Tiger was just 11 when he entered golf digest’s first armchair architect contest.
We marvel at Tiger Woods’ abilities. Even at 11 he was contemplating issues specific to professionals many times his age. His 1987 entry in Golf Digest’s inaugural Armchair Architect contest, conceived by our Architecture Editor Emeritus Ron Whitten, reveals a preternatural understanding of how tour players process challenges, and it previewed the way he and the pros after him would attack golf holes through new levels of power and soaring trajectories. The U-shape par 5 he envisioned, with a towering escarpment blocking the direct route between tee and green, forcing play through a gauntlet of punitive hazards, could be interpreted as an early psychological experiment for how Tiger would defend courses against himself: this is the only way I might be stopped.
Though clearly an abstraction, the hole isn’t entirely out of step with the design models of the time (Pete Dye’s PGA West was so extreme in its demands that PGA Tour pros protested playing there). There are some Dye influences here, including an island green and rock or bulkheads lining hazards. But there are classical elements, too, like a creek, crossing the fairway twice, that recalls William Flynn; the risk-reward options in Alister MacKenzie’s greatest work; and the routing through a natural canyon (check out those topo lines) and a bunker in the middle of the green that would make George Thomas smile.
But this is the drawing of a child who was fascinated with golf in all its possibilities. Tiger’s imagination was as unbound as his future, and the potential he saw in design was as unlimited as his playing potential. The courses he has built with his firm TGR Design have shown admirable restraint and playability. Let’s also hope, as he continues, there’s still some of that 11-year-old imagination inside him.
