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Having the Last Laugh
It's time to take Architect of the Year Brian Silva seriously
Golf World - October 15, 1999
BY RON WHITTEN :: Architecture Editor
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.
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| Silva has answered early critics by designing courses such as Cape Cod National. |
| photo credit: Ron Whitten |
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.
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Golf World - October 15, 1999
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