The post What you can learn from 6 positions in Billy Horschel’s swing appeared first on Golf.

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A standout amateur who helped the U.S. secure the 2007 Walker Cup and a University of Florida star with four All-American honors and two SEC Player of the Year titles, Horschel was the can’t-miss kid du jour when he turned pro in 2009. Earning his PGA Tour card that December via Q-School, Horschel’s wrist injury stalled his 2010 rookie season, but after two more Q-School attempts, his career took off in 2013. He claimed his first victory at that year’s Zurich Classic of New Orleans with a dazzling six-birdie final round, then dominated 2014, winning the FedEx Cup with triumphs at the BMW Championship and Tour Championship.

After a silent decade, Horschel bounced back in a big way in 2024, notching two wins — one on the PGA Tour, one on the DP World Tour — and a near-miss at the Open at Royal Troon. He continues to post top-10 finishes and showcase a renewed consistency and resilience. 

Check out below to learn more about the eight-time Tour winner’s swing.

1. Address

Pros stand much closer to the ball than rec players. Billy is close without looking crowded, and he has his rear end out without over-straightening his back.

2. Takeaway

Notice the toe of Horschel’s club pointing toward the sky — an old-school move that allows you to soften your trail arm and shoulder more to free up your turn.

3. Top

Billy’s neat and tidy backswing is neither loose nor long. Notice that he doesn’t over-flex his lead left wrist — flat is just fine, folks. The buttons on his sweater point away from the target. Now that’s a torso turn!

4. Downswing

Horschel does a great job of starting to push off his trail foot without overdoing it, and he keeps his chest closed while opening his hips. He’s keeping the shaft between his arms, à la Jack Nicklaus and David Toms. This is a great goal for any golfer who gets burned trying to over-shallow the shaft.

5. Impact

Billy’s impact position is a great combination of a relatively high and forward trail shoulder. It’s something he must continually balance with his tendency to retain side bend long after impact.

6. Release

Horschel controls the clubface by keeping his trail arm under his lead arm while getting the butt of the club to point back at his torso. One keeps the face from closing too fast and the other from staying too open for a weak swipe.

Brian Manzella is a GOLF Top 100 Teacher who teaches at English Turn Golf & CC in New Orleans, La.

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The post This head movement in the downswing is crucial for generating power appeared first on Golf.

The post This head movement in the downswing is crucial for generating power appeared first on Golf.

The key, as you probably know, is to leverage the ground and move your weight from your back foot to your front foot as you begin your downswing. This is a non-negotiable.

The trick, however, is not letting your head follow while you make this all-important weight shift. Keep it back. 

In fact, it’s a good idea to feel your head actually move away from the target while you shift from back to front. It’s this lower-body shift toward the target with your head hanging back that creates the whiplike motion all big hitters share, as well as maximum speed.

When you move your head with your shift, your path goes haywire, either forcing an out-to-in path or one that’s overly in-to-out. So, when you swing, especially with driver, think of two forces: the forward one with your lower body and the hang-back one with your head.

The ball won’t know what hit it. 

Mike Perpich is a GOLF Top 100 Teacher who teaches at RiverPines Golf in Johns Creek, Ga.

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The post What’s the correct tee height for every club in the bag? appeared first on Golf.

Here’s everything you need to know about teeing it up correctly in order to set yourself up for success. There are three tee heights to consider.

1. Driver 

Many amateurs tee these shots too low, but there’s an easy way to check. When you place the peg in the ground, confirm that about half the ball sits just above the top edge, or crown, of your driver head when you set it on the ground.

With driver, you want to catch the ball on the upswing. Combine that with a ball positioned just slightly forward in your stance and it becomes easier to catch the ball on the sweet spot as the club is rising. This is the contact you want to maximize your smash factor, resulting in drives that are more consistent and fly farther.

2. Fairway Woods and Hybrids 

The optimal tee height for these clubs is when the ball is positioned just barely above the top edge of the club when it’s sitting on the ground. A common mistake is teeing these too high, thinking it’ll help launch the ball better. But if it’s too high, you risk popping it up. Use this simple gauge and you’ll catch it clean every time.

3. Irons 

Unlike with your driver, iron shots are meant to be struck with a descending blow. You need to tee the ball low, almost flush with the grass. If you can fit your finger underneath the tee, it’s probably too elevated and that could cause you to catch it too high on the face, leading to poor contact. I promise, these three simple keys will help you find the sweet spot way more often.

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Accelerate through impact

The first mistake golfers make when trying to create speed is decelerating through impact. This typically happens because they make a backswing that’s too long for the shot they’re trying to hit, forcing them to slow down through impact. Start by making a smaller backswing and then accelerating through the ball.

Wedges

Increase spin loft

Spin loft is the difference between your angle of attack and the loft of the clubface at impact. Feeling like you are hitting down on the ball is a great way to get the proper angle of attack to create spin.

However, many recreational players go wrong when doing this by closing the clubface and de-lofting the club. Not good for spin. Loft is your friend.

