Abstract Golf Architecture in the Middle of Nowhere
Thoughts on the strange beauty of West Texas
I visited my folks in Austin this Thanksgiving and chose to road trip from California with my partner, my golf clubs, and our dog. As part of that trip we spent some time in Marfa, Texas.
Marfa
The small towns out in West Texas are buoyed by their proximity to Big Bend National Park, but unlike the towns of Alpine and Marathon, Marfa is just a bit farther west, and is closer to Big Bend Ranch State Park. Marfa thrives on its arts scene and tourism, whether it’s the Chinati Foundation, or the various galleries, or the artisans whose businesses host some of the best products in the region. The place is a destination for many trying to get away from city life.
If you’ve heard of Marfa before, all of this should be very familiar. A blend of traditional West Texas culture, combined with the hippies and the artist community that punches way above its weight class in culture. The place is truly an oasis in the sea of desert. The place gives visitors a real sense of isolation and interest at the same time.
Marfa Municipal Golf Course
That Marfa Municipal Golf Course even exists is unexpected, but not unprecedented. It’s not the only course in the area. Alpine has a nine hole course 25 miles away. And there is Lajitas Golf Resort, and their prominent course, Black Jack’s Crossing, that sits two hours south of Marfa, on the US-Mexico border at the western edge of Big Bend National Park. Marfa’s course has even had golf media coverage before, when Erik Anders Lang visited the course for Adventures in Golf a few years ago.
Since I was there with my clubs, I thought I should play. I am a person who celebrates the municipal course, and the place has all the signs of a cute little course in a cute little town. What I found, however, felt much more like a blank canvas.
A blank canvas
There is a lot about Marfa’s muni that reflects the land around it. The dry, rocky waste areas outside of the fairways reflect the desert landscape. The long, narrow fairways that stretch out in straight lines mirror the lonely roads that stretch out through that desert. The clusters of trees by the greens and tees seem to mirror the towns where the highways meet.
The whole thing is flat. Very flat. The holes are straight. Very straight. Even the doglegs are two straight sections on a hinge at the halfway point between the tee and green. There are no bunkers, though there are three “water hazards” that closely mirror the shapes of bunkers. The rough is just rocks. Every inch of it. The fairway and green conditions are fairly impressive, though, all things considered. When I visited, the greens were smooth and the fairway grass was substantial (if dormant).
Yes, the course is playable, and people were indeed playing there. Still, it took me a while to figure out how I felt about the strangeness of the experience. Aside from the occasional water bunker and tree in the fairway, I felt as if I was playing a default course in the course designer mode in PGA Tour 2K23. This design was extremely alien to me. The locals were there, having a good time and zipping around the course in their carts with bluetooth speakers blaring, and I still couldn’t put my finger on why it felt so strange.
Art as a motif
Please indulge me using abstract art as a through line here and the local art scene as a motif.
One way to look at this course is extreme minimalism on extremely minimal land. I really don’t even like using the term “minimalism” here, as the term is often ambiguous in golf writing. I’m reminded of Robert Rauschenberg’s White Paintings or other monochromatic works.1 I suspect, however, that the resultant extreme minimalism is the byproduct of obvious design constraints.2 Still, I wonder whether the design constraints limited the design, or whether the course was built with simplicity in mind. Unless off the fairway, the course seems like a wonderful course for beginners learning to play, and it may be that the course was built to serve a community that simply doesn't need or desire much from a golf course. This would lend itself to spartan design.
I have some sympathy for Ben Malach’s concept of golf architecture as craft, not art, and that framework pretty much rejects out of hand the idea of modern or contemporary art movements as a parallel for course design. After all, my feet are firmly planted in the Strategic School, and my views on golf are almost always seen through that lens. The most interesting hole, to my mind, is the ninth. The hole features a water hazard tucked in the corner of the dogleg, which can be carried if players are willing to contend with the trees they might end up behind.
Tradeoffs here create options, and options are what I love in golf design.
What would I do with this canvas?
On the course I immediately thought about what I might add if it were up to me. I can see that people love this course as is, and I think that’s just fine. Again, though, please indulge me as I discuss some potential architectural features.
Design constraints
First, let us presume the primary design constraints for the course are money and water. I’m going to assume there is no access to either. I do know that Marfa is receiving $67,500 in grants from the state of Texas, of which $52,000 is going to four organizations: “To advance the creative economy of Texas by investing in the operations of this arts organization.”3 The issue here is that the vast majority of people don’t hold golf course architecture up to the same level of artistic merit as painting, film, music or other art forms. However, Marfa is exactly the type of place where the artistry in golf design could be showcased. Golf course architecture is a long-term near-permanent artistic medium, and in a town where long-term, near-permanent installations are the goal, a municipal course is exactly the venue to showcase this type of public art. The potential to create a truly avant garde course exists here in a way that could not exist in most other places. For now, however, let’s just assume that’s not going to happen.
Minimal changes: bring in the nature
The first thing I would do is add strategic native areas that encroach on the fairway. Either long native grasses, cacti, or agave would do, whichever can be maintained without ongoing cost (and are obviously choices that do not interfere with the agronomy). Marfa Garden’s Instagram page has a significant number of examples of this, and Cane Bluestem or Blue Grama seem like ideal candidates. The key, however, is that the grasses be allowed to grow wild, and are not cut. Ending up in them should be penal, and only the lucky will get a perfect shot out.
Using these native areas, I think the primary features that can create strategy using just grasses are diagonal crossing hazards. Diagonal crossing hazards create strategy for players of every distance off the tee. Play to the wider section of the fairway, or if the wind isn’t helping in that direction, then lay up.
