The Links at Outlook Golf Course :: South Berwick, Maine

Having the Last Laugh
It's time to take Architect of the Year Brian Silva seriously

BY RON WHITTEN
Architecture Editor

Golf World - October 15, 1999

If he hadn't been a golf architect, Brian Silva surely would have been a stand-up comedian. His humor is dry and arch, his timing flawless, and he has an uncanny ear for dialects and accents.

But he's no lounge act. He's a golf course designer-although, ironically, the only one who's had a constant set of hecklers. They were relentless, for more than a decade. Tossing jeers from beyond the bushes. Placing calls to Silva's potential clients. Whispering into the ears of his actual ones. The hecklers cost him jobs, especially bread-and butter remodeling work that is essential to many young golf architects on the way up.

For the 46-year-old Silva, the heckling is likely over, after years of gritting his teeth and letting his architecture be his response. Silva's perseverance in the face of what amounted to a grill-room blacklist, and the remarkable portfolio he has recently compiled in spite of it, warrants his selection as Golf World's Architect of the Year, our annual determination of which architect was most in the news.

To put it in perspective, we must retreat briefly to 1986, the year Silva (after just three years in the design business) completed the remodeling of a few holes at Wampanoag CC, an old Donald Ross design outside Hartford, Conn. It was an era dominated by the deep bunkers and abrupt slopes of Pete Dye and Jack Nicklaus, which is what Wampanoag's green chairman wanted and what Silva provided. In response, three Wampanoag members, outraged at what they considered to be desecration of classic architecture, banded together to form the Donald Ross Society. While they spouted altrustic motives (providing funds for restoration of some Ross holes and preservation of some Ross drawings), much of their energy was devoted to trashing Silva at every opportunity. It didn't matter that Tom Fazio had bulldozed away genuine Ross at both Oak Hill and Inverness, or that Pete Dye had eradicated the master at Alabama's CC of Birmingham. The Ross Society's wrath was directed primarily, if not exclusively, at Brian Silva.

It reached a nadir last June when Sports Illustrated labeled Silva "the villain," and gave Ross Society secretary Michael Fay national space to pop off about him. Silva's work is mediocre at best, Fay harrumphed, and Brian Silva is a horse's patoot.

But if anyone was exposed by the article, it was Fay. He was subsequently stripped of his officer's status, if not his membership, by the Ross Society, which was obviously embarrassed by the story. And here's a hoot: Wampanoag's remodeled holes, the ones that so offended the society's founders back in 1986, are still there. So much for the power of the Donald Ross Society.

Here's an even bigger hoot: Michael Fay didn't know what he was talking about. As a self-proclaimed expert in golf architecture, he should have recognized that every architect's style evolves, due in part to experience but more often in response to bigger budgets and better sites. It happens to everybody, even Dye, Jones and Fazio. It happened to Brian Silva. But Fay and his Ross Society cohorts, blinded by 15 years of Wampanoag Whining, couldn't, or wouldn't, acknowledge it.

Fact is, Brian Silva is now doing some of the most interesting work out there. Nothing outlandish or revolutionary. Just the opposite. It's retro design, very much reflecting the features and philosophies of grand old architects whose courses Silva has reworked over the years: Ross, Tillinghast and, especially, Raynor.

Silva, who grew up outside Boston, first learned about course building from his father's lap atop a bulldozer. John Silva was a prominent golf course shaper, carving greens and bunkers for New England architects, including Geoffrey Cornish. Silva studied turf management at the University of Massachusetts, then taught agronomy in Florida for three years before returning home to work as an agronomist for the USGA Green Section. In 1983, Cornish surprised everyone by making Silva his new design partner. Two years later, Silva's first design, Captains GC in Brewster, Mass., won Golf Digest's Best New Public award. Another high-profile assignment followed, a third 18 at famed Firestone in Akron, Ohio. But then, thanks in part to the heckling of the society, high-visibility jobs became scarce.

But he has landed plum assignments in recent years. Among the Ross designs he has worked on is Biltmore Forest CC, site of this year's U.S. Women's Amateur. "That was pure restoration," he says. "They had awesome pictures of every single golf hole. So we used those pictures and put it back like it was."