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Rules

Find a flat area on the practice green and place an alignment stick behind the hole. From the hole, walk 10 paces away and place a tee in the ground. Two feet beyond that, place another tee. Then another two feet behind that. Do likewise until you have five tees in the green. From the first tee, roll putts. The goal here is to either make the putt or get the ball between the hole and the stick. Coming up short is a no-no. (Those shots never go in.)

Once you can get three balls either in or past the hole without hitting the stick, move to the next tee. Then continue all the way to tee number 5. Set a time limit— like 15 minutes. When you start seeing putts roll at different speeds from different lengths one after the other, you’ll really start controlling your rolls. I do this with rec players and my Tour students. Works like magic.

Mike Bender runs the Mike Bender Golf Academy at Magnolia Plantation GC, Lake Mary, Fla.

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I get asked about this shot all the time. The key? Club selection. Just because you’re in the bunker doesn’t mean you need to use your highest-lofted wedge. Instead, I’m pulling an 8-iron while using the same bunker technique I would around the green.

Setup is everything. If the pin is tucked short, I shift my weight forward. But for longer bunker shots like this, I like to feel more pressure toward my back foot. The goal is to make a full, committed swing with a slightly open face, entering the sand two inches behind the ball — just like a greenside bunker shot.

A big key here is margin of error. If I make a mistake, I want it to be on the chunkier side rather than catching it too clean. A slight chunk ensures control and prevents the ball from flying too far.

Mastering this shot comes down to knowing your carry distances. Next time you’re practicing, grab four different wedges or short irons and test the results. Get comfortable with different trajectories and soon you won’t fear the long bunker shot anymore.

Learn more from McLachlin at shortgamechef.com.

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The post So you want to build a golf course? Here’s how — and what it will cost appeared first on Golf.

The post So you want to build a golf course? Here’s how — and what it will cost appeared first on Golf.

A nice piece of land with pretty views, a bulldozer, 18 flags — what’s so complicated? World Top 100 here we come! Thankfully, your accountant, spouse, employer and so on will quash such Keiser-esque visions, because creating any course, never mind a great one, is hugely complex and fraught with danger — not unlike juggling chain saws on a unicycle while giving a toast.

A world-class course can easily run into the tens of millions of dollars. Here’s a quick primer on the process.

SITE SELECTION

Finding an enticing piece of land for golf with sufficient acreage (120 minimum for 18 holes) is tough enough — but that’s just the starting point and likely involves real estate brokers and lawyers, who don’t work pro bono. The question then becomes: Is it feasible? The answer comes down to the golden rule of real estate: location, location, location. Meaning, firstly, is there a market for your would-be course? Is there sufficient demand locally, regionally, nationally or internationally? Research and possibly specialist consultants can determine if you’re answering a need beyond your ego or building a snowball for hell.

Then there’s location as it bears on the physical qualities of the land as well as growing conditions. Rolling hills are nice, but suitability involves more than topography. Soils, water availability, drainage, geology and vegetation must be considered. Oh, and then there’s potential environmental and legal restrictions, the local infrastructure and service provider situation, never mind safety issues and other possible hurdles and conflicts.

DUE DILIGENCE

Think you’ve found a winning site? Great. You’ll likely either acquire an option to purchase the land or make an agreement to do so with a specified due diligence period. That means going through title insurance, figuring out if there are any deeds or liens and such on the land. Also, site surveys to make sure there aren’t ancient burial grounds or endangered salamanders to consider. Due diligence is an expensive proposition, involving several experts and often hundreds of thousands of dollars just to figure out if you want to make this long-term commitment.

“Development costs can be insane,” says renowned architect David McLay Kidd of Bandon Dunes (Top 100 World No. 85), Nanea (Top 100 U.S. No. 83) and Gamble Sands (Top 100 U.S. No. 100) fame. “Pre-construction/development costs are very location dependent and in no way associated with the quality of the site. You could have a great site that costs the earth to get a permit, or a terrible site that’s supercheap, or vice versa. But the construction costs are somewhat linear. The better the site, the lower the cost.”

PERMITTING

Presumably, you’ve checked with the zoning board already, so it knows your plan, but you’ll still need an official sign-off on it. There will be a number of permitting hurdles to clear — related to streams, wetlands, wildlife and trees, just to name a few — at both the state and federal level. Without sign-off from multiple agencies, you will be DOA. Welcome to your new reality. For our developer, Trey Marucci, hard at work on Bounty Club, a nascent private club in Nashville, it took almost two years to go through the permitting process, which can be patience-testing and expensive too, given the costs of a civil engineer on the payroll as well as specialists to support the engineer.

“Making sure you’re doing everything by the book is one of the biggest challenges in the process,” says Marucci, who is overseeing the project for 8AM Golf. “There are a lot of books out there, and you must read them all. One regulatory authority wants X, the other regulatory authority wants Y, and sometimes those two things might be in conflict.”

