Silva's Red Tail GC opens at former Fort Devens

Contact Hal Phillips
Phillips Golf Media
207-926-3700
onintwo@maine.rr.com

AYER, Mass. (May 21, 2002) - Any attempt to classify Red Tail Golf Club, the dazzling new design from architect Brian Silva, is an exercise in futility. After all, what sort of blanket statements can one make about a course which plays through several distinct ecosystems, marries classic and modern design with impunity (and creativity), and still manages to skirt abandoned ammunition bunkers?

"I think you could start by calling Red Tail a heap of fun to play," says Silva, a partner with Uxbridge, Mass.-based Cornish, Silva and Mungeam. "I mean, it's not every day you play hole with an active tank crossing."

Indeed, Red Tail GC, which opened for daily-fee play in April, was developed inside the recently decommissioned Fort Devens and several military remnants are scattered about its 200 acres of diverse, often spectacular terrain. The 18 holes here strongly reflect this variety; they span abandoned sand pits, occupy deep natural valleys and ride the crests of wooded highlands.

There are traditional New England parkland holes whose fairways slither between more than 80 vintage-style bunkers. There are contemporary desert-style holes completely surrounded by sandy waste areas. There are throwback features like greenside chipping areas, flamboyant, oversized fairway bunkering, and Redan-style greens - yet there are modern touches, too, like the ornamental bunkering which covers an entire hillside at the par-5 2nd, where a functioning easement really does exist to accommodate tanks.

"Red Tail isn't easily classified because, as a firm, we don't want to be classified," Silva says. "We don't want to cookie-cut our courses; we don't want to be tied down by any sort of stylistic expectation. We want to give each layout a different feel and look, while always achieving first-rate variety and shot values.

"I've gotten a kick out of folks making [Alistair] Mackenzie references after seeing some of the bunkers at Red Tail, especially at No. 6" - where a massive, baroque fairway bunker guards the left side of a drivable par-4 - "but too much can be made of paying homage to classic designers. I'm adapting traditional design principles to contemporary golf. That means random bunkering; it means 'up' greens with 'down' surrounds; it means holes that require a player to put the ball on the ground; it means recovery-shot varietyŠ Red Tail is equipped with all these 'vintage' characteristics, but it's modern and distinct. It stands on its own."

Red Tail is located just a few miles from another heralded Silva design, Shaker Hills Golf Club, which Golf Digest hailed as the nation's second-best new course for 1991 (behind Pumpkin Ridge in Oregon). Later this summer, Silva will christen another Boston-area layout, the private Black Rock Country Club in suburban of Hingham.

"If you could play those three courses, Red Tail, Shaker Hills and Black Rock, in the same day, you'd never think the same architect designed each one," Silva asserts, adding that Waverly Oaks and Cape Cod National in Massachusetts, and Black Creek Club in Tennessee only further the point. "They all have dramatic, structurally sound golf holes but they look entirely different. I lean on the traditional design principles because they work, because they're so adaptable. There's no need to reinvent the wheel. We're just putting the wheel to use in a modern context, adapting it to each site's unique qualities."

Witness the long, deep strip bunkers which guard the left side of No. 10, a 560-yard par-5, and the right side of the stern, 460-yard par-4 7th. These design elements wouldn't look out of place at The TPC at Sawgrass, "But," Silva says, "they're also similar to the long bite-off bunker on the Alps hole at The National Golf Links of America," the 1911 Seth Raynor/C.B. Macdonald design on Long Island.

The fairway at Red Tail's par-4 17th is not unlike something you'd find at a new course in the American Southwest: a dog-legged island of turf in a sea of sand. Yet the 17th fairway is also a classic cape design, whereby players are invited to bite off as much sand as they dare in attempts to find the fairway. What's more, the putting surface at 17 - along with eight others at Red Tail - is bounded by the closely mowed chipping areas famously employed (in this country) by Donald Ross.

"One neat thing about Red Tail is how lightly bunkered the greens are - there are only about 12 bunkers set close to the 18 greens! The 'bunker left, bunker right' scheme is pretty boring. At Red Tail we've replaced it with a collection of grass hollows, chipping areas and hard edges. These schemes are more interesting to look at, and more fun to play."

Each hole at Red Tail has been named in the classic tradition, yet even these monikers reflect the merging of old and new. The 2nd was appropriately dubbed "Tank Crossing". The dramatic par-3 11th plays dramatically across its namesake "Gravel Pit". The 17th, "Bunkers", derives its name not from the giant sandy expanse which surrounds it, but from the aforementioned ammo storage units which abut the putting surface.

Red Tail was built by Ellington, Conn.-based Agri-Scape Golf Course Construction (the same firm which worked alongside Silva at Rolling Rock Club in Western Pennsylvania, where the architect designed an original nine to complement a Ross nine). The course superintendent at Red Tail is Brian Barrington, who presides over Massachusetts' first Audubon Cooperative Sanctuary Signature Series layout, the nation's highest designation for environmental sensitivity.

Red Tail was developed by a private consortium which leases the property from the Fort Devens redevelopment authority.

"It's pretty incredible that this land, which is so magnificently suited to golf, was once the site of military exercises," Silva muses. "It just goes to show how adaptable the tenets of classic course design can be. The dramatic landscape here - some of it man-made - can makes certain holes appear quite 'modern', but they're simply vintage-style holes in a singular, modern setting."

With original designs and course restorations underway up and down the East Coast, and as far west as Chicago, Cornish, Silva and Mungeam, Inc. is one of the nation's busiest course architecture firms. Silva will unveil Black Rock CC (routed through a former quarry) this July; he's at work restoring a pair of Seth Raynor layouts in Florida, The Everglades Club in Palm Beach and Mountain Lake Club in Lake Wales; and the nation's golf junkies will get a gander at another Silva-restored Raynor layout, Fox Chapel GC in Pittsburgh, during telecast of the USGA's 32nd Curtis Cup Matches, Aug. 3-4 (ESPN).

Next summer, the national spotlight swings to Chicago and CSM partner Mark Mungeam, who recently completed his renovation/preparation of the North Course at Olympia Fields Country Club, site of the 2003 U.S. Open Championship. Fresh off the fall 2001 opening LeBaron Hills CC (a private club in Lakeville, Mass.), Mungeam is now overseeing construction of Hudson Hills, the first public course to be built in Westchester County in 63 years.

For more information on Cornish, Silva and Mungeam, call 508-278-3407, or visit the firm's new web site at www.csmgolf.com.