Swinkelsche (Championship)

Architect Frank Pont and his team of shapers, led by Conor Walsh, have somehow managed to transform what was a largely flat and featureless property into a natural looking heathland landscape – and one that’s as fit for golf as you will find anywhere in the Netherlands.

Five of the Championship holes are routed through the adjacent forest and little, if any, shaping was required to bring them into play. For the remaining holes though, over half a million cubic yards of sandy soil was shifted – along with the installation of wetland areas, a meandering stream and several water features – during the formation of these fairways.

Overall green sizes range from 6,000 to 9,000 square yards but large areas around the putting surfaces have been finished with green mix, extending the total greenside area around many of the pin positions to as much as 16,000 square yards.

Pont’s “experimental” short par four 11th hole – which is almost as wide as it is long – certainly causes something of a stir with those who tee it up here for the first time. Standing on the tee, facing the enormous sand pit that lies in the middle of the fairway, there has to be at least four different paths to consider en route to marking a potential “4” on the scorecard.

The following edited extract by architect Frank Pont is from Volume Seven of Golf Architecture: A Worldwide Perspective. Reproduced with kind permission. To obtain a copy of the book, email Paul Daley at fswing@bigpond.net.au.

“The project was uniquely satisfying for me as a golf architect, for three reasons. The first reason was that the client gave us full creative control of the design. The client, brothers Harry and Hendrik Swinkels, stated early on they hired me because they knew little about golf and fully trusted my judgement. Our reference material included visits to several classic Dutch courses and the brothers indicated they were happy to see a course emerge with similar classical and strategic design ideas incorporated.

The second reason was that the client gave me a site that consists of pure sand, with an expansive extent of 250 acres. Furthermore, the property possesses a low water table and, in many areas, is bordered by beautiful mature pine forests. The large site permitted the possibility of many different routings, allowing us to create a sense of space for the players when walking the course. We created strikingly different landscapes throughout the site: from undulating heathlands, to a large lake bordered by some holes, to a number of traverses through the forest.

The third reason pertains to preparation time. Given the lengthy lag between the start of the design and the actual course building, I had a lot of preparation time to deeply consider all design elements of the course, such as the routing, hole-strategy, bunker-style, green designs and what kind of landscape to create on the flat agricultural land. The routing underwent much iteration before we happily settled upon the final configuration of holes, whereby the key was ensuring lively changes of direction.

Swinkelsche’s sizeable greens are generally undulating and possess a mix of ball-collecting and ball-repelling shapes. This means that many approach shots finish next to the greens; something we anticipated by building much larger green surround areas. Regarding bunkering, in order to fit the big scale of the landscape it was important to make the bunkers substantial. The bunker shapes are irregular, supported by fescue-laced edges. And heather-laced too, in places, making them fit nicely into the newly created heathland landscape.”