PICKING AN ARCHITECT

Unless you’re a DIY lunatic, you’ll require a course architect. How many you solicit plans from is up to you. The top names might well be busy, and they’ll for sure be pricey — anywhere from the high six figures to the low(ish) seven figures. Anyone you do contact will likely ask for a pin so they can first check the site on Google Earth.

“Back in the days of Donald Ross, they’d stick him on a train, and it would be the first he’d seen of it,” says Brian Curley, veteran designer of layouts from Palm Springs (The Plantation Course) to China (Mission Hills). “Nowadays, between the topo and Google Earth and drone images, I’ve already kind of got it figured out before I set foot on a property.”

Assuming no red flags like, say, not enough acreage or it’s in a FEMA floodplain, some architects will go put boots on the ground.

“If I know the developer is real, then they’re not paying for me to go look — I am,” says McLay Kidd. “It’s hard to get someone to pay and then tell them no. That feels really bad, so I generally don’t charge to go see a site.”

… AND PICKING A PLAN

Architects will eventually give you a (probably rudimentary) development idea, a (ditto) budget and a proposal that includes their design fee. Eventually, you’ll choose the one you prefer and sign a contract. At this point, the designer starts putting more flesh on the bone in all the different components of course construction — earth-clearing, demolition, earth-moving, materials needed, irrigation and so on. From this, the budget gets refined. Going from preliminary design to detailed design will likely take a few months.

“Courses can cost wildly different amounts,” says McLay Kidd. “In only the last three years we’ve built courses for under $10 million and well over $20 million. The main difference is the suitability of the site when you start.

“Including all fees and the grow-in costs,” he adds, “$1 million per hole is a reasonable ballpark figure.”

What drives up the cost? Features, mainly. “Bunkering, water features and landscaping,” says Curley. “Those are the three line items where an owner might say, ‘Oh, no, I just need a basic thing.’ Otherwise, irrigation is irrigation, cart paths are cart paths, grass is grass.”

PICKING A BUILDER

While there are some design-build firms that handle both jobs, more often you’ll bid out the job to a few of the specialist golf course construction firms like Heritage Links, LaBar Golf Renovations or Landscapes Golf Management.

You’ll pick one based on schedule, the architect’s relationships and experience with them and price, although they’re unlikely to vary much. Things generally cost what they cost.

BUILDING THE THING

Hands on? Hands off? Some degree of collaboration between the developer and the architect is always there. No plan perfectly mirrors the end product, and issues and changes are inevitable. Communication structures vary; some owners employ project managers for day-to-day contact, others are involved hour by hour themselves.

Sometimes it’s a committee. And some — well, maybe one or two — are essentially hands-off.

CONSTRUCTION

The architect oversees the construction crew and will spend time on-site — how much varies, and associates will be there otherwise, but they’re all there to read the plans and interpret them because, as McLay Kidd notes, “there’s a lot of interpretation. Some architects follow the plans quite closely, some barely follow them at all. So, the contractor is working hand in glove with the architect to realize the course and hopefully follow the budget and bring it together inside the original estimates.”

WATER, POWER

“Where you start the process is at your irrigation lake,” Curley says. “Number one is: Where are we going to have water available so we can start irrigation as soon as possible? And you’ve got to get power to your irrigation lake. The building process doesn’t go in a binary, yes/no fashion — it’s overlapping and interconnected. The construction schedule might have to do with just how you get the equipment around. A lot of factors determine the construction sequence. But one thing is inviolable: Drainage always comes before irrigation. Because drainage is gravity flow. You have to keep a constant flow going. Irrigation can be laid on top of drainage because irrigation is pressurized.”

SEQUENCING

That sequence starts with “rough grading” — moving dirt around with big equipment — then shifts to feature shaping. Which gets done twice: pre-irrigation and post-irrigation, because after irrigation the features need to be put back together and cleaned up.

“Once irrigation’s in, it’s a full-court press,” Curley says. Depending on planting windows to grow grass — Montana’s, say, is a lot tighter than Malaysia’s — and the time frame, the tension can ramp up considerably.

PRAY FOR GOOD WEATHER

Weather delays inevitably mean an increase in cost; people’s time is money, and so are resources like bulldozers sitting idle. A good architect and builder will do what they can to mitigate such expenses, but there are limits to fighting Mother Nature’s budget busters.

THE GROW-IN

Going from something in the shape of a golf course to an actual golf course means growing grass. That’s not on the contractor or the architect (who may stay involved, keeping an eye on mowing lines and other bits of fine-tuning). That’s the superintendent’s job, responsible to the developer. It might take six months to a year for the grow-in to be completed. And if you think growing grass is as simple as watching grass grow, well, you haven’t been paying very close attention.

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To keep this from happening, delay your release by moving your body and trail arm like you’re throwing a ball sidearm toward the target. This will allow you to deloft the club, which produces more ball speed and positions the low point of your swing farther in front of the ball. When you get it right, you avoid hitting the ground before the ball and produce that ball-first contact that every golfer strives for.

