next to links, for me, the most beautifully designed courses have all those features.

"That was a big attraction for me about this place," says McGinley.

The landscape has clearly captured his imagination and his heart, but the man who might have been a stockbroker in another life has his head screwed on too. With over €12 million being poured into the new course at Macreddin, McGinley has done the math and the figures add up.

"I've been offered a lot of projects before, but for one reason or another I didn't go for them.

"When I saw what they had down here, when I saw the beauty of the land, the most important thing for me was the budget. That this thing was not just a Mickey Mouse operation," he says.

"I saw what they had already achieved with the spa and hotel. There was plenty of finance behind it. I wasn't going to lend my name to something that wasn't going to be properly backed up, particularly for my first venture into golf design, which is something I am passionate about. One of our old school teachers used to say: 'You don't get a second chance to make a first impression.'"

McGinley and co-designer Roger Jones are taking no chances. The issue of drainage, which has bedevilled many hillside golf courses, is high up their list of priorities. With the aid of a strong river that runs through the middle of the course, McGinley says the installation of a "proper drainage" system will ensure that Macreddin will play as a "very dry golf course". Unlike some other golfers, whose role in the design and construction of a new course extends mainly to lending their imprimatur and name to the project, McGinley's fingerprints will be all over each of the 18 holes.

I've involved myself more than I thought I would and more than I really wanted to. It's taken up a lot more of my time than I had originally budgeted for. Having said that, I'm very passionate about the project.

It's my first baby and it will always be that - a golf course I want to come back to again in 10 to 20 years time. Plant a tree here, move a bush there. Hopefully, it will be an ongoing project for a long, long time. I didn't want to put my name to something and not be able to stand over it. If there are mistakes on this course, they are my mistakes and I'll be accountable for them because I've had 100 per cent control."

And as the television crew waits for the sun to break out of the clouds, McGinley's input is apparent. A chat with the design team leaves no room for doubt that he wants the tree-lined avenue that surrounds the 18th fairway to be complemented with an "evergreen amphitheatre" around the final green.

McGinley has long held strong views on golf architecture, opinions expressed publicly most recently at Augusta when its management decided to lengthen the famous course for the 2006 US Masters.

At five foot seven in height, McGinley is never going to hit a golf ball as far as Tiger Woods.

He strongly believes that moves by golf courses to continuously lengthen holes is stifling creativity and skill in the modern game, favouring power over subtlety.

Having talked the talk so vocally, the eyes of the golfing world will be upon Macreddin to see McGinley's version of how golf should be played.

Cognisant of this perhaps, McGinley has drawn inspiration from some of his favourite golf courses around the world - Royal Portrush in the North, Sunningdale in England and Pinehurst No 2 in North Carolina. Macreddin is an attempt by McGinley, he says, to throw up a traditional golf course with a contemporary twist, such as modern speeds of greens and heights of fairways. There will be run-off areas next to the greens, small valleys where players will have a range of options - a driver, a putter, a lob wedge and nine iron - to plot their escape.

None of the 18 holes will be modelled on any one hole around the world but the greens will resemble those at Pinehurst. I played the US Open there last year and I was blown away by the beauty of the place and with the questions the golf architect was asking us.

The exam paper he set was very different to the exams we sit every week on the tour. He was asking us different questions than we are normally asked and I enjoyed that," says McGinley. Too many people are setting the same exam paper. I want to bring in a little bit more skill, creativity. It doesn't have to be a brute of a golf course.

"The US Open at Pinehurst last year wasn't a long course, yet nobody finished below par."

Ironically, at 7,300 yards from the blue tees, Macreddin is a long course. However, McGinley says that that the way the course is configured will ensure it does not play that long.

The longest holes will be downhill, the uphill holes tailored slightly shorter to accommodate the average golfer. His intention is for the course to play fair - if you have a bad hole, you won't necessarily end up taking a 10.

Not for him the proverbial card-wrecking holes favoured on other courses.

I'm not a golf course architect who wants to intimidate the player too much. I want the golf course to bring out the flair of the skilled player.

You've got to work the ball on my course, use your imagination.

At the same time, I want to create something where the 20 handicapper or the lady golfer can enjoy their day and want to come back. I don't want them to walk away broken hearted having lost six or eight golf balls and fed up with the game. That's not to say the course is going to be easy but it's going to create options for all standards of play.

As he works through his first venture, McGinley admits that he is biased about whom he allows to influence his ideas on golf course architecture.

Former Irish stars Christy O'Connor Junior and Des Smyth are mentioned. Tom Fazio, who helped upgrade Pinehurst No 2, Augusta and Waterville in Co Kerry, is cited as the best international designer around.

McGinley confesses that the course, at the minute, does not have a signature hole. Instead, he says there are about half a dozen holes vying for that accolade, although the 12th which wraps alongside the river, is a leading candidate.

The signature hole has not quite evolved yet and as it evolves, one of them will really stand out. We found a new stream only a few weeks ago.

It's a spring well, which we are about to bring across the 15th fairway.

I want to make sure it is seen because it will run 40 yards in front of the green. I don't want any hidden agendas on this golf course. I want people to stand up on this course and know exactly what they have to do. The golf course is all going to be in front of you.

Located near Aughrim, Co Wicklow, McGinley is hopeful that infrastructural developments, such as the eventual completion of the M11 motorway from Dublin to Wexford, will one day facilitate the hosting of a major tournament at the venue.

Its proximity to the capital, just over an hour's drive away, would be a selling point if Macreddin was to throw its hat in the ring one day to stage the Irish Open.

But that is for the future.

Right now, McGinley is focused on completion of the golf course this time next year, with one just one eye on life after professional golf. With a Degree in International Finance and a Diploma in Marketing behind him, McGinley says he would have been perfectly happy to have played Gaelic football for Dublin, and to have been a stockbroker if golf had not intervened.

A self-confessed "bit of a gambler" on stocks and currencies, McGinley likes to read the financial pages every day.

But although he turns 40 in December, it is hard to see him on retirement being merely content to walk down to the shops every day to buy a copy of The Financial Times.

Golf design will surely occupy more of his time when he eventually hangs up his golf bag. ''I see beauty, I know what it is and I want to create something beautiful here. I'm really looking forward to seeing the finished product and to be able to reflect on it. I'll be in a better position then to say if this [design] is something I really enjoy, if I have got it right and if this is something I'll go forward with.

The biggest buzz will come in 12 months time when it is finished. There's not many people get to create something that will be around for hundreds of years. There's not many businesses you can do that with.