It was several centuries ago that Mark Twain famously contended that golf “was a good walk spoiled.” Yes, there have been times when the weather is miserable and perhaps there are even more occasions when your golf game is even more miserable. Yet because I never could hit the curve ball, don’t ever want to put on the pads again, and have a relatively flat jump shot these days, golf just so happens to be the only game in town. As I now enter my 53rd year of competitive golf, I find myself appreciating that “good walk” regardless of weather, lack of talent and other forces I have absolutely no control over.
It was a relatively pleasant Tuesday afternoon last month that I engaged in one of those “good walks” even though I did so without the benefit of my golf clubs. It was sunny, the temperature was in the mid-50s and I was part of a most impressive threesome.
Our threesome included Steve Molinelli of San Francisco. Steve is a Bay Area businessman with a wife and two kids. He started out in golf as a caddie at Burlingame Country Club and was a member of a top-notch high school golf team at Burlingame High School. He followed that up by playing on the golf team at the University of the Pacific in Stockton. I crossed paths with Steve numerous times at competitive golf tournaments and was in his pairing a handful of times, most notably some 20 years ago when Steve used to play in the NCGA Partners Better Ball Tournament at Buckingham. Steve’s family has a longtime Lake County connection with property on Cobb Mountain as well as an ever-growing walnut orchard in the Lower Lake area.
Steve Molinelli has game as evidenced by his four wins in the Olympic Club championship. A true student of the game, Steve parlayed his past looping skills coupled with his knowledge of Olympic to caddie for Colt Knost when he won the 2007 United States Amateur there.
Steve sent me an email in November. It was an invite to view the premises at the so-called Brambles Golf Course project just north of Middletown in the area of the glider port just east of Highway 29. Obviously I was on board. I was not only looking forward to checking out the Brambles site, but I was also looking forward to talking golf with Steve Molinelli.
The other member of our walking threesome was James Duncan. A most distinguished and highly intelligent individual with a high regard for the game of golf, James is the principal designer of J.H. Duncan Golf Course Architects. James’ father is from Scotland, was trained as a civil engineer in Denmark, his mother’s homeland, and was highly influenced by golfing life in Scotland and Denmark. During the course of our day last month, James often mentioned the influences of the Royal Dornoch Golf Club, the home course of noted golf course architect Donald Ross. The design of the original course at Dornoch is attributed to Old Tom Morris.
James had an early internship with a golf course design firm in Aberdeen, Scotland, and then followed that up with a Masters degree in civil engineering and landscape architecture while doing research at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. While at Cornell, James met other golf course architects, including Gil Hanse (Rio Olympic Course), Jim Urbina (Old Macdonald), and Tom Doak (Pacific Dunes, Aetna Springs). James received a Donald Ross Society internship and signed on with Doak’s Renaissance Golf Design where he participated in bunker renovation at Fitchburg Country Club, greens renovation at Shinnecock, and new course construction at Riverfront Golf Club in Virginia. James contended that the best part of the Shinnecock job was getting to play “a ton of twilight golf that summer of 1996.”
Duncan originally met two-time Masters champion Ben Crenshaw at the National Golf Links in 1995 and two years later he crossed paths with Crenshaw’s design partner, Bill Coore. He convinced Coore and Crenshaw to let him participate in one of their projects, and in 1998 James was part of the construction of the East Hampton Golf Club in New York. James downplays his role in the East Hampton project, contending he was a glorified go-fer as well as the principal sitter of Bill Coore’s dog, but obviously he did make some sort of a positive impact on this top-notch design team as he continues a professional affiliation with them to this day. Under the umbrella of Coore and Crenshaw, James has been involved in projects at Dos Pueblos in Santa Barbara, Austin Golf Club in Texas, Hidden Creek in New Jersey, Old Sandwich in Massachusetts, Bandon Trails in Oregon, Blue Point in New York, Wykagyl in New York, and Clear Creek Tahoe in Carson City.
An international traveler from the very beginning, James Duncan was also involved with Coore and Crenshaw projects at Castlegregory in Ireland, Windermere Island in the Bahamas, Shanqin Bay in China, and Yokohama Country Club in Japan. Currently, James and his wife and two children reside in the upstate New York area, have a West Coast home in the South Bay, and also have a vacation home in the wine country.
Along the way, James formed his own design business. Because of his West Coast connections, he started to consider a golf course project that would bring vibrancy to wine country. James was looking for a site that would feature authentic golf with a look and feel similar to the great courses of the United Kingdom, most notably St. Andrews, Dornoch and Carnoustie. He was looking for a land stewardship type of locale that would couple golf with other forms of recreational entertainment. He also was looking to provide for a throwback mentality where the walk would be a good one with a quality caddie program to enhance the golfing experience. As James stated, “the Northern California wine country with its mixture of agriculture, viticulture, outdoorsmanship, food, wine and tourism is the perfect location for a version of such a vibrant, energetic place.”
I would spend several hours that sunny December afternoon walking the Brambles site with golfing friends Steve Molinelli and James Duncan. Next week we’ll take a look at the site and my initial impressions of the Brambles coupled with some of the plans in store for this inspirational golf project at the southern end of Lake County. You can assume that it was a very good walk with no spoilage anywhere in sight.
