Gil Hanse wins Rio.

Gil Hanse and Tom Doak at The Creek Club, 1989
 - a 'classic' image too good not to borrow from Masa Nishijima's blog.

You know, we have worked really hard at this for a long period of time, and that means -- and don't get me wrong. I love what we do and we are very fortunate and very blessed, but sometimes when you're choking back dust and you've been on a bulldozer for 12 hours and it's 90 degrees and all you want is a beer, you know, sometimes you think, oh, man, this is a little bit hard. I think Jim and I can reflect back on a lot of those times. You know, this is a nice reward for that dedication and effort I think that we put into what we do.

- Gil Hanse, following yesterday's announcement that Hanse Golf Course Design has been awarded the job of creating the Olympic golf course at Rio de Janeiro, for the 2016 Summer Games.

I was anticipating the announcement of the winner of the design competition for the Olympic golf course at Rio with a lot of bias. I wanted Gil Hanse win. I've admired Gil, and his work for nearly two decades now.

Back when I was a teenager obsessed with golf architecture, it was all about what Tom Doak and Gil Hanse were up to; they worked together back then. I read all of Tom's writings, and made special trips to see their new golf course designs and restorative-based work on classic courses. Tom and Gil were up-and-comers then, but their philosophy on golf and approach to course architecture gave me a strong sense that things were changing for the better. It's taken awhile but yesterday's announcement confirms that sense I had, two decades ago.

I think many of us - particularly from my generation of golf architecture fanatics - looked at this incredibly important commission at Rio as a potential "game changer". As architecture critic Brad Klein puts it, the selection of Hanse as designer of the Olympic course "is a powerful step in the emergence of a more naturalistic, more traditionalist and ecologically sensitive approach to golf and golf course design".

One of the wonderful things about Gil's architecture is that it isn't so much about building individual holes and doling out penalty for errant shots. It's about creating - in some cases simply preserving - interesting, beautiful landscapes that fit with, and are senstive to the environment. In many ways, the golf then simply takes care of itself.

I first talked with Gil back in 1998 when I was a whippersnapper on my club's Green committee. We were looking for a golf architect to assist with restoring Donald Ross' original design at Essex Golf and Country Club, in Windsor, Ontario. In my mind, there were only two candidates - Tom Doak and Gil Hanse (who had set-up his own shop by then). Although both had done some very interesting work by that time, they were relatively unknown. We ended up hiring Doak, and his then-associate Bruce Hepner. But I stayed in touch with Gil; and, he's always been accommodating and very encouraging to me. More than being a very talented golf course designer and builder, Gil's a great person; so is his partner, Jim Wagner.

I met Jim once, on-site during construction of French Creek Golf Club, near their home base in Philadelphia. I watched as Jim shaped a bunker, using a 'chunking' technique he's perfected, which involves taking big, gnarly pieces of native sod and stacking them irregularly on the edge of a bunker to get a beautifully natural, eroded look. Gil and Jim have created some of the most attractive bunkers ever imagined.

Their most recent work is really, really sharp - Boston Golf Club and Castle Stuart, which garnered rave reviews from the world's best golfers during last year's Scottish Open. PGA Tour players have also raved about their renovation at TPC Boston - originally a comparatively mundane "Arnold Palmer design" that Hanse and Wagner have transformed into a course that, in Hanse's own words, "now looks like it belongs in New England". Plainfield and Ridgewood - where they've restored classic designs by Ross and A.W. Tillinghast - have also hosted PGA Tour events in recent years. But it's Los Angeles Country Club's North course that's, perhaps, their crowning achievement in the field of classic restoration. Working in collaboration with George Thomas' biographer and Los Angeles native, Geoff Shackelford, Hanse and Wagner restored what is arguably the most complex golf course design in history, at LACC -  George Thomas' "courses within a course concept", and some of the most artistic bunkers ever made.

The powers that be at Rio have made a very wise decision. I'm absolutely thrilled for Gil and Jim, knowing that the Olympic golf course at Rio will be everything we expect it to be... including a catalyst that (should) positively effect people's understanding of golf and course architecture worldwide.

The Olympic design competition.

Olympic gold medalist, George S. Lyon.

By the time the 2016 Olympic golf competition tees off in Brazil, it'll have been 112 years since the Royal and Ancient game was part of the program at the Summer Games. Back in 1904, at Echo Glen Country Club in St. Louis, Missouri, Canadian George Lyon took the gold medal.

The biggest obstacle to having golf at Rio de Janeiro in 2016 is a course. I understand there are a handful of courses in and around Rio, but apparently not a single one of Olympic quality. So, in conjunction with the International Golf Federation (IGF), Rio 2016 organizers are holding a competition to determine who will design a new course specifically for Olympic golf.

I took a quick look at the initial Request for Proposal, which contained a few oddities. Get this one, a mandate that the successful bidder have an office in Rio de Janeiro? Golf architects don't usually open offices in every city where they work. The timelines on submissions and review were incredibly tight, too.

Regardless, over a mere few weeks between mid-October and now, the selection committee has revealed a short-list of eight who remain in the running for what may be the most talked about, and anticipated golf course design commission in recent history.

The Olympic course commission is so sought-after, in fact, that Jack Nicklaus has teamed up with Annika Sorenstam on a bid. Greg Norman has done the same with Lorena Ochoa. Both Jack and Shark are short-listed, too, along with Robert Trent Jones, Jr.; Martin Hawtree; Peter Thomson and his partner, Ross Perrett; Gary Player; Gil Hanse; and, Tom Doak.    

It's a good thing I'm not on the selection panel. It'd be difficult for me to be impartial. I sincerely believe there are but a select few golf course designers who can provide Rio with exactly what it needs; and, that's not a course that simply tests the world's best golfers in Olympic competition for a single week. As the IGF and Rio 2016 organizers have made clear, this is a huge legacy opportunity. The Olympic course not only has potential to promote interest in golf worldwide, but create a beacon in South America's largest country and a city of more than 6 million people where the game is largely unknown. And, as my Australian friend and fellow golf course designer Paul Mogford points out in a response to this blog at Facebook, "an educative example of the right approach to golf course architecture, worldwide".  

Rio doesn't need what's become typical. That is, too much money spent on course construction; too many tees to accommodate 8,000 yards; too many bunkers and water hazards; narrow fairways bordered by thick rough... you get the picture. All of this translates into high green fees (or bust); six hour rounds; too many lost balls; and, too many people who become so frustrated with golf they don't stay with it. No, Rio needs a course that, first, can somehow be accessible and affordable for the masses following the Olympics and that epitomizes all of those wonderful characteristics we saw at Royal Melbourne a few weeks ago, during the Presidents Cup, for example. An absence of artificial water hazards; a conservative number of attractive bunkers in the right spots; plenty of width and short grass; and, influential contouring that presents interest and challenge in lieu of extreme yardage.

It's going to be interesting to see how this competition plays out. But, in my biased opinion, there are only two guys on the short-list who are capable of appropriately delivering in this circumstance. With no disrespect intended, I'll give you a hint... their names aren't Jack, Greg, Bobby, Martin, Peter, or Gary.