Course Development
FOR OCCM RENO
well represent the local environment. Many
of the finer details that make any course
unique felt imported or manufactured. We’re
in China — on an island in the middle of the
mighty Yangtze River! Our redesign strongly
accentuates that sense of place and culture.”
Though the firm recently broke ground on its
first U.S. project (renovation of Shady Oaks
GC, Ben Hogan’s club in Dallas, Texas), OCCM
have worked mainly and to much acclaim
in their native Australia. Their recent 36-
hole redesign at Peninsula Kingswood has
catapulted the club into Melbourne’s elite
Sand Belt cohort. Down the road at Kingston
Heath, the firm’s long-standing consultation
gig recently produced a stunning new 19th
hole. And though OCCM has authored more
extensive, similarly celebrated renovations
all over the country — at Victoria GC,
Commonwealth, Royal Canberra, The Lakes
in Sydney, and Lake Karrinyup (home to a
European Tour event near Perth) — Mead
sees very little at the new Lanhai design that
he would call “Australian” or even “Australia-
inspired”.
“We frankly see a lot of Friar’s Head at
Lanhai,” Mead says, referring to the 2001
Coore/Crenshaw design, “and I think Long
Island is a pretty fair comp for the natural
sandy environment and vegetation here on
Chongming. We drew a lot of inspiration on
11 at Lanhai from the 10th at Friar’s Head,
where Bill Coore also used a natural dune
short of the green. We just thought that was
a wonderful natural feature to play around…
More generally, in the way Lanhai transitions
from fairway to sandy ground, then from wispy
rough areas to outlying dunes, I see a great
deal of Friar’s Head — and Pinehurst No. 2, to
be honest. I also see elements of Garden City,
with its dark brown rough areas contrasting so
strikingly with the green of the fairways.”
The team Ping An has assembled at Lanhai
International is headed by the American
Porter. Club operations are shared by
U.S.-basedLandscapes Unlimited (www.
LandscapesUnlimited.com) and China’s
Forward Group (www.ForwardGolf.com.cn/
en), which also handled course construction
duties on Chongming. The Forward/
Landscapes partnership produced and
continues to manage 9-year-old Shanqin
Bay, now a fixture on every major world top
100 ranking. Indeed, the superintendent
now presiding at Lanhai is Alan Hu, formerly
the superintendent at Shanqin Bay, another
Coore/Crenshaw design on another Chinese
island (Hainan).
“We feel as though we have the finest
possible construction and maintenance
resources at our disposal here,” says Mead.
“And that’s a good thing, because what
we’re building here could not be handled
by just anyone. The saving grace — and the
factor supplying this project such incredible
potential — is the terrain itself. The natural
movement is compelling. The river is right
there. And this entire golfing environment
is undergirded by sand, straight from the
Yangtze.”
Golf Industry Central I Winter 2018
37