Mike Strantz – A Life Much Too Short 3

When someone as special as Arnold Palmer passes away, it affects millions of people. Folks like me who never knew Mr. Palmer but idolized him and respected him throughout his life were saddened by his death and miss seeing him and hearing from him even though it was only from afar on the television or in the pages of various publications.  Although not as well known to the general public as Palmer, the death of Mike Strantz in 2005, at the early age of 50, was a huge loss to the multitudes of golfers that had discovered and enjoyed his unique golf course designs.  A native of Toledo, Ohio and a graduate of Michigan State University, he began his career shortly after graduation working for Tom Fazio on the modifications that were being made to the Inverness Club in Toledo before they hosted the 1997 U. S. Open.  The day after the Open, Fazio hired Strantz full-time and he continued to work with Fazio as an on-site designer and shaper on many high profile projects until 1987.  He then worked on several projects on his own such as Wild Dunes and Dunes West near Mt. Pleasant, South Carolina and The Legends Group Parkland Course in Myrtle Beach.  His services were in enough of a demand by then that he was able to start his own firm, Maverick Golf Course Design Company in 1993.

His first solo design, Caledonia in Pawley’s Island, South Carolina opened in 1994 and was a huge success being recognized as one of the top new courses in the country by several golf publications. It is still considered one of our country’s top public and resort course over 20 years later.  At that time, Golf World stated,

“With a small body of impressive work, Strantz has already become a visionary – perhaps even a force – to be taken seriously.”

 He then had two courses in Virginia open in 1996, Stonehouse and Royal New Kent.  Both courses opened to great praise with Stonehouse being voted as the “Best New Upscale Course in the U.S.”  by Golf Digest and Royal New Kent was included on Top 100 lists of several publications. Golf Digest had this to say about Royal New Kent,

“Royal New Kent, a succession of you’ve-never-seen-this-before holes with strong suggestions at every turn of you-ain’t seen-anything yet. Actually, we have seen bits and pieces of this before, but never on this spectacular scale.  Royal New Kent is Alister Mackenzie-meets-Pete Dye.”

 With these two projects behind him, Mike Strantz returned to Pawley’s Island and began work across the street from Caledonia on a bold new course called True Blue.  Whereas he was limited in space when he built Caledonia, he was given all the land he needed for True Blue and he took advantage of this opportunity to build a course with massive fairways, large waste areas and spectacular greens.  True Blue was established in 1997 and was quickly named by Golf Digest as “Best New Public Upscale Course”.  In 1999 it was named “Best Course in South Carlolina” by Golf Digest.  In 2000, it was named the #2 course on the “Top 25 Golf Courses in the South” by Golf Magazine. Golf World was quoted as saying,

“Many course historians compare True Blue to Pine Valley, citing the former’s demand for target-awareness and a smooth blending between course and the habitat that surrounds.”

 Next came perhaps his most ambitious project to date, Tobacco Road, about 20 miles north of Pinehurst, North Carolina.  If you play Tobacco Road, you get a crash course in the genius of Strantz.  Some fairways at Tobacco Road are 100 yards wide, while others are blind off the tee.  There are greens 60 yards wide and others almost as deep.  Some are obscured, tucked between mounds while others feature huge drop-offs as much as five feet between tiers.  The waste areas are vast and the scale of the course is big and bold, much like True Blue but with more deception.  On the current Golf Digest Top 100 Public courses, Tobacco Road has the highest ranking of the Strantz courses at #55 while Caledonia resides at #86.  Royal New Kent and True Blue were last ranked on Golf Digest’s Top 100 Public in 2007-08 at #64 and #87 respectively.

Tobacco Road hit a new high water mark in 2013 when the European based publication, Golf Course Architecture took a survey of 240 architects and designers from 28 countries and they rated Tobacco Road Golf Club as the 50^th Best Course in the World.  Robin Hiseman, of European Golf Design, ranked Tobacco Road his number one choice in the survey because “it was the course that transformed what I understood to be possible with golf architecture.”

“There are several very creative contemporary golf architects recognized on my list, whose egos really don’t need stroking,” Hiseman wrote in Golf Course Architecture.  “Creative and imaginative they may be, but Mike Strantz was all that and a genius to boot.  He had the nerve and commitment to try things that others would never dare to.”

Caledonia/True Blue co-owner and co-developer, Doc Lachicotte, went with Strantz when he met with the co-owners of Tobacco Road the first time. As they were walking the property and looking over the proposed site for the course, Doc told them, “If you build a course here, make it a 1 or a 10, do not build a 4,5 or 6.”  They listened and Strantz delivered them a 10.

Strantz’s last public course project was near Asheboro, North Carolina. Tot Hill Farm opened in 2000 and was immediately nominated for “Best New Course of the Year”.  Golf Digest had this to say about Tot Hill Farm,

“Every Strantz design is a special effects production that’s like a small independent film. He doesn’t mass produce.  He moves to a location and chisels away at the land until he’s satisfied”.  

 The last three projects for Mike Strantz were private clubs. Bull’s Bay, near his home in Mt. Pleasant, South Carolina, and his total renovations of Silver Creek Country Club and Monterey Peninsula Country Club in California were unfortunately, the end of his short but illustrious career.  He was diagnosed with an aggressive form of tongue cancer about the same time he was hired for the Monterey Peninsula project and he was determined to make the redesign of the MPCC Shore Course his best work.  All eighteen holes were rerouted, 45 acres of non-native vegetation was removed and the entire course was sand-capped which was the first time this was done in America.

