What other memories do you have from that early visit?
I stopped at Pitlochry, Boat of Garten and Strathpeffer on my way up. My most vivid memory was taking an iron for safety on the 15th at Boat of Garten because it looked threatening, and walking up there to discover that I’d taken the perfect club to hit into the gully!
Besides Dornoch, the other course that prompted a deep reaction from me was Cruden Bay. I remember calling home from the phone box in Port Erroll, just across from the fourth tee, to tell my mom it was the most dramatic course I’d ever seen.
I don’t still think that, but it was so exciting to discover the course for the first time. I had only ever seen one photo of it before I got there, and had no idea what to expect. I feel badly for people nowadays who have seen everything on Instagram before they even get to a new place.
Your second Scottish course, Old Petty at Cabot Highlands, is opening this year. Did the existence of the Gil Hanse Castle Stuart course influence your design?
Certainly. Some of the little bulkheaded hazards and sharp edges were things I’d like to have experimented with, but we didn’t want to look like we were copying what Gil had done, so we had to find a different direction.
Our idea was to try and model it after the earliest links courses, where the playing corridors weren’t so clearly defined and the hazards were less formalized.
For most of the project we refrained from building any revetted bunkers or anything that looked like one, the idea that all pot bunkers have to be revetted has only been around for 50-75 years, and it’s a necessity that a lot of the smaller links courses can’t really afford. So we wanted to see if we could build compelling holes just relying on the contours around the green to make the approach shots challenging.
In the end I didn’t want it to feel like we were cheating the visitor out of the pot bunker experience entirely, so I challenged everyone on the crew to locate one or two bunkers, with the caveat that the bunker would be named after them, so they’d better be prepared to live with their choices! Clyde Johnson, Chris Haspell and Angela Moser all contributed their bunkers, as did I. But when we tried to get the owner, Ben, to add one he didn’t want to do it.