He redid the bunkering at the famed Seminole GC in Florida, considered one of Ross' finest. "Seminole was entirely different," Silva says. "They didn't have any old photography. Dick Wilson completely redid all the bunkers after World War II. There's not a member who remembers what the Ross bunkers were like. So we tried to make it look like Ross, by rolling the grass over the bunker faces. I can't say I restored them to exactly what Donald had. But the members like them."

He also added a second nine to Ross' original at Rolling Rock Club in Ligonier, Pa., and restored Sara Bay CC in Sarasota, which sports perhaps the finest set of Pinehurst-like greens outside of Pinehurst. "Sara Bay was easy," he says. "The greens-those inverted saucers of Ross-were there. We just jazzed up the surrounds a little bit. They now have more flow to them, and some support. So if you hit over a green, the ball can't just keep going and going."

But if anything, Silva has been more intrigued with Seth Raynor architecture. He touched up a few holes at Fox Chapel in Pittsburgh, host of the 2002 Curtis Cup, and at Mountain Lake Club in Florida. He also totally restored Lookout Mountain GC outside Chattanooga in accordance with Raynor's original plans. (Raynor had died during construction and many of his intended bunkers were never built.) What those experiences have given him, Silva says, is a new perspective on what "vintage golf design" is all about.

"I think it means random bunkers," he explains. "No more of this functional bunker crap, where a bunker has to go 250 yards slice side, 280 yards hook side. The courses that really have a beautiful palette have random bunkers. Some bunkers at the beginning of a fairway, some at the landing area, some are approach bunkers. And there are others sprinkled in between. What they do is give the golf course flow.

"You know why the Old Course at St. Andrews is still a great golf course? Because the wooden shafts would hit over the first group of bunkers, the steel shafts over the next group of bunkers and now the titanium shafts have to hit over the group after that. It's random bunkering."

Silva's appreciation for the old-style art is reflected in his most recent work. Waverly Oaks, a daily-fee in Plymouth, Mass., sports a hunkered-down set of greens accented by steep-sloped geometric bunkers highly reminiscent of Raynor. The exquisite Cape Cod National, a private course in Brewster, Mass., looks even more retro, thanks in part to high wispy fescue grasses outlining most bunkers. Its greens are inverted saucers, toned-down versions of Donald Ross designs at Pinehurst No. 2, most flowing off into subtle chipping areas. What's more, Silva's bunkers there are scattered all over.

"They're put in where the land accepts the bunkers," Silva says. "We finished the cuts and fills at Cape Cod National, then we started placing bunkers. Where the land allowed them."

In the process, Silva utilized Raynor's trick of using bunkers to make steep transitions in elevation. The right side of the long par-4 11th, for instance, drops down into a long strip bunker, then into a sink hole. The bunker shouldn't come into play, but if it does, the player will be grateful for its existence. At the par-5 15th, Silva countered a pond on the left front corner of the green with a hidden bunker at the right front corner. Is that hidden bunker unfair? No, because it keeps a ball from bounding downhill into a wooded ravine.

"Too many architects think traditional design means not moving much dirt and not doing anything artificial," Silva says. "That's missing the point. You tell me these Raynor greens aren't artificial? There's nothing more artificial! But they're great greens. And easy to build."

"What's more," he says, "traditional golf shouldn't be boring. Donald Ross wasn't boring. You should see his original nine at Rolling Rock, and how 'untraditional' it is. Deep steep bunkers, crossbunkers, wild green contours-hollows instead of inverted saucers-where did that come from? If you went to Pinehurst and then Rolling Rock, you'd never think the same guy did both."

The same can be said of Brian Silva's work. His recent work at Captains, two new nines merged with the original 18, graphically shows his progress. His Black Creek outside Chattanooga will be his full-blown tribute to Raynor. But don't be surprised if his Bison Run north of New York City hints of Tillinghast. Silva's stuff is as varied and intriguing as any in golf today. Anyone who thinks otherwise deserves to have his design critic credentials revoked.

Golf World - October 15, 1999

The Links at Outlook are pleased to present the first interactive virtual scorecard. This virtual scorecard will allow you to view still photos, 360 photos, course layouts, and descriptions of all 18 holes, as well as all our facilities.
� Play the front nine � Play the back nine � View the facilities