Here we give the eighth hole a crossing hazard with 150 yards to carry the start of the hazard and 215 yards to the gap. Longer shots must clear the rough completely at the turn, and risk being sliced away from the dogleg, which would spell disaster. A straightforward par four becomes a par four-and-a-half, and an obvious tee shot becomes complicated.
Typically I wouldn’t advocate rough for rough’s sake, but here, limited sections of native grasses can carve out corridors, reduce the amount of maintenance, and make the hole much more interesting.
Moderate changes: tree removal and reversed routing
Another feature that stands out is the trees that line both sides of most of the holes. I subscribe to the idea that wind is the greatest and best hazard on the golf course, and windy days certainly thrive in Marfa. To battle against wind effectively, it is optimal to have a bailout area. This means taking the trees out on one side of each hole, especially around the greens. Tree removal can be expensive, but an extremely inexpensive approach would just involve cutting them down without removing the stumps.
By strategically removing trees, we can also make the course reversible or open up alternate routings. Why would one want alternate routings? It solves the issue of the gentle back-to-front green complexes. The basic back-to-front green complexes become more varied when looking at a reversed routing:
The reversed #1 green plays similar to the way it would play on the regular routing. However, other greens change dramatically. The reversed #6 will approach the green with a severe right-to-left tilt, which changes the ideal position in the fairway. On reversed #7, there is an extremely challenging fall-away green that runs into a hazard on the left side. This makes distance off the tee extremely important.
Different contours on the greens require different shots to hold the green. This means more unique skills to learn and execute, and more for the player to consider than just playing to a specific distance. There are even further alternate routings can create other interesting approaches:
Maximal changes: art as hazard
Here I continue the previous motif. The town is a locus for art. Why not embrace it as part of the course? Matt Johnson’s enormous Sleeping Figure is exactly the type of piece that is on a scale where a golf course can be an ideal venue. Prada Marfa is probably the most famous of the areas’s large-form art pieces, but Stone Circle or 15 untitled works in concrete could also easily be dramatically displayed, interactively, on a golf course. Instead, many of these huge sculptures exist on the side of the highway west of the town. I could imagine folks full of emotion playing across, over, or under them.
I certainly understand that interactive or intrusive art isn’t for everyone, and I definitely think the idea of placing structure on a course may be deeply naive on my part, but in a place where open space is in abundance, and large installations are the norm, a golf course can exist as much as a gallery as it can as a retreat. Not everyone in the town feels the same way about the avant garde presence, but I’m always looking for multiple uses for a course, and I don’t know if there is a more unique venue for the large form art to be displayed on a golf course. Especially if the course becomes a gallery after the sun goes down.
You really should consider a visit to Marfa, Alpine, or Marathon
I don’t want my self-indulgent navel gazing about art and potential changes to a muni to take precedence over the fact that this region is worth visiting. The Chihuahuan Desert region is incredibly beautiful. The Big Bend area is a unique region where a river cuts right through this desert. The seven-hour drive from Austin is long, and once you pass Kerrville, most of the normal traces of civilization start to fade away. Between Ozona and Fort Stockton there is just 100 miles of nothing at all. Even after you leave I-10, there are 80 more miles through the empty high desert. The sense of deep isolation is part of the experience, and is inseparable from the beauty of the region. For the people who live in Marfa, I presume that isolation is part of daily life. I enjoyed my short time there, and I’ll certainly be back.
Examples of white paintings here are variations on a theme:
Robert Rauschenberg: White Paintings
Agnes Martin: White Stone
Jo Baer: Untitled (White Square Lavender)
I honestly think the most appropriate parallel is Ad Reinhardt’s Number 107, which leaves more of a muddled form, which is less clean, and to me, best parallels Marfa’s golf course.
The obvious throughline here is the rocks in the rough. Now, I don’t care about the rocks. I learned to play at Lions Municipal in Austin, which also has rocks off many of the fairways. It’s no big deal if you’re not precious about scuffing your clubs. And for those who are, it’s easy enough to just play with a winter mat when the ball ends up on the rocks.
Texas current grants: https://www.arts.texas.gov/current-grants/, just click to get to Marfa, which if you adjusted it to 100 entries per page, should be on page nine.
Total: $67,500
Award - Name: Description
$9,000.00 - Ballroom Marfa: To advance the creative economy of Texas by investing in the operations of this arts organization.
$13,000.00 - Judd Foundation: To advance the creative economy of Texas by investing in the operations of this arts organization.
$15,000.00 - Chinati Foundation/La Fundacion Chinati: To advance the creative economy of Texas by investing in the operations of this arts organization.
$15,000.00 - Marfa Live Arts (formerly Marfa Theatre): To advance the creative economy of Texas by investing in the operations of this arts organization.
$2,000.00 - Marfa Studio of Arts: To support the Studio in the Elementary School, a school residency program providing preK-6th grade students with visual art instruction.
$3,000.00 - Judd Foundation: To support two annual Ranch Day events at Donald Judd’s ranch outside of Marfa, comprised of educational programs celebrating the artistic and natural history of the West Texas landscape.
$5,000.00 - Marfa Live Arts (formerly Marfa Theatre): To support playwriting preparatory courses for seventh and eighth graders in Marfa.
$5,500.00 - Chinati Foundation/La Fundacion Chinati: To support the annual Chinati Weekend, which features exhibitions and a variety of activities, to attract local, national, and international visitors to Marfa.