Reno-Tahoe: Gray's Crossing/Timilick

by Vic Williams

J-Talkin' In Truckee

Three of Today's Most Outspoken Architects Have Designs on Sierra Greatness

You gotta love the Jake and Jim show. Nothing but perfectly timed jibes and surprisingly pithy insights, with occasional goofball asides from a third wheel they call Sign Boy.

Then again, Johnny can hold his own in front of an audience, too. Everybody knows that. On TV or in the flesh, doesn’t matter. The man can talk. Heck, give him five minutes and you’ll be calling him One Take Johnny. He doesn’t miss a beat. Makes sense. He’s been doing it for years.

But every showman demands his due. Could be a clicker to their hi-def domain, could be a ticket to a command performance, could be a $100,000 membership to get a front row seat. Depends on what you’re looking for and what they’re working on at the moment — a constant cache of new material. And for these guys, a theater just ain’t big enough. They need some serious real estate, all done up nice and pretty by behind-the-scenes magicians who set the scene not with paint and rigging, but with bulldozers and blueprints.

 Step on up to the greatest show on earth, if you’re a golfer who looks at a course as something more than 18 stretches of turf to be endured in as few strokes as possible. Step on up if the nuts and bolts of architecture are like a well-wrought script to your ears. And if you really want a good seat, step on up to 6,000 feet above sea level, where Jake, Jimmy and Johnny are doin’ their thing in a big way in a not-so-little town called Truckee.

We’ve said it before (as recently as last issue) and we’ll say it again: A half hour west of Reno, 90 minutes east of Sacramento and three and a half hours from the Bay Area, this one-time railroad burg and historic Donner Party stopover is bursting at the seams with new and in-the-works golf courses. While the rest of the golf industry struggles out of the doldrums, Truckee is one of several West Coast destinations to buck the trends and build away.

Big plans call for big names. So, East-West Partners, one of today’s biggest golf developers, called on Peter Jacobsen and Jim Hardy to route Gray’s Crossing through forested terrain just off Interstate 80, the newest of several private layouts attracting members and real estate buyers from across the West. “Jake,” of course, is the popular, wisecracking longtime tour pro who also dabbles in event management, writing and whatever else will make him a buck. Hardy is a former player, knowledgeable architect and Top 100 teacher who came up with the “one plane/two plane” method. Together they form a dynamic design duo that held court, along with Matt “Sign Boy” Griesser and Annika Sorenstam, for Gray’s Crossing members and guests in early July.

A week later, two-time major winner-turned-TV commentator extraordinaire Johnny Miller, along with his own longtime design buddy John Harbottle, put their final bunker-and-green touches on Timilick Tahoe, another buy-in beauty just three miles south of Gray’s and right next to the Truckee’s original high-end members-only course, Lahontan, designed by Tom Weiskopf. Timilick’s members will get a sneak preview play as early as this fall.

Need more name-dropping? In 2004 Jack Nicklaus left his stamp here with Old Greenwood, another East-West product that opened to the public (and Tahoe Mountain Club members) in 2004 to complement Brad Bell’s stellar Coyote Moon, which began the Truckee boom in the late 1990s. Next up is Tom Fazio, whose second Lake Tahoe-area effort, Martis Camp, is on track to open in 2009.

But for now, as the High Sierra’s 2007 golf season reaches its final act, the stage belongs to Jake, Jim and Johnny. Whether or not taking the plunge into private golf membership is in your plans, they’re worth your attention.

The Gift of Gray’s

It’s a common riff among modern mountain golf course architects: God does most of the work, while it’s the human’s job to get the hell out of the way. “This land is fantastic,” Jacobsen said on the Gray’s Crossing range before he, Hardy, Griesser and Sorenstam inaugurated the course with a friendly charity skins game. “When you get great land the most important job is to not mess it up. We’ve always worked with the land. We don’t force anything. I’m sure we could all tell of some crazy courses we’ve played where a bunker or a green or a tee looked out of place. Nothing will look out of place here. We simply had to step out of the way and let the land do the talking.”

And talk it does, in tones