The Tree Farm was true collaboration between Tom Doak, Kye Goalby and Zac Blair. Doak’s masterful routing utilizes the site’s natural terrain in a way that required limited earthmoving. It also features short green-to-tee transitions that make for a pleasant walk and contribute to the Club’s quick pace-of-play culture. The greens were shaped to be receptive to run-up shots—albeit from the correct angle—so they present the full range of aerial and ground options. An economy of fairway bunkers were built as the team of Goalby and Blair opted to rely upon the natural movement of the land to deliver the challenge of uneven stances and lies. With no two holes alike and flexibility in the day-to-day setup, the course will remain intriguing and enjoyable after countless rounds.

“With a couple of ridges and a valley 60-feet deep, the site has a lot of potential for dramatic holes. The trick was how to make the most of that without a lot of climbing up and down. Once I started playing around, I found myself coming back near the clubhouse location at several different points in the round. That’s always a good thing, but especially here, because in spite of the elevation changes, the routing feels intimate: you are never more than two holes away from the clubhouse at any point on the property. The third green comes back underneath the clubhouse; the fourth, fifth and seventh greens all look right across the valley to the clubhouse from the opposite ridge; the tenth comes back close, and so do the twelfth and sixteenth. It should be easy to squeeze in a few extra holes at the start or end of the day.

I asked Zac at the beginning to name a few favorite holes, and one he mentioned that resonated with me was the fifth at Pine Valley. I’ve never seen another hole quite like that one, but as soon as I looked at the map I saw a good site for a version of it, which turned out to be the fourth hole. From there, I quickly put together the little triangle of 5-6-7, which includes a semi-blind approach to the sixth hole and then a drivable par-4 for the seventh, and it was off to the races from there.”

—Tom Doak