GODDESS GAVE IDEA FOR COURSE

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30945, 29 December 1965, Page 9

GODDESS GAVE IDEA FOR COURSE

pOMMANDER John D. Harris, one of the world’s 40-odd golf course architects, is a contented man.

Few members of his profession are presented with the chance to plot a perfect lay-out and those who are fortunate usually have only one opportunity in a lifetime. Commander Harris is one of the lucky ones. In all modesty, he claims that he has created the ultimate in course lay-outs on a Portuguese island called Tavira. A magazine photograph of a Far Eastern goddess with a multitude of arms protniding from both sides of her body provided Commander Harris with the idea for his perfect lay-out. He planned the 7200 yard course in similar fashion, each hole in the first half having a corresponding hole in the second, to fit into the multi-arm pattern. Naturally enough, , the course has been named “The Goddess.” Commander Harris’s fir* venture in golf course architecture took place in 1929, when he designed a ninehole course as a naval cadet at Naval College. Since then he has planned hundreds of courses in many parts of the world. The most expensive course he has designed was at Runaway Bay, Jamaica, where most of the holes had to be blasted out of rock and then covered with soil carted from a nearby estate. The course cost £ooo.ooo with one of the major holes costing £40,000 alone. But in two years and a halt the club was showing a profit. . .. Golf course construction is in Commander Harris-

biood. His father founded Britain’s first golf course construction company in 1890 and later built the Eden, Jubilee and new courses at St Andrew’s. Commander Harris considers that to be a competent golf course architect a man must be a qualified civil engineer, a scratch golfer and at least 45 years old—“no golf club committee will take any notice of you if you are younger ’’

In the course of his world travels, Commander Harris has gained many impressions about golf. One that is fresh in his mind is that proficiency in golf is now a prerequisite for potential company executives in the United States and Britain. “The thought behind this is that you do more and better business on a golf course than when facing each other in a stuffy office with hangovers,” he said.