Peter Williams: Pitman's courses are a rendezvous with nature

When you play golf in Auckland these days the man you're most likely to encounter is Chris Pitman. You probably won't see him in person but you'll certainly be surrounded by his art. Pitman is an English-born golf-course architect whose work is now in evidence at seven golf courses around the greater Auckland region - Titirangi, Akarana, The Grange, Manukau, Pakuranga, Redwood Park and Peninsula.

The area has never known a busier time in golf-course reconstruction. Few of the major clubs in Auckland have a full layout at the moment. As well as the places where Pitman is working, other courses such as Remuera, Aviation and Pukekohe have temporary holes while renovations are made or have plans for this to happen soon.

So how come the bulldozers, earth movers and irrigation installers are working flat out at this time?

"Most club golf courses in Auckland are roughly the same age and they just need modernising," said Pitman. "Some work has been attempted in the past but too much of it was designed by well-meaning club committees and it's fair to say that mistakes were made."

Golf-course design is like any art form. A new work will never gain universal approval but the fact that the experienced Pitman has been engaged by so many clubs for expensive course upgrades suggests the man's work is high quality.

He's trained as a greenkeeper and was a course superintendent at Watford, north of London, in his early 20s. That was at an Alister MacKenzie-designed course so Pitman, subconsciously, became influenced by the man regarded as the best golf architect of all time.

MacKenzie, a Scottish physician, is assured of an everlasting reputation in the game after his work at Augusta National, Royal Melbourne and Cypress Point in California. He also played a significant part in the layout of Titirangi during a short visit to New Zealand late in 1926. He left drawings and designed a routing of the holes which is in play to this day. But in the mid 1990s, Titirangi's administration knew the course was badly in need of an upgrade. Pitman was engaged to redesign the holes and supervise construction.

The project is still going 9 years later and is a couple of years from completion. It's been frustrating playing there over the past decade because there's almost always been some part of it being rebuilt but the end result will be the most demanding golf course in Auckland.

So what particular philosophies does Pitman bring to his golf course reconstruction process ?

"Like MacKenzie I believe a golf course should be a rendezvous with nature. If possible, you leave the land just the way it is and build holes as nature intended. But more often than not, you have to create. But if you do create, you make it look natural."

Despite being in demand in Auckland, Pitman is the first to acknowledge that this city, because of the puggy and non-porous clay soil around much of the region, is a dreadful place to build golf courses.

"But it does have great valleys and ridges on which you can make some really good golf holes - especially at Titirangi."

There's no doubt Pitman's work has considerably enhanced the city's golfing landscape. Holes like the new 8th at Akarana, the remodelled 15th at Titirangi and the 11th at Manukau, currently under construction, are more demanding and ask more of the player. If an architect can do that, he's done his job.

Like renovations on your house, rebuilding at your golf course is a damned inconvenience. But, like at home, it's usually worth it.


- HERALD ON SUNDAY