The beautiful ocean side Shore Course was completed just before his untimely death and is one of the courses now used for the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am tournament on the PGA Tour.  Not only do the members love it, the touring pros that play it every year also speak highly of this outstanding design.  In its latest ranking of The Top 100 Courses in the U. S., Golf Digest lists MPCC Shore Course as #56.  This list includes ALL courses in the United States, private and public.  It appears that Mr. Strantz succeeded in reaching his goal with this outstanding design.

I first played Caledonia Golf & Fish Club on a golf trip in 1999.   I remember loving the course but I did not give much thought to who the course architect was at that time.  When we played its sister course across the road, True Blue, it ate us up.  Two courses so close in proximately but so different in design.  Only then did I start to think about Mike Strantz because I was amazed that these two courses, so different in style, were designed by the same individual.  At that time the owners were even marketing the two courses as “Heaven and Hell”.  A short time later the owners decided to soften True Blue in places to make it a little more playable and thus, a little more fun.

From that point on, both Caledonia and True Blue not only became known as two of the best courses on the Grand Stand of Myrtle Beach and the entire state of South Carolina, they became two of the best resort courses in the entire country.  Both courses continue to be nationally recognized by multiple golf publications today.  Matt Ginella of The Golf Channel, puts both Caledonia and True Blue on his list of the Top 50 Public Courses the America.

We purchased a condo in the Pawley’s Island area in 2005 and one of the biggest reasons for doing so was the proximity to these two courses. We were playing Caledonia shortly after our condo purchase with our son Scott.  Before our round was completed, he looked at us and said, “If you do not join this course you are crazy.  It is beautiful and is like playing in a botanical garden.”  We became members of Caledonia and True Blue shortly after that round in November of 2005 and only after we began to play these two courses on a regular basis did I realize what an artistic genius Mike Strantz was.

I was very surprised to learn Caledonia was his first solo design both because of its high quality, and the ingenious manner in which he pieced together 18 amazing holes on a limited piece of property.  I began reading about Strantz as much as possible and found that he had designed two other public courses in North Carolina and two in Virginia.  I could not wait to play these four courses, especially Tobacco Road which was getting a lot press.  Most of those writing about Tobacco Road at that time were positive in their reviews but like early True Blue reviews, some thought that Tobacco Road was a little too much over the top to be considered great.

After playing Tobacco Road, Royal New Kent and Tot Hill Farm I become more enamored with the work of Strantz and his design philosophies.  Upon doing more research, I was not surprised to find that the architect that had the most influence on his work was Dr. Alister MacKenzie.  There are several excerpts from the book entitled The Spirit Of St. Andrews by Dr. MacKenzie that Mike always used to help explain his design philosophy.  Some of those are as follows:

    “A first class hole must have the subtleties and strategic problems which are difficult to understand, and are therefore extremely likely to be condemned at first sight even by the best of players.”

         “A good golf course is like good music or anything else:  it is not necessarily a course which appeals the first time one plays over it; but one which grows on a player the more frequently he visits it.” 

    “It is an important thing in golf to make holes look much more difficult than they really are.  People get more pleasure out of playing a hole which looks almost impossible and yet is not so difficult as it appears.”

           “It frequently happens that the best holes give rise to the most-bitter controversy.  It is largely a question of the spirit in which the problem is approached, depending on the player.  Whether he looks at it from the card and pencil point of view and condemns anything that disturbs his steady series of 3’s and 4’s, or whether he approaches it in the spirit of adventure.”     

 If you think about these MacKenzie quotes as you are playing a Strantz course, everything in front of you suddenly makes sense. I cannot help but love the strategies, the visual intimidation and the beauty of the holes he literally paints for us golfers.  There is nothing boring or routine about the courses he built.  Every hole is unique and each presents options for attacking par.  No matter how difficult it looks from the tee, if you look a little harder, you will find a safer, more-gentle approach that you can navigate to make par.  He loves to prey on the male ego and he dares us to take the heroic path, and when you fail, you blame the architect for making the hole too difficult.  Genius!

Royal New Kent and Stonehouse were owned and developed by the same group and fell onto hard times after the economic downturn of 2008-09. This led to inferior course conditions which led to even less play.  We played Royal New Kent in 2014 and the conditions were a little less than perfect but not enough to spoil a great experience.  I had heard that Stonehouse was in bad condition and I made the mistake of not playing it when I had the opportunity.  Both courses closed in 2017 because of financial difficulties but happily, a new investment group purchased Royal New Kent and has spent 2018 restoring the course to the original Mike Strantz design, even going so far as to bring back two of the shapers that worked for Strantz when it was originally built.  That is great news and I look forward to playing it again in 2019 after its re-opening.

On our final golf trip to finish the quest of playing all 193 courses ever ranked in Golf Digest’s Top 100 Public Courses, I did not play the private Monterey Peninsula Country Club Shore Course, but I made a point to see what I could of this great design from Seventeen Mile Drive.  We stopped and got out of the car to take a closer look at one of the holes near the road.  It was near sunset and there was a hazy marine fog coming over the course at the time.  Knowing how he persevered through his fatal illness, 80 pounds lighter than his normal weight, knowing that he spent hours designing, drawing, marking and scouting each hole to make it the best course he ever created is incredible.

Standing behind a tee box and looking through the haze at the distant green and the ocean beyond, I felt very emotional knowing that this was Mike Strantz’s final work.  It was a very surreal moment for me.  I never met the man but I miss him.

In 1998, Golf World named Mike Strantz  “Architect of the Year.”

In 2000, Golf Week named Mike Strantz as one of the “10 Greatest Golf Course Architects of all Time.”  (This is an amazing accomplishment when you consider that he had only completed six courses at the time of this honor.)