Chip: What is your favorite movie?                                                             

Geoff: Impossible to narrow it to one. Blues Brothers, Tootsie, All The President’s Men, Annie Hall, The Insider, Get Shorty, The Ladykillers (Coen version), Diner and of course, The Godfather.2

Chip: What is your favorite restaurant?

Geoff: Musha in Santa Monica. Japanese food. A friend took me there kicking and screaming. Now I can’t get enough.

Chip: What’s your handicap?

Geoff: No idea. I don’t have an index. Shot 87 doubling three par-5s the last time I played, which was at LA North. It was ugly.

Chip: What is your favorite quote?

Geoff: “The fascination of shooting as a sport depends almost wholly on whether you are at the right or wrong end of the gun.” PG Wodehouse

Chip: What is the best golf town

Geoff: St. Andrews

Chip: Favorite tour event and why?

Geoff: Northern Trust Open, my hometown event. I haven’t missed one since 1982

Chip: What is your dream car?

Geoff: Don’t have one, not really a car guy.

Chip: What is your favorite CD?

Geoff: Goodbye Yellow Brick Road-Elton John, White Ladder-David Gray, Sam’s Town-The Killers, Mercury Falling-Sting, Poetic Champion’s Compose-Van Morrison

Personal

Chip: You played golf at Pepperdine, did you ever think of playing golf professionally?

Geoff: I did throughout much of my college career but I wised up. I don’t know how those guys do it.

Chip: What got you interested in the architecture side of golf?

Geoff: Growing up playing Riviera. It’ll do that to you. It was truly an architectural museum and Ben Crenshaw was kind of enough to show me so many things about it that I did not understand. There still are remnants and it continues to retain charm, but I don’t know for how much longer. You can only injet so much Botox and cut away at it before it becomes unrecognizable.

Chip: Tell me about your relationship with Gil Hanse and his architecture business.

Geoff: Gil liked my books, we chatted via email, eventually met in the Philadelphia area and he told me if a project ever came up and I wanted to work with him and learn the business, to give him a call. Rustic Canyon came along and it was great fun, and he’s kept me involved with his work out west since. He and Jim and I work pretty well together. We each have our talents and I know my limitations. We’ve got some really neat sites to work with, hopefully we’ll get the chance soon.

Chip: What’s the inspiration for your blog?

Geoff: It was started to coincide with The Future of Golf. Essentially, the goal was to keep following up on the book and to monitor the state of the game. I’d like think it’s stayed pretty close to that mission. I do highlight more whimsical stuff than I originally expected to, but the late great Stu Schneider really drove home the importance of keeping it entertaining to keep people coming back and to prevent it from becoming just a daily dose of rants and negative stories.

Chip: Is there one or two courses that you are burning to see and if so, why?

Geoff: Royal Melbourne East and West, Kingston Heath…for obvious reasons. I want to see this “proper golf” that I keep hearing about. They look like what California courses should look like, but don’t. Firm, fast, rustic, sandy and fun.

Chip: Where would you most like to see a course built that currently doesn’t have one?

Geoff: Catalina Island off the southern California coast. There’s a nine-holer there now, but it’s a great little place and it’d be fun to see a full length course there.

Chip: I have read of your dislike with the overuse of rough.  What would your favorite U.S. Open site be without constricting rough?

Geoff: Oakmont, without question. It’s so brilliant. It just doesn’t need rough. No course is more obviously ruined by rough and countless people have said that post-2007. With some width those amazing greens would take on meaning and it would still be nearly impossible. But it’d be a fun impossible!

Modern Golf

Chip: What is the biggest challenge to the modern golf course architect?

Geoff: Financing and expectations. The first is obvious in light of recent news, the second is more of a comment about what Tom Fazio, Robert Trent Jones, Jack Nicklaus and others have left us as a legacy: 7,200 yards, par 72, $10-25 million to build a great course. A majority of people still think familiar names and big budgets translate to great golf, no matter how many examples there are saying otherwise. It’s why the game is in the mess it’s in and why so many of those courses are being redone within 10 to 15 years after opening. We are so far from realizing the game’s true potential through architecture that inspires. Thankfully though, there is a movement in the other direction and I’m proud to be a small part of it.

Chip: Are there any features in course design today that you think are greatly overrated?

Geoff: Most of it. Length, narrowness, trees, small greens, the list goes on and on. So much of it is so bad I don’t even know where to start.

Chip: How do you think the period in course architecture (1985-1999) will be viewed in fifty years time?

Geoff: Hmmm…not the dark ages, but certainly not a golden age either. Pete Dye did some neat stuff and tutored some pretty talented proteges.

Chip: Is there any way to get the genie back in the bottle concerning distance with modern clubs and balls without a decade of lawsuits from the manufactures?