So, in your practice, focus on making your regular downswing but keep your trail elbow in front of your hands for as long as you can as you approach impact (above). Key: Don’t drive your trail elbow into your trail hip; it should move in front of it and always be moving toward the target.

Groove this move and the ball won’t know what hit it.

Jason Baile is a GOLF Top 100 Teacher and the director of instruction at Jupiter Hills Club in Tequesta, Fla., and the 2025 PGA National Teacher of the Year.

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Time to “go yard.”

Speed tip No. 1: Copy the Tour pros

The men’s pro game has seen a dramatic increase in swing speed over the last decade. In 2015, the average clubhead speed on the PGA Tour was 113.2 mph. This season, it’s 116.5.

No doubt pros have adjusted their training in order to hit it as far as they can. Two of the longest players in the pro game — Tony Finau and Bryson DeChambeau — are prime examples.

While Bryson’s body transformation grabbed headlines a few years back, it was but part of his power story. What really turned him into a 200 mph ball speed machine was his commitment to speed training.

“The best device for training speed is your desire,” DeChambeau says. Bryson pushed his limits by intentionally swinging as hard as possible, using tech to measure his progress. This “over-speed training” rewires the nervous system and trains the body to move faster.

Bryson didn’t treat speed as a side project — he made it a priority. Even five to 10 swings a day at max effort added up over time, teaching his body what fast really feels like.

Finau’s approach is much more managed: a wide backswing arc and proper sequencing on the way back down.

A wide backswing arc gives you more space and time to build speed, while good sequencing ensures the energy flows from the ground up, from the legs, hips, torso, arms to finally the club at the moment it really counts: impact.

Finau has toned down his once-massive backswing in recent seasons, but he’s still gaining speed thanks to how he moves through the ball. His big hitting advice? “Control what you can. Swing within yourself.”

Speed tip No. 2: Practice with speed in mind

Many golfers have been conditioned to “swing easy” or “stay behind the ball,” but, to gain speed, you need to raise your intensity. Think of it like throwing a football. Tossing it casually in the yard feels very different from launching a hard throw downfield. Golf requires the same mindset shift: You have to get excited to generate speed.

To help ramp up your swing speed, Top 100 Teacher Bernie Najar suggests treating your practice sessions differently. “You can’t swing fast for an hour straight unless you’re a professional long drive competitor,” he explains. Instead, focus on short, intense speed sessions where you elevate your heart rate and swing aggressively in bursts.

A sample session might look like this: warm up normally, then hit driver five times at near-normal speed to get comfortable. After that, push your intensity higher and swing at five balls at maximum effort, then rest for 90 seconds to two minutes before repeating. Keep going until you feel yourself losing speed — that’s your sign to stop. “That’s when you don’t want to push anymore, or you start just jogging instead of sprinting,” Najar says.

Physically, you’ll notice that you’re putting more energy into the start of the swing—maybe initiating your backswing a bit quicker. This doesn’t mean losing control but rather upping the overall intensity. Staying hydrated and forgetting about accuracy during these sessions is crucial. “This isn’t about hitting it straight,” Najar emphasizes. “It’s about retraining your brain to accept faster swings, to let it rip and have fun.”

Developing comfort with speed is like driving a car faster than you’re used to. At first, it feels wild and risky, but, with practice, it becomes natural. Najar has seen golfers increase their swing speed by 5 to 10 percent in a single session by simply adjusting their mindset and tempo.

One of Najar’s favorite analogies comes from his mentor Jim Hardy: “Imagine standing at the beach, where all you have to do is hit the ball into the ocean. Would you be nervous about missing? Probably not. But hitting down a narrow one-lane highway requires a completely different mindset. If you’re too concerned about control, you’ll never swing fast enough.”

The goal is to get your heart rate up, energy high and swing at full speed — even if it’s just for five minutes at a time.

Speed tip No. 3: Get in the gym

As you know by now, if you want to hit the ball farther, you must swing faster. What’s less commonly understood is how to build up your body’s capacity for speed. That’s where strength and conditioning coach Mike Carroll — founder of Fit for Golf and a trusted adviser of weekend warriors and Tour pros alike — comes in.

“Clubhead speed is just an expression of force,” Carroll says. “If you want more of it, your muscles need to produce more of it.” Simply put, stronger muscles mean greater potential for speed.

“Strength is the foundation,” he says. “Your body limits your output. If you’re not strong enough, no amount of technique work will make up for it.”

The golf swing uses nearly every major muscle group. That means your training should focus on your entire body.

“You want to target your quads and glutes for lower-body drive, your obliques and core for torso rotation and your shoulders and lats for upper-body speed,” Carroll says.

So, what are the best exercises to build those muscles? According to Carroll, it doesn’t matter as much as you think.

“The goal is to apply consistent, progressive stress to your muscles,” he says. “How you do that can vary depending on what equipment you have and what your body can handle.”

