文章基本信息

标题：Now playing … : Whistling Danny Boy - Brief Article
作者：Ron Whitten
期刊名称：Golf Digest
印刷版ISSN：0017-176X
出版年度：2000
卷号：Sept 2000
出版社：The Golf Digest Companies

Now playing �� : Whistling Danny Boy - Brief Article

Ron Whitten

The main reason the original course at Whistling Straits--the daily-fee Straits Course a few miles north of Sheboygan, Wis.--will be the site of the 2004 PGA Championship is that it lacks jurisdiction to conduct a British Open. Strung atop bluffs along Lake Michigan, the Straits has all the elements of an Irish links. Designer Pete Dye shaped it into a moonscape of sand dunes and pot bunkers. The fairways are humps and bumps of dry-to-the-bone fescue. You play the game on foot here--carts aren't allowed. There's even a herd of sheep.

Now Whistling Straits has a second 18, which opened in August. It is another matter altogether. Dubbed the "Irish Course," this Pete Dye concoction is just two parts Irish to four parts American. Granted, Dye sculpted more sand dunes from flat farmland (inland from the lake) and installed some blind shots, bump-and-runs and awkward bounces along its 7,203 yards. But he has some holes among mature trees and a couple around lakes, the fairways are plush bent grass and a continuous cartpath skirts the perimeter of every hole. Toss in more railroad ties than Dye has used on a single course in the past 10 years, and the result is far more Dyeish than Irish.

To pacify purists, and to educate newcomers into the game, the two-year-old Straits Course really ought to be called the Irish Course and the new 18 should be called the American Course. Irish courses (at least those not designed by Americans) don't have bent fairways and cartpaths. American courses do.

But it's hard to imagine an upcoming major tournament venue abandoning its name. So call the new 18 at Whistling Straits the Irish-American Course. That's what it is. An American course with a couple of Irish overtones, a definite contrast to the original.