ON YOUR GAME

ince his creation of the 2016 Olympic Golf Course at Rio, for an event won by England’s Justin Rose with American Matt Kucher placing second, Gil Hanse has become golf’s hot architect. The Philadelphia based architect renovated the Perry Maxwell Classic Southern

Hills Country Club in Tulsa, site of the 2022 PGA Championship and the 2021 PGA Senior.

He is redoing the classic Robert Trent Jones, Sr. golf course Oakland Hills, outside of Detroit, the site of a former Ryder Cup and multiple U.S. Opens. But his biggest project to date, likely for his career, is the new PGA Frisco complex currently taking place 40 minutes north of Downtown Dallas, 20 minutes to the east of DFW Airport, the new home of the PGA of America.

Already scheduled to host 23 PGA of America events including three PGA Championships and a possible future Ryder Cup, PGA Frisco will feature two public championship golf courses, the East Course, site of the PGA Events, designed by Hanse and the West Course, designed by Beau Welling, who worked with Tiger Woods on the highly regarded Bluejack National course outside Houston.

Along with the two courses, plus the PGA Headquarters, will be a short course open to all along with a massive putting green, instruction center, 500-room Omni Resort and Northern Texas PGA Headquarters.

Hanse calls it the American St. Andrews. PGA of America Executive Director Seth Waugh calls it the Silicon Valley of Golf. Regardless of the title, it’s a project slated to change the face of Texas Golf for decades and for golf in the U.S. with all facilities open to any Texas golfer and visitor national and worldwide.

The PGA of America will operate the courses, which are owned by the city of Frisco and partly funded and developed by Dallas-based Omni hotels with a long term lease. Frisco school district officials will also help share the project cost along with financial partners, with a management group from Dallasbased Omni and Stillwater Capital, among others.

After finishing 34 of the 36 holes at PGA Frisco and later at the virtual PGA Show in Orlando, Hanse and his partner on the project, Welling, was happy to talk to OTL Senior Writer Art Stricklin about the new project which has kept them in Texas for more than a year and will have its impact felt for Lone Star Decades.

OTL: What’s special about this course?

Gil Hanse: To put it simply, projects like this don’t come around very often. To know that they have already set this many tournaments at these courses, to want to get it right, to make a legacy for golf. That’s very, very special and we’re very honored to get to do this.

OTL: You’ve done many courses like the Olympic course in Rio and others you’ve redone have hosted major tournaments, like Southern Hills and Oakland Hills. But never has one future course had this many tournaments scheduled. How did that affect your design at PGA Frisco?

GH: Well, we certainly had some experience with the Olympic course in Rio because of the crowds there, but we didn’t really know what to expect. In Frisco, we worked with (PGA of America) Kerry Haig about the access inside and outside the ropes. Where the crowd would stand and what holes would be key during different tournaments. We, of course, will have different crowds for different tournaments, but we were prepared ahead of time.

OTL: Was there something you

learned during the Olympics about hosting professional tournaments on a public access course?

GH: Instead of individual tee boxes as you see on most courses, we designed one long ribbon of tee boxes which can range as long as 100 yards, which allows the PGA to set up the tee for any yardage. Also, with the NorthBridge Bermuda grass, the fairways can be mowed to be super narrow or wide enough to catch the worst tee balls.

OTL: The most anticipated tournament at PGA Frisco is the one not yet announced and may never happen, a Ryder Cup, which would only be the second in Texas. Was that part of your design thinking as well?

GH: If you look at past Ryder Cups, most matches are ended between the 15 and 17th holes. So adding a drivable par 4 (15) and a short par 3 (17) here could be very exciting at the Ryder Cup. We want to see fireworks. We want to see positive things happen at the finish, we didn’t want to see players just hanging on for pars. That why we have these finishing holes, plus a water fronted 18th hole to finish.

OTL: Austin’s Ben Crenshaw once told me he found a surprise every time he walked on a new property. What surprises did you find at PGA Frisco?

GH: Two of the pleasant surprises when we walked this facility were the elevation change we found here and the way Panther Creek comes into play on several of the holes. One of the less pleasant was the density of the soil and how much we had to move it to get the course shaped the way it needed to be.

OTL: How much North Texas earth

did you move when you first started?

GH: We moved approx. 1.6 million acres of cubic tons of dirt here. In some cases we had to raise the fairway 10 feet to keep it out of the flood plain. We got 34 of the 36 holes completed before the winter set in and we are able to allow the course to set in and get done before we start playing on it in 2022. We start playing professional events here in 2023 and it’s going to be busy for players and pros. We want amateurs to have a great time, but we want to challenge the best players in the world as well. The Texas wind and landscape will help us as well.

OTL: How were you able to get so much work done, operating in the heart of the COVID pandemic?

GH: We moved to Frisco after Christmas (2019) with my wife to personally supervise the golf project, working here full-time through the winter before traveling to do work on renovation jobs at Oakland Hills and Baltusrol Golf Club in the spring. For the year or

year and a half, this was the world headquarters of Hanse Golf Design, and I traveled to other sites as needed. This was a great challenge and opportunity to get golf pointed back in the direction of fun and popularity.

OTL: What was it like working with Beau Welling who did such a good job of creating fun and popularity at Bluejack National outside Houston?

GH: We had a lot of fun working together. Beau built the short course and the putting course and those will be hugely popular. We want the kids to have fun here and the golf players to have fun as well.

BEAU WELLING: I didn’t design the same type of course Gil did, but one with a lot of elevation changes and great views. I wanted to build a course my grandmother would enjoy along with low handicappers. Both courses are the same family, but not the same course. We are creating a habitat for golf and it’s important that the eyes of the golf world are on Frisco, Texas and Texas in general.

OTL: Are there some things you think golfers might not notice about the course, maybe the first time they play?

GH: We’ll I’m really proud of our bunkers, we had some heavy soil to get through, and it’s a very big site, (660 acres) but I think the bunkers are emblematic of Texas. I think the PGA will be very proud.

BW: There is a lot of water and a lot of elevation change. People don’t always expect that from Texas, but it’s very good here. We also built a course where you can hold a high school tournament, a friendly round with your buddies and the best of the best.

OTL: The course will certainly be judged by the tens of thousands of people who play here, what would you like for them to take away from your work?

GH: What we did was find some of the dramatic elements which we enhanced. My partner Jim Wager and I want to create drama here and we want to set up ways for players to win in a positive way. Not for ways for them to lose it. I really believe this is the St. Andrews of American Golf. You will have the great championships here, but you will be involved with every day players. You’re giving every single person who comes here a chance for golf.