According to Carroll, you should train each major muscle group at least twice a week. “Research shows that about 10 sets per muscle group per week is ideal,” he says. “That can be split into two or three sessions. The key is consistency.”

If you’re serious about gaining distance, it’s not just about swinging harder. It’s about giving your body the tools to swing harder. And that starts with building a stronger, more powerful you.

“Think of it like upgrading your engine,” Carroll says. 

Speed tip No. 4: Copy the Long Drive pros

When it comes to hitting bombs off the tee, few understand the skill better than those who live and die by the numbers on the launch monitor: World Long Drive pros like Justin James (No. 2 in the WLD open division in 2024). His take: 

“There’s some great advice on these pages, but it’s important to build the proper foundation for speed first. Start with mobility, then add strength and finally fine-tune your technique. Only after those foundations are solid should you introduce speed training.”

James suggests taking a TPI-type assessment of your body to better understand how it moves and how to improve movement limitations. “Fix the body, then build the engine,” he says.

Upping your ball speed doesn’t just come from swinging fast. It’s also the product of hitting the center of the face and increasing your smash factor. Because speed without solid contact is useless. 

“Speed without [solid] contact is useless,” says Phyllis Meti, a five-time World Long Drive chapion. “As a coach, I always start with ball contact first. You can’t chase speed until your fundamentals are solid.”

Once you swing is dialed, then comes the fun part: speed training.

“Speed training has made the biggest difference for me,” says Monica Lieving, one of the longest pros in the WLD women’s division. “But it’s not just about swinging hard — it’s about being able to swing hard while maintaining your mechanics.”

Bottom line: Hitting the ball longer is a layered process — even for those whose singular focus is hitting bombs. Nail your fundamentals. Train your body. Practice swinging fast with control. And, most of all, swing like an athlete.

Speed tip No. 5: Build solid fundamentals

The team at Dewsweepers Golf (dewsweepersgolf. com) and Top 100 Teacher Tony Ruggiero focus on helping students in a way that makes them better players overall. It’s easy to show gains on a launch monitor or post flashy speed and distance numbers, but those don’t always translate into lower scores.

“Here’s how we approach it,” Ruggiero says. “First, we build a balanced, solid setup. The body’s primary job is to stay balanced and not fall over. Otherwise it’s tough to turn and rotate fully. From there, it’s about properly loading up on the backswing. We teach golfers to wind and load pressure into their trail leg rather than twisting. Many confuse loading and turning with simply twisting. We use specific drills and exercises that build the mobility and stability needed to wind properly into the trail leg.”

Three of their favorites are shown below.

1. Use a cable pulley at the gym or a stretchy band at home: Hold one end as if it were the club. Pull the band as far back as possible. You can only do it if you load more than twist.

2. Stand against a wall with your front foot set against it as shown. Now turn. You’ll quickly learn how much strength you need to accept a power load on your backswing.

3. Place a stretchy band underneath your lead foot and hold the other end in your hands. Make a backswing. The resistance will force you to stabilize your lower body as you move your arms to the top as you turn. If you’re a “lifter” of the club, this drill will expose it in seconds.

Speed tip No. 6: Understand your body

Swing speed isn’t just about swinging harder — it starts with understanding your body’s capabilities. GOLF Top 100 Teacher Jon Tattersall stresses the importance of beginning with a proper physical assessment to build speed safely and effectively.

“You can’t just throw a bigger engine into a car if the chassis isn’t built for it,” Tattersall says. “The same goes for your body.” Knowing where you stand physically helps tailor a plan to increase speed while minimizing injury risk.

A key part of this process is figuring out whether you need to improve your ability to generate speed or transfer that speed efficiently to the clubhead. Many golfers overlook the fact that generating speed isn’t only about accelerating —  it’s equally about deceleration, or how well you can brake during the swing.

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Tattersall explains that the grip of the club must slow down just before impact to allow the clubhead to snap and whip through the ball. “If you keep accelerating the grip, the clubhead never fully releases,” he says. Golfers who lack the strength to decelerate properly often lose potential speed, as the clubhead trails behind instead of whipping past their hands.

Building that strength and control involves traditional strength training, particularly in the lower body. “To move fast, you have to be able to stop fast and push hard against the ground,” Tattersall says. The best hitters have strong, stable lower bodies paired with flexible but powerful upper bodies. The hips and thoracic spine generate most of the rotation.

A common mistake is focusing only on hip rotation without developing upper-body strength and mobility to support it. The goal is a strong, stable lower body combined with a flexible, powerful upper body to maximize speed and control.

Speed tip No. 7: Learn from the LPGA

If you’re looking to hit the ball farther, there’s more than one way to get there. Just ask Nanna Koerstz Madsen and Elizabeth Szokol, two LPGA pros who rank in the top 15 on tour in average driving distance. Both mash the ball off the tee, but their paths to get there are quite different.

For Madsen, the turning point came during the Covid lockdown.

“I got so slow because we weren’t doing anything,” she recalls. “So I thought, Oh s—, I need to get my speed back.”

