MUIRFIELD

     The sole source and inspiration for this design of one of the
most venerable golf courses in the world came from the book "Sandy
Lyle Takes You Round the Championship Courses of Scotland," Lennard
Publishing, 1989, by Sandy Lyle with Bob Ferrier.  This is the best
golf book I've ever seen for designing courses.  It has complete
descriptions and several illustrations, photographs and paintings,
of each hole of the six courses it covers -- St. Andrews, Carnoustie,
Royal Troon, Turnberry, Muirfield, and Gleneagles.  I've taken the
liberty of quoting it verbatim (or as close as I could get, given the
space limitations) for most of the hole quotes and the course quote.
So this is my version of Sandy Lyle's description of Muirfield.

     A little history:

     The Honourable Company of Edinburgh Golfers (The Hon Coy) was
formed in 1744 and is the oldest golf club in the world.  In that year
it formulated the "13 Articles" which were the first rules for playing
the game, and which, adopted almost word for word by St. Andrews ten
years later, still form the basis of the game of golf today.
     The club moved several times as golf became more popular, and
in 1891 it moved to "an auld watter meadie" near the town of
Gullane and there Muirfield was built.  There have been 13 Open
Championships played there since 1892, so this year will be the
hundredth anniversary of the British Open at Muirfield.  After winning
the 1966 championship, Nicklaus built and named his own Muirfield
Village in its honor.
     The club is evidently unimpressed with the concept of par.
The championship scorecard has no figures for par on it.  Nor are
there yardage markers, tee pegs, a snack bar, or even a pro shop.
Muirfield is just golf at its most basic.  But by common consent, the
course plays 36-35-71, to a length of 6,926 yards.  Into a northwest
wind, it can seem substantially longer than that.

     Some remarks:

     On the JNUG version I used OB to simulate heavy rough, and
experimented with a kind of "plaid" which contained several unpleasant
textures all mixed up together, so that you might find yourself forced
to hack your way out of the rough with a putter if you were unlucky.
However, with the option of heavy rough OR out of bounds in JNSE I was
faced with a strange choice.  Heavy rough was exactly what I needed
(Muirfield is famous for having about the longest rough in the world),
but on the other hand there are two holes -- #2 and #9 -- whose
character is defined by the gray out-of-bounds wall that runs around
most of the property, and comes very much into play around the green
on those two holes.  Coincidentally, #9 was my favorite hole on the
course.  I wanted to retain that out of bounds in the worst way.  I
almost gave up the heavy rough in its favor, but finally decided that
to sacrifice 16 holes for the sake of 2 holes didn't make sense.  So I
tried routing these holes up against the edge of the frame in order to
produce a true out of bounds, but it didn't work for a variety of
reasons.  As a result, if you go over that wall, you're still in
bounds.  Try not too.  It may not be out of bounds, but it sure isn't
easy to get back through those trees and over that wall, either.
     As Sandy Lyle describes the course:  "No water, no trees, no
crippling carries -- the course is fair and open to all who play
sensibly and well."  This is true, but despite the absence of the
above, you may find Muirfield a surprisingly tough nut to crack.
After Revery, and before I designed Bellerive, it was definitely my
most difficult course.  This is due in large part to the bunkers, so
many of them that I haven't been able to count them all, but over 150,
at least.  The Muirfield bunkers are also quite distinctive.  They're
kind of hard to describe, but they have "reveted" sides, sort of
mason-work walls where the bricks are made out of turf.  They're big,
they're deep, and they're evil.  To look at them from a distance,
frequently what you see is not sand at all, but just these ominous
shadows where you know there's a deep pit in the ground.  I've tried
to simulate this effect by making steep walls of heavy rough around
many of the traps, and on tee shots and approaches you may think at
first you can't see where the bunkers are, because there's no white
showing.  Look for dark lines intruding into the fairway, and avoid
them.
     This is a course on which the main challenge is often the
accuracy of the drive, and where the careful player is rewarded
without being required to execute a lot of "heroic" shots.  Then
again, there's the wind, which is a prime factor on Scottish links
courses.  Without it, the course is quite vulnerable.  The harder it
blows, the worse it gets.
    The water in the background is the Firth of Forth, and the
bridge is the New Forth Bridge.  Poetic license, of course, has
been taken in portraying it as I did.  There's an Old Forth Bridge
too, but I couldn't figure a way to work it in.
     This is a course that almost everyone agrees is rather homely,
and has very little that is distinctive about it.  It is also
currently ranked by Golf Magazine as the 5th greatest course in the
world, 1st in Great Britain.  I think the key to appreciating
Murifield is to realize that it's a course that strips golf down to
its essence.  You hit your shots and you see your results.  And when
you're done you wonder why you couldn't have done a little better, and
you want to go back and try again.  I've played this course many times
without ever tiring of its challenge.

                                   Revery
                                   7-3-92