A confession: I cannot stop thinking about TGL course architecture.
Just the other day I sketched out some thoughts on the brilliance of Stinger (as well as Cenote), two mind-bending additions to this season’s repertoire of mega-simulator holes that have pros out-doing each other in Full-Swing-measured, low-launch competitions and sending drivers flying 30 yards over the green on a par-3 on purpose. Those two were designed by Agustin Pizá, a visionary architect who seems to have found his calling in a golf world without boundaries, taking the opportunity to ask questions about playing golf in four dimensions, playing holes that go forwards and backwards plus other inspired brain teasers.
Until, on Thursday, another shocking drop arrived.
The anti-Pizá, in my mind, was Gil Hanse — arguably the hottest golf course architect in the real world and a TGL addition for Season 2. I don’t say anti-Pizá because Hanse is some sort of wet blanket; he has talked about “fun” in course architecture literally his entire career and was game for this hilarious SoFi Center walkout. But he’s undeniably more of a traditionalist; in addition to his original designs he’s an expert in real-life restorations, and in his introductory comments as part of this TGL experiment he shouted out some Golden-Age designers as inspiration.
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“On a few of our TGL holes, we decided to honor the concepts, thoughts, and styles of some of the greatest designers from golf history like A. W. Tillinghast, Alister MacKenzie, Donald Ross, etc.,” Hanse said.
His debut design, “Stone and Steeple,” followed that ethos. The 590-yard par-5 looked a believable addition to a country club in a bucolic New England town.
TGL announced today that Gil Hanse has joined the league’s stable of course architects.
Hanse called his involvement with TGL as “liberating,” saying, “Designing holes for TGL has given us an opportunity to step out of our comfort zone and step into other aspects of golf course… pic.twitter.com/q842rBwICp
It did feature a graveyard down the left side — every TGL match is a reminder of our ultimate mortality — but Hanse referenced Taconic Golf Club as inspiration (where he led a restoration in Williamstown, Mass., arguably the greatest place on earth) and a press release compared the hole’s fairway bunkering to Hanse’s work at Baltusrol’s Lower course in New Jersey; that’s a Tillinghast restoration. This was a Golden-Age tribute on the big screen.
Then came this one.
🚨 NEW HOLE DESIGN JUST DROPPED 🚨
The Last Toll | Par 3 | 241 yds
In a world that fell apart, this bridge still decides who gets through.
Designed by Gil Hanse, The Last Toll asks for courage under the truss, touch over the road, or craft around the towers. There’s no toll… pic.twitter.com/zuM22C5rum
“The Last Toll” is a 241-yard window into a future where a massive city has decayed but a brave greenskeeper presses on. Its centerpiece is a giant section of bridge, still standing even as everything around it has broken, that you’ll have to navigate to land anywhere near the green. “In a world that fell apart, this bridge still decides who gets through,” TGL’s release reads.
Old Tom Morris has his “Road Hole” at St. Andrews. Now Hanse has his “The Road” hole at TGL. Beginning next week we’ll all bear witness as teams take on an unprecedented challenge in an unforgiving landscape — the type of hole that would make Cormac McCarthy proud.
Hanse’s video explanation is remarkably deadpan. While hearing the hole name out loud adds another dimension — The Last Toll is a clever homophone for The Last Hole — he casually mentions that his team “tried to look into a dystopian, post-apocalyptic version of the future” even though no team in course-design history has ever used that as a North Star.
“These vertical hazards have always been of interest to us,” he says, downplaying the fact that this “vertical hazard” looks suspiciously like a zombified Brooklyn Bridge. (It’s unclear if this is any sort of commentary on congestion pricing.)
His Tillinghast homage already seems like a distant memory.
I drew some Golden-Tee parallels to the Piza holes, which immediately stretched our conceptions of what a golf hole can be. Now Hanse is taking a step further into the fantasy realm; he’s plunging us into the middle of a story. What happened to make the cityscape look like this? Who or what is responsible? Are the members of Jupiter Links and L.A. Golf Club the last six humans on earth? And seriously, who’s watering the green? Hanse is sending a message with this design: I can adapt to this weird alternate reality, too.
(There may be another question worth asking: After a graveyard opener and a post-apocalyptic follow-up, should we be worried about you, Gil?)
This is all ridiculous, of course. And TGL still doesn’t have to be for you. But it’s fun to see some of golf’s brightest and most creative minds pushed outside their day-to-days to be more and more creative. The designers are pushing boundaries and then the players are, too. It’s not real golf. It’s something different.
