Malvern golf-course architect thrust into the spotlight

Gil Hanse has spent nearly 20 years keeping a low profile heading a small Chester County golf course architecture company. He liked that his course designs spoke for him. He liked being on a bulldozer moving ground at a project while listening to the Grateful Dead or Dave Matthews more than being recognized in a crowd.

But Hanse's cover has been blown. The Rio 2016 Organizing Committee for the Olympic and Paralympic Games selected Hanse Golf Course Design to create the layout where men and women will participate in the first golf competition at the Olympic Games since 1904.

The announcement on March 7 thrust Hanse, 48, of Malvern, into the international golf spotlight, especially because his company was chosen over seven other finalists that included companies led by World Golf Hall of Fame members Jack Nicklaus, Gary Player, Greg Norman, and Peter Thomson.

He's already got a plan in place if all this goes to his head.

"I told our kids, 'Listen, if I start acting differently, you've got to give me a hard time, call me on it,' " Hanse said Thursday in an interview at his home.

Named Golf Magazine's architect of the year in 2009, he has two courses on the international stage - TPC-Boston, an annual stop for the PGA Tour playoffs, and Castle Stuart, home of the Barclays Scottish Open at Inverness - as well as local courses Inniscrone, Applebrook, and French Creek.

The Olympic assignment means that he must design a course that can accommodate both the men's and women's competition while addressing a practice area, clubhouse, and access issues such as security. But another matter arises once the Olympic flame is extinguished - an anticipated golf boom in Brazil and other countries where the sport gets little notice.

Hanse recalled that Antony Scanlan, president of the International Golf Federation, told him, "I don't want to scare you, but there's a lot of responsibility here."

"This will be the face of golf," Hanse said. "I said in my presentation, 'I never watch figure skating, but in the Olympics, I'll watch figure skating.' There are going to be a ton of people who never watch golf, maybe never have seen golf. But because it's the Olympics and because it casts a very wide net to all corners of the world, this will be an opportunity for people to see what golf looks like.

"From our perspective, we're just presenting the stage. We're not going to be the ones out there competing. The players are the most important part of this. But people will be watching them play our golf course and there's a tremendous amount of responsibility as to what that looks like."

The committee said Hanse's presentation, made in conjunction with design partner Jim Wagner, "addressed the environmental sustainability directives for the Games and efficiently conformed to the building restrictions on the land."

And fans of Hanse's work, such as PGA Tour star Phil Mickelson, were happy at the selection.

"I think he's one of the best architects in the business," Mickelson told reporters the day the announcement was made. "He understands how to make a golf course playable for the average player but challenging for the good player.

"I give the Olympic committee a lot of credit because it would have been easier to go with a big name. And instead, they went with the best. I thought that was pretty cool."

The 230-acre site consists of sand that will be easy to move around, Hanse said, and has lower-growing trees on the property with larger trees bordering the land. The target date for completion of the course is January or February 2014.

Hanse said he will look at the designs of the other finalists and contact them if they have something he likes "because ultimately this is much bigger than us. We're trying to get it to be the best golf course it can be."

Hanse's team includes Wagner, Owen Larkin, who did much of the environmental planning, and former LPGA star Amy Alcott, now in the World Golf Hall of Fame. Hanse met Alcott while working on a renovation of the course at Los Angeles Country Club, and she expressed her interest in golf course design.

"In Brazil, she was great with respect to the legacy aspect, talking about getting kids involved and teaching academies and what is required for those things," he said.

Hanse plans to move to Rio in October. He said his wife, Tracey, and his daughter, Caley, the youngest of the couple's three children, will be moving to join him a few months later.

Another interesting aspect of the project for Hanse is his work elsewhere, most notably an agreement to renovate the famed Blue Monster course at Doral Resort in Miami for new owner Donald Trump. He said the fact that nonstop air travel exists between Rio and Miami makes that less daunting.

There's a lot going on, but Hanse is ready to handle the responsibility and the spotlight.

"Probably the biggest challenge is to keep our composure about us," he said. "We can't succumb to the pressure, but I think it's important for us to understand the importance of this event, and what it can do not only for golf in Brazil but hopefully for golf in all developing countries."