Geoff: Sure. We just rolled back grooves and they manufacturers rolled over. Why I don’t know because now a precedent for a rollback has been set. There are ways to tinker with the ball that address the issue while going unnoticed by the average golfer. But the USGA and R&A would have to sell and explain that concept, and I’m afraid they just aren’t capable. They’re marketing side has never been more inept when it comes to media savvy. And they’ve lost so many supporters amongst the serious, devoted golfing elite. What’s funny is that a few years ago I was a lone wolf nut and now the number of people who understand the problem and want action is just incredible.

Old Courses

Chip: Who is your favorite architect and why?

Geoff: George Thomas. He blended beauty with strategy, made it all look neat and fun the first time you played his courses, but then they got better as you discovered the nuances. He’s the Steven Spielberg of golf architecture, able to tell a great story with subtlety and thought-provoking ideas, yet still a mainstream piece of work that the masses can enjoy. Why Thomas’s work has been so radically changed is beyond me, especially after so much has been written about his original designs. Bel Air continues to make a mess. It’s almost comical to see it now. Just when you think they have exhausted every possibility, there’s more on the way!  Gil and I have been working for two years on a master plan for LACC North. I hope when we’re done people will get to see what a genius Thomas was and that the last thing he was working on when he died was his most brilliant: his courses within the course concept. And the par-3s there are just extraordinary. I think they may be the best set in the world…after we dust them off and bring out the highlights.

Chip: Do you think a new course will ever again be built with as much ruggedness and exposed sand as Cypress and Pine Valley originally looked?

Geoff: Hmmm…that’s a tough one. I hope so, but the love of fairness and the hatred for any kind of bad lie in sand will make it tough. Isn’t it odd how people would rather look for their ball and slash out of three inch rough than play a course that is crispy around the edges and maybe really sandy in places off the fairway? I can’t relate to that. Two courses come to mind that were once really sandy: Indian Creek and Oyster Harbors. Both were so mind-boggling in their original design, and now they are just very solid courses. But the people at both really have fought the restoration of sand. I’m sure there are others that I’m forgetting. And don’t even get me started on the destruction of Pine Valley. But that’s what happens when you put a course in Tom Fazio’s hands. It’s not a shock. Just disappointing.

Chip: It seems you have a special relationship with Cypress Point Club.  I was lucky enough to play there recently and thought it was wonderful.  What are a few of the little known facts that people might not know about that special place?

Geoff: That a green chairman filled in many of MacKenzie’s bunkers and the club really almost folded. That the caddies have playing privileges twice a week. That you have to wear a coat and tie in the clubhouse. That they have the nicest staff in the world. That the 18th hole in its original form was very dramatic. Sure, I don’t know how it played, but it certainly was dramatic looking. MacKenzie did not do a bad job on this hole, contrary to what has been said over the years.

Chip: Everyone seems to love the bunkering work Mackenzie did around the sand belt in Australia.  Why do you think that style is not duplicated in other parts of the world?

Geoff: It would take a lot of handwork and a site with sandy soil to create that style. Two rarities in modern golf. Gil and Jim Wagner and I keep talking about doing some of the Melbourne type bunkering somewhere, one of these days. I’ve been lobbying to do those types of bunkers at our project in Cabo, Querencia. None of the bermuda grasses really look good in the shaggy, rugged style Gil and Jim do so well, so I say why not do a sandbelt look there with tight turf on the green and fairway side, the back side bleeding into the native scrub and cactus.  We’ll see!

Chip: The US Open will be at Merion in a few years and will be closely watched given its length. If you were in charge of course set up for the event, and given your dislike of constricting rough, what would you do to challenge the players and not have them shot 20 under par?

Geoff: I just don’t know how to answer that. The course is too short for modern golf. So either the USGA has to let go of the par protecting and contouring to take away driver, or just set it up to take driver out of their hands and have a goofy open. I’m confident Mike Davis is going to let them play the course as much as possible and not trick it up.

Varity

Chip: Tim Finchem and you have one round together, where do you play, why, and what’s a possible topic of conversation?

Geoff: TPC Sawgrass of course, because that’s the only way I can afford to play it now. And that way I can point out how rough weakens it as a design. I’m sure he’d just say that it’s what Davis Love and other vets have been telling him and as with them, I’m sure my comments would go in one ear and out the other. He’s not a particularly imaginative leader and I never hesitate to point that out. I like easy pickings.

Chip: Walter Driver and you have one round together, where do you play, why, and what’s a possible topic of conversation?

Geoff: Oh definitely Augusta National so I could point out how to restore it and watch his head spin. We’d talk about our preferred Citation jets, Shinnecock Hills, the athleticism of today’s players and how he managed to use his Blackberry during major championships when every other spectator would be tackled by Pinkerton guards if they even thought about reaching into their pockets for a PDA.