Her solution: SuperSpeed sticks, a training tool designed to increase swing speed through overspeed training. Madsen committed to the program, training twice a week for two months at a time.

“SuperSpeed can help, and going to the gym is a good idea,” she says. “But honestly? Just rip it. Don’t be afraid to swing hard. Sometimes when you try to be too controlled, you’re actually less accurate.”

As Madsen chased speed directly, Szokol added 20 yards to her average driving distance by focusing on getting healthier.

After dealing with knee and back injuries, she prioritized building total body strength, especially in the lower body and core.

“I don’t do anything too specific — just try to keep my quads, glutes, hamstrings and core strong and stable,” she says. “It’s about staying healthy and being able to swing freely.”

That work paid off. As her body got stronger and more balanced, her clubhead speed began to return naturally.

“I haven’t worked on it intentionally,” she says. “But I feel like I’ve gotten my swing into a good place, and now I can move more freely. The speed kind of came back on its own.”

Szokol also emphasizes the importance of a proper warm-up. Her routine — often 30 to 40 minutes of foam rolling, stretching and activation work — gets her body primed to move at full speed.

“I spend more time warming up my body than hitting balls,” she says. “That’s probably the most important part of my prep. I think most rec golfers do the opposite. The way your body moves is the key.”

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The post The long strange trip of course-design giants Gil Hanse and Jim Wagner appeared first on Golf.

The post The long strange trip of course-design giants Gil Hanse and Jim Wagner appeared first on Golf.

His schedule, though, was jam-packed in more ways than one. When he wasn’t grooving to the strains of “Cassidy” and “Scarlet Begonias,” Hanse made the rounds at a handful of recent and pending commissions.

He checked in at the Olympic Club, which he and his longtime design partner, Jim Wagner, had updated in 2023, dropped by Lake Merced, where they had revived an Alister MacKenzie layout, and met with San Francisco Golf Club, one of the country’s most exclusive enclaves, to start hashing out a new master plan.

All of those commitments were clustered within a few miles of the park, letting Hanse hopscotch from the concert venue to the clubs and back. A longer drive awaited. Before his trip was over, Hanse would motor two hours south to Monterey for conversations around Spanish Bay, the Pebble Beach Resort course that will go under his knife next year.

His counterpart, meanwhile, had a full slate of his own. On the far side of the country, Wagner was knee-deep in the finer points of High Grove, a private club in a Florida orange grove that will have its ribbon cutting in January, about a month after member play commences at Childress Hall, a Hanse/Wagner original in Eastern Texas.

“Jim and I balance each other out nicely, but we don’t see each other very often,” Hanse says. “These days, we’re like ships passing in the night.”

“Weir everywhere,” Deadheads like to say, as in the band’s cofounder Bob Weir. Something similar could be said of Hanse and Wagner. In the nearly 30 years since they joined forces under Hanse Golf Course Design, the two have built a portfolio as far-flung and varied as any in modern golf design. They have stitched fairways through central France’s Loire Valley, dropped layouts in the sandhills of Nebraska, shaped seaside holes in the Scottish Highlands, etched playing corridors through the desert outskirts of Palm Springs, to name just a sampling.

In an era of explosive industry growth, no architects have been in greater demand or laid their hands on more headline projects. Of the courses on GOLF’s World Top 100 and U.S. Top 100 lists, Hanse and Wagner have left their imprint on nearly two dozen. These range from fresh builds such as CapRock Ranch and Castle Stuart to a list of restorations that reads like a roll call of sacred ground: Winged Foot, Oakmont, Merion, The Country Club, Los Angles Country Club, and on.

While much of their work has been for private clubs and wealthy owners, the pair have also poured their hearts, pro bono, into municipal courses with socially conscious missions and other standout public-access tracks — projects that provide what Hanse calls “particularly good vibes.”

In some circles, the pace and volume of their output has prompted snarky comments — “Is there a job they aren’t doing?” — and a skeptical question: How can the quality keep up with the quantity?

The rejoinders are simple: The courses keep meeting with critical acclaim, and the clients keep lining up.

“When it comes down to it, there’s a proven track record,” says Ran Morrissett, GOLF’s former architecture editor and cofounder of the design-focused website Golf Club Atlas. “If you’re a club or an owner trying to build something special, you know they’re going to get it right.”

The architects, for their part, point to safeguards that keep them from getting spread too thin. For starters, Hanse says, “We politely turn down 90 percent of what we’re offered.” They also divvy up the labor. Central to that strategy is an inner circle of shapers, known affectionately as the “cavemen,” who travel from site to site, translating sketches and concepts into ground forms. Hanse and Wagner also lean on a yin-yang dynamic.

“We’re really at our best when Gil is selling and Jim is yelling,” Wagner says.

Hanse, a Jim Nantz–smooth extemporaneous speaker with a gift for delicate diplomacy, is better in the boardroom, while Wagner is more at ease barking at contractors. The contrast frees them up to tag-team projects and helps explain why they’re rarely in the same place at once.

“If we’re together,” Wagner says, “it probably means that something’s not getting done.”

Whatever the project, in staggered shifts, both make a point of spending ample time on-site. Their hands-on approach left a lasting impression on Irving Azoff, the music-industry magnate and longtime manager of The Eagles who, with Apple exec Eddy Cue, hired Hanse and Wagner to design and build Ladera, an artfully rugged layout in the Coachella Valley.

“I liken them to the great record producers of the ’70s,” Azoff says. “I’m talking vinyl, analog. No short cuts. They’re trust artists, and they’re committed to putting in the work.”

Another musical comparison comes from Dead & Company keyboardist Jeff Chimenti, a close friend of Hanse and a Lake Merced member.

“They’re a bit like a band where everyone has a role,” says Chimenti. “They also work around a central idea, but with a lot of improvisation.”

The soundtrack syncs.

“Most of the time,” Hanse says, “I just want to get on the bulldozer, listen to the Grateful Dead and build.”

That affinity goes back to 1979, when he was 16, and, in Deadhead parlance, first “got on the bus.” Growing up in New York, he enjoyed golf, but it was the landscape that really grabbed him — he was as likely to doodle golf holes as he was to play them. The same visual streak drew him to the Dead: the skull-and-lightning iconography as much as the music. He wore their Steal Your Face logo on a jean jacket, ringed in roses, and rode a train to Madison Square Garden for his first show. Two friends passed out not long after it started. Hanse stayed wide-eyed. He was hooked.

Instead of chasing shows, he pursued education. At the University of Denver he studied history and political science, then went on to Cornell for graduate work in city planning. There, he discovered a direct path into the game, one blazed a few years earlier by fellow Cornellian Tom Doak: a degree in landscape architecture and a life in golf design.

Supported by a scholarship — the same stipend that Doak had won before him — Hanse spent an immersive year in Scotland. Back in the States, the Cornell connection deepened. In 1989, fresh out of grad school, Hanse signed on as Doak’s lead design associate.

It was a formative stretch. Hanse soaked up lessons on routing and restraint while sharpening his skills on big machines. The two men had complementary temperaments — Doak the outspoken iconoclast, Hanse the diplomatic counterweight — and Hanse believed their differences could seed a successful partnership. But the two couldn’t agree to terms. Nearly four years into his tenure with Doak, Hanse was at a crossroads. He and his wife, Tracey, had just welcomed their second child. He had bills and ambitions. Something had to give.

“It was fight or flight,” Hanse says. “I thought, I’ve got two kids, a wife and a belief in myself. Do I settle into a situation that’s not going to become a partnership? Or do I do the right thing for my family and my career? So I took a leap of faith.”

That risk was rewarded with modest commissions around the Northeast, including work at Delaware Country Club, where a young up-and-comer named Jim Wagner had been appointed superintendent.

Born and raised in Philadelphia, with the accent to prove it (“golf” in his rendering is gawf), Wagner had a background in agronomy and construction along with an interest in design. As a kid, he’d been a “fence member” at several classic clubs in suburban Philly. Some of his buddies caddied at Merion, so he got to play there too.

“I didn’t know it at the time, but when you’re around all that great architecture, you can’t help but learn something,” Wagner says. “It basically happens by osmosis.”

Personally and professionally, he and Hanse clicked. In 1996, they formalized a partnership. Neither could have forecast where it would go.

“It’s one of those things where you wake up one day and realize that you’re not this little boutique company anymore,” Wagner says.

Businesses often grow the way one of Hemingway’s characters went broke: gradually, then suddenly. For Hanse and Wagner, every commission mattered, but a few figured more prominently in their rise.

An early break came from overseas. While studying in Scotland, Hanse struck up a friendship with Graeme Lennie, the head pro at Crail, one of the world’s oldest golf clubs. The bond began with a cheeky encounter — Hanse, dressed in black jeans and red high-top Converse (“It was the ’80s,” Hanse says. “What else were you going to wear?”), popped into Crail’s pro shop unannounced and asked if he could stroll the historic grounds. Instead of showing him the door, Lennie invited Hanse to show himself around — and invited him back on another day “properly attired” to browse his own collection of golf architecture books. The two stayed in close touch. Years later, when Crail decided to build a second course, Lennie helped Hanse get his hat in the ring.

His competition included such high-profile architects as Robert Trent Jones Sr., who mailed a book but skipped the interview. Hanse showed up in person, made his case and got the job, emerging from relative obscurity to become just the third American, after Jack Nicklaus and Tom Weiskopf, to design a course in Scotland.

Craighead Links opened in 1998 — Hanse and Wagner’s first original design and a cool calling card. Other assignments followed, none more pivotal than Boston Golf Club.

