This new pole five course doesn’t look fun

Fake grass plays a real role in golf.

Once it remains primarily in the short-term interior of the backyard, it extends its coverage to various public places. The most prominent of these projects is Sofi Center in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida, an indoor home at TGL. However, the comprehensive trend of coastal to coastal trends in low-key playgrounds has taken over (artificial).

up to date? Shortland Golf Club in Portland, Oregon.

Shortland is the creative of Mike Fritz, a longtime golf junk, former footwear developer for Nike Golf, who saw a gap in his hometown market. In eastern Portland, about 45 minutes into the suburbs, is a sweet PAR-3 course that allows you to get into the game quickly and easily.

“But there’s nothing real on the west side of the town,” Fritz said.

What to do is another matter. Land on the new route is scarce.

“I think the only way to achieve it is to find something that is closed or ready to be sold,” he said.

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Fritz found that in the old footprints of Sandelie Golf, 30 minutes from downtown, 30 minutes in the belly of the end of 2022. Fritz obtained a quadrant of 31 acres and developed a plan.

There isn’t a full-scale course space for a plot of that size, and Fritz doesn’t want one anyway. He knows enough that building and running a place like opening a restaurant: it sounds fun until you actually do it. Even if you are designed and constructed, maintenance and labor are long-term obligations that can drain your bank account and drive you crazy.

Fritz has played a lot of lessons around him. In his memorable round, there is a player 3-shot 3 course at Skamania Lodge on the Oregon border in Washington, which includes faux vegetables and t-shirts. Another is a loop on Bad Little Nine at Scottsdale National Golf Club in Arizona.

What about the hybrid power of these two? A short course combines the subtlety and strategy of beautifully designed with the benefits of synthetic turf.

To help you, Fritz turned to Jackson Kahn Design, the construction company behind Bad Little Nine, and other widely acclaimed projects. It happens that Connor Dougherty, one of Jackson Kahn’s chief colleagues, is based in Portland. Dougherty has experience with short-term internal setups of the backyard with his colleagues at Jackson Kahn, and while this is his first stabbing in his publicly accessible course with synthetic turf, he has a good idea of ​​what he wants to create.

“The goal is to bring a lot of features and sports into the Greens and make them fun,” he said. “We want a couple that can allow creativity and become a playable experience for everyone.”

This helps fake grass soon, which is the lower turf of past generations. Like a golf equipment, it advanced by leaps and boundaries in the modern era, so now it lives, bounces, rolls and receives shots in a way similar to real grass.

The rest is going to be Dougherty.

His dreamy design was a 19-hole 3-pole layout, looping, like a clover, surrounding a square package with a club and food cart in the center, and the route touched three times in the process. The holes range from 59 to 104 yards, and their shapes and contours vary from vegetables, making demand. The 19th hole is ignored by a clubhouse balcony, aptly called “heckler’s deck”, which doesn’t sound like a daunting one. After all, most golfers are better than trouble beginners, and most experienced players can handle the ribs well. If not, they will turn to another game.

All the t-shirts, bunkers and put the surface on the Celebrity Green Shortland display cabinet synthetic turf (“sand” is not sand, but 2 inches of turf, painted white). This means no need to rake, water, mow grass or fix ball markings. But the push rod surfaces still need care; they are rolled and polished to keep them smooth and country club smooth. The transition area has natural grass, mowed to the height of friendly courts and putters. Miss Green, have the chance to recover.

Shortland has been busy since its opening in early August, and last week it added another raffle: a 19-hole push rod and debris route called “Nest” that can be played with flat rods or wedges. Choose your choice. Grass is fake, but experience is real.

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