Did a phone interview last week with Ben Crenshaw, for a story about an outing he’s doing here. Most of our talk wasn’t really for the story, just stuff I was interested in. Following are some highlights.
Crenshaw was captain of the 99 Ryder Cup team, which beat the Europeans with the famous comeback including Justin Leonard’s famous putt. Crenshaw split with his players at the time over the issue of pay for the players. Some of the players - David Duval, for sure - still seem pissed at Crenshaw.
“Oh, they are [still mad]. I understand that. We almost split, as a team, over the issue of pay. I wasn’t caught in the middle, but as captain I didn’t want to be dealing with so much ideology. The PGA gave in after that event. I hope it assuaged everybody. I understand why they felt the way they did.
“During the course of the first two days our guys weer very frustrated. Watching them Saturday, I could tell they were playing well, just not getting putts to fall here and there. They team had a very special makeup, some built-in leaders in Davis Love, Payne Stewart, Tom Lehman and Hal Sutton.”
On why the US hasn’t done better in the Ryder Cup since:
“[The Europeans] live for the Ryder Cup. I’m amazed how well they play together. They shrug off a mistake very quickly. It seems to debilitate us for a while.
“It’s interesting that players who are from different countries share that feeling of playing for their tour. It has to do, I think, with the way the two tours are structured. Our players are very independent. They travel great distances from tournament to tournament. They don’t. Wherever they play, that’s where they stay. They all end up together. It’s sort of a different way of traveling and playing, and they’re very much a team when it comes to that.”
As a course designer, Crenshaw (and partner Bill Coore) fell into his masterpiece when an associate purchased 8,000 acres of land in north-central Nebraska.
“[Golf Digest] Architecture editor Ron Whiten is from Nebraska. In his book, “The Golf Course,” he included some pictures of this plain, raw land in Nebraska, which looked like the British Isles. I had this magazine at home, Southwest Art magazine, that also had some pictures of it. It looked just like Great Britain. Even so, when we got there, I just couldn’t believe what we were seeing.”
The land was just endless rolling country with sort of naturally “routed” golf holes. Crenshaw/Coore identified at least 130 of them. It was as if God had decided to dabble in golf architecture. Further, the sandy soil was so perfect for golf that the greens, which normally cost around $40,000 each to build to USGA standards, cost $300 each.
The result, Sand Hills Golf Club, is about the coolest-looking course I’ve ever seen. It’s currently the eighth-ranked course in the world according to Golf Magazine, even though it opened in 1995 and has never and likely will never host a major tournament because of its beyond-remote location.
“It was a great leap of faith. We didn’t know if we could make it work as a club.”
It seems to be. There’s a clubhouse and 26 housing units. There are about 120 members, all of them golf nuts, mostly from the Midwest, who come in several times a year and stay on the site.
“It’s entirely natural. We had so many options, it was really a matter of paring down more than building something.”
Crenshaw would like to see golf in general pared down a little. In the argument about equipment technology, he’s firmly in the limit-and-pull-back camp.
On the lengthening of Augusta National, where Crenshaw won two Masters:
“Golf clubs across the world are looking to [Augusta] to take the lead. In the club’s defense, they had to do something. In playing there, you have a lot less freedom. You have to play defensive golf. There’s just too much golf course out there.
“If we don’t do something, there will soon be 8,000-yard courses. We have to get our feet back on the ground, give people something that’s more pleasurable, and grow this game.”