Built on rugged, wooded ground south of the city, Boston Golf Club gave the pair everything they could have hoped for: a generous budget, ample time and a client willing to let them push boundaries. It was a statement piece. It also drew influential members, including PGA Tour pro Brad Faxon and Seth Waugh, then CEO of Deutsche Bank and future head of the PGA of America. Waugh helped pave the way for a Hanse/Wagner renovation of TPC Boston, a Tour stop, which got their work on TV and caught the eye of Kingsbarns developer Mark Parsinen, who tapped the duo for his next project, Castle Stuart, in the Scottish Highlands, which opened in 2009.

By then, Hanse and Wagner had built a résumé of prestigious restorations — Fishers Island, Kittansett and the Creek among them — and a glowing reputation in the trade. Even so, they were underdogs when the International Olympic Committee went searching for someone to build a new course from scratch for the 2016 games in Rio. Hanse’s gift for presentations — and his willingness to relocate — helped him win the bid over heavyweights like Nicklaus and Doak. The Olympics were next-level global recognition.

“At that point, we were really off to the races,” Hanse says.

Years ago, Hanse and Wagner worked for an owner who insisted that they install cart paths before moving forward with the course.

“He had a Cadillac, and he wanted to be able to drive around and see what we were doing,” Hanse says.

They can now afford to say no to such jobs. Though Hanse won’t talk numbers (“It can sound like bragging, and besides, it’s not why we do this,” he says), it’s well known in the industry that design fees for top architects routinely reach into seven figures. That level of commitment requires serious clients. When they were starting out, Hanse and Wagner figured that for every 10 offers they agreed to, seven would probably go away.

“We now assume that every project is real, so we have to be careful and conscientious about what we choose,” Hanse says.

Their first condition is that golf, not real estate, be the focus on compelling land that allows for a walkable layout. Because the site dictates the style, not the other way around, some courses might be siblings but never twins. Both men take pride in the fact that it’s tough to tag their work with a “signature” trait.

If there’s a guiding aesthetic, it’s what Wagner describes as “genteel neglect.” Hanse draws an analogy that he credits to his and Wagner’s friend and mentor, Bill Kittleman, the former head pro at Merion, who, at 92, remains their design consultant.

“Bill would talk about courses as those old tapestries you might see hanging in 11th-century castles,” Hanse says. “In the center they are vibrant and tightly wound, but at the edges they become more frayed and tattered. A lot of great courses get blurry, where it’s hard to tell where the course ends and the native landscape begins.”

Anyone who has played Ohoopee Match Club, in Georgia, where firm playing corridors flow seamlessly into sand and scrub, has seen this design philosophy in effect.

Completed in 2018, Ohoopee is Hanse and Wagner’s second-highest-ranked original course, bested only by CapRock Ranch, which opened in 2021, in the chop hills of Nebraska.

Rural areas, of course, provide more opportunity for new work, while urban centers have been hotbeds for the duo’s restorations. There is, however, one conspicuous gap in their résumé. For all their reach, Hanse and Wagner have never built a course for the Keisers — not Mike, the patriarch behind Bandon Dunes, nor his sons, Michael and Chris, whose projects include Sand Valley, Rodeo Dunes and Wild Spring Dunes. The omission seems to sting Hanse, though he’s too diplomatic to say so.

From Michael Keiser’s standpoint, the timing just hasn’t lined up. “I love Gil’s work,” he says. “He and Jim are incredibly busy, and right now I’m in a great flow with Tom Doak, Bill Coore and Crenshaw and their associates. I hope one day I have the opportunity to work with Gil and Jim.”

That missing line on the CV is an outlier. Though Hanse and Wagner have never wanted to be identified with a single region or style, their goal has been to touch one of the top clubs in every major golf hub. San Francisco is the rare exception: They’ve worked on three courses there, each on a very different site by a different architect.

“I like the idea that people could see those places and have no idea the same architects worked on all three,” Hanse says of Lake Merced, the Olympic Club and SFGC.

Just as they’ve avoided being tied to one region, they’ve never had a fixed office. The closest they come to a headquarters is Philadelphia, where Hanse has lived since the 1990s. (Wagner now calls Florida home.) There, they’re immersed in restoring Cobbs Creek, a historic muni designed by Merion architect Hugh Wilson. Like The Park in West Palm Beach and Maggie Hathaway in Los Angeles, the revived Cobbs will be affordable and community-oriented. On all of those, Hanse and Wagner waived their design fees.

“That’s one of the places where I grew up playing, so it’s gratifying to give back,” Wagner says. “It feels like we’ve come full circle.”

That doesn’t mean they’re winding down. He’s 59 now, Hanse 62. In Wagner’s perfect world, he’d ease to one project a year. Hanse can see the appeal. He wants more time to travel with Tracey, to hang out with his grandkids, to take in more shows without work obligations. The coming years, he says, will bring “a thoughtful transition.”

For now, though, the phone keeps ringing and the sites keep calling. The pace may slow, but the tour goes on. “I still love what I do,” Hanse says. And besides, as Jerry Garcia sang, a touch of gray kind of suits him anyway.

The post The long strange trip of course-design giants Gil Hanse and Jim Wagner appeared first on Golf.