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Sensational Kinloch Golf Club
Puts Richmond Golf on the Map
Standing on the tee box of the 9th hole at
Kinloch Golf Club 12 miles northwest of Richmond, Va.,
golfers can be easily distracted by the vista. The 9th
is a majestic, panoramic 556-yard dogleg right. A stream,
whose banks are populated with sedges and other marsh
grasses, splits the rolling fairway and meanders the entire
length of the hole. The right fairway is bordered right by a
hardwood forest and a bluff. Players willing to risk it must
cut their tee shots sharply around the hardwoods and right
of the creek if they want to shorten the hole. The safer but
longer route is over the creek bed to the more elevated left
fairway. At about 400 yards out, the left fairway is
interrupted by a 20-yard marsh swath before the pickup
fairway begins again at a natural dome with a 20-foot
vertical wall that is like a miniature of Yosemite’s Half
Dome. The right fairway continues up toward the right side
of the green and is interrupted by the stream bed. Players
electing to lay up on the right side face a daunting short
iron third shot over a rise to a partially hidden green. The
view from the green back down the fairway is absolutely
stunning, and as strategically fascinating as it is
beautiful. There are no fewer than 8 different routes into
the green.
As fine a design as it is, the 9th is just one
of 18 virtuoso holes that make up the most beautiful, best
conditioned parkland layout I have ever played. This is a
Rembrandt of a golf course, an architecturally magnificent
work of art.
Opened in April 2001, Kinloch Golf Club is already the
talk among the golfing cognoscenti. A Golf Digest reviewer
who has never before awarded a golf course a perfect rating,
reportedly has given Kinloch 10's on all ratings criteria.
In a metro area not generally regarded as golf rich, Kinloch
is a treasure that is putting Richmond on the golfing map.
Kinloch is a private equity golf club with a limit of 300
members (as of August 2001 there were 175 members).
Resident, non-resident, corporate and national memberships
are available at remarkably modest rates. For example,
non-resident members who live within a certain zone outside
the metro Richmond area have an initiation fee of only
$65,000 and annual dues of $3500; Initiation fees for
national memberships are only $35,000 with annual dues of
$2000. Memberships are by invitation only.
Every aspect of the club, from the golf course and
physical complex to the service and amenities, is world
class at Kinloch, yet the theme of the club is understated
elegance. There is nothing flamboyant about Kinloch, just a
polished professionalism that speaks low while exhibiting a
quiet confidence that it knows few other golf clubs in the
world can rival it in quality.
In addition to the golf course, which is so good it has
some people comparing it to Augusta in both setting and
conditioning, the club has a short- and long-game practice
facility that includes indoor hitting bays, state-of-the art
cameras and a video room, and force plates which measure the
energy loading of a player during the swing. The crack
instructional team is under the direction of Steve
Slotterback, a veteran with Rick Smith. Those lucky enough
to have club Director of Golf Phil Owenby as their
instructor will have THE best teacher in the country,
according to some observers.
The 20,000 square foot clubhouse (scheduled for
completion in 2002) will feature plush carpeting, a modest
sized, comfortable locker space, a restaurant offering world
class fare, and a pro shop stocked with top-of-the-line in
apparel and equipment. The clubhouse, which has a
Tudor-style exterior design, overlooks the 70-acre lake, the
centerpiece of the 274-acre property and the inspiration for
the name Kinloch, which in the "Old Country" means
"by the lake".
| The lake, which also
services a fishing club at one end, was built some
10 years earlier by Richmond real estate scion C.
B. Robertson, who first envisioned a residential
development on the site. Robertson later scrapped
that idea in favor of building a daily fee golf
course. One day, he invited Marvin "Vinny"
Giles out to visit the site. Giles, a Richmond
sports agent and world class amateur golfer, took
one look and persuaded his friend that they should
do something special with it. Subsequently, the
two formed a partnership with a third principal, |
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Manassas golf facility owner Charles
Staples, and the idea of Kinloch was born. It is
not surprising that the heraldry of the club logo
includes the cross at St. Andrews and the trophy
of the U.S. Amateur Championship. Giles won a
critical Walker Cup match on the Road Hole at St.
Andrews and he is the 1972 U.S. Amateur Champion.
He also won the British AM at Hoylake. |
Giles was a consultant to Lester George, a Richmond-based
architect who, among many other projects, redesigned the
Newport Bay Course at the Ocean City Golf & Yacht Club
and who was recently commissioned to redesign the DuPont
Country Club course in Wilmington Del., site of the LPGA
McDonalds Championship. Good friends, Giles and George
pretty much saw eye to eye on all facets of the design.
During their many early site visits through the thick
underbrush, they quickly realized they had a piece of
property that fairly begged from a traditional layout, and
that is what they produced. In routing and shaping the holes
through the hardwoods and pines, and around and over the
abundant streams on the site, the team preserved the natural
look. Very little earth was moved, and all grading was tied
to the original grading. There are no created mounds or
other artificial features.
"For the size of the project, we moved an incredibly
small volume of earth," explains George. "We fit
the course to this exquisite piece of land because we wanted
a natural look."
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Open corridors through the thick forest were created to
provide ample landing areas, and the undulating landscape
offered great opportunities for a wide variety of shots.
Once the corridors were cut, meticulous effort was made to
preserve the site's natural endowment, particularly its
hundreds of flowering fruit trees including dogwoods.
"You should see the color in the spring," George
exclaimed. "You can't believe the color! |
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"We did 55 acres of select clearing all
by
hand," George added. "We gave the crew leaf
packages so that they would recognize those species of
plants and flowering trees that we wanted left alone as they
cleared out the understory. We also laid down 75,000 cubic
yards of mulch in the natural areas." |
The course, which has four sets of tees measuring from
5360 to 7112 yards, looks as natural as if nature herself
designed it. The design team took every advantage of the
elevation changes to sculpt a course of fascinating rhythm
where no two shots are similar. All the contoured areas are
tied to the original slope and there are no artificial
mounds.
Shunning any temptation to build greens with deep
dramatic swales which would have clashed thematically with
the rest of the course, "We designed the greens for
understated subtlety," George said, adding that the
transition zones from fairway to green are seamless, giving
players the option of bump-and-run approaches. With the
exception of one pot bunker on the back side, the course
features some 68 wide, shallow-faced bunkers designed to be
hiccups and not round ruiners.
| The front 9 includes a
311-yard downhill risk-reward challenge with a
fairway split by a creek, a par 4 that has a
fairway whose upper and lower tiers are separated
by large bunkers, a spectacular 230-yard downhill
par 3 in a natural amphitheater and the 437 yard 8th
requiring a draw off the tee over a crest of a
hill and down to a green diagonally position
behind a pond reminiscent of the 11th
at Augusta. A well struck draw off the tee can
catch the left listing pitch of the fairway scooting |
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the ball down
into a little valley from where the approach into
the green is shorter and directly over the pond. A
drive right creates a longer but safer angle into
the green. A drive too far right winds up in thick
rough. This hole is a great one.
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