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Remember mixtapes?
Long before the advent of CDs - let alone the iPod - music lovers with eclectic tastes had to record and splice collections of their favorite songs from albums onto cassette tapes for their portable listening enjoyment. Our curated iTunes or Spotify playlists are the contemporary equivalent, and don't require dual cassette tapes.
Architect Forrest Richardson, a recent former president of the American Society of Golf Course Architects (ASGCA), seeks to mash up the idea of a mixtape-style playlist with a short-course golf experience called The Score Golf Club in one of the country's hottest markets with a concept-album loop, set to break ground in 2024. Property owners Laveen 140 plan to bring golf back to the neighborhood while also building up to 400 new homes.
The Score Golf Club, a nod to Richardson's golf-and-music ambitions, will be best described as an executive golf course, with two par 4s and 18 par 3s. In other words, it will be a 20-holer, adding to the illustrious list of golf courses with unusual numbers of holes.
The idea for The Score's music component came to Richardson as he noticed two young couples out for a round at Mountain Shadows, the short course he redesigned in nearby Paradise Valley, Ariz. They were using a four-person "party cart" outfitted with speakers. "It got me thinking how neat it would be if their music could fit the mood of the golf hole," said Richardson.
The Score will repurpose former golf course land in the southwestern part of the city, a neighborhood called Cotton Fields. That was the name of the area's original 36 holes, first laid out by PGA Tour player Dan Pohl in 1993. After various name and ownership changes, it was reduced to 18 holes in 2004 and ultimately closed - seemingly for good - in 2018.
Richardson's vision for The Score is not altogether different from the practice of pairing specific wines with specific foods; only this time, the extra sensation will be for the ears, not the tongue. Richardson seeks to pair each of the course's 20 holes with a specific piece of music meant to evoke a particular feeling or make a particular reference to the hole about to be played. The playlist will be generated via a geofencing-enabled smartphone app. For example, when golfers arrive at a short hole over water, their phones will automatically queue up the iconic, ominous chords from the movie Jaws.
Richardson, who lives in Phoenix, has always had a tendency to zig when other architects have zagged.
In 2016, he revamped Mountain Shadows into a short, compact and fun-forward midcentury-modern golf experience that has become popular with guests of the stylish on-site resort as well as locals, who flock to its weekly skins game on Tuesdays. Its sweeping, mischievous green contours and nods to classic "template" golf holes offer an indication of Richardson's design ambitions with The Score. Mountain Shadows allowed Richardson some space for innovation. It has a bonus par-2 hole, #17a, which is all green. Golfers try their hand at a 50-yard putt to approach the cup.
When he became the president of the ASGCA in 2020, Richardson unveiled a 14-minute video manifesto that advocated for more creativity in golf course design and planning - especially around short courses.
The Score represents yet another opportunity for Richardson to practice what he preaches. And on the heels of the opening of Grass Clippings, the Phoenix area's first par-3 course outfitted for night golf, The Score should add another interesting flavor - or genre - of golf in the Valley of the Sun.
"I think sound has always been a part of the game, but passive," said Richardson. "This concept takes that to the same level as artificial hazards and features, both of which we’ve accepted as visual and tactile parts of architecture. Sound — if tastefully integrated — can add to the experience just as it does in other forms of entertainment and sports."
Would you play a golf course with its own musical play list? Let us know in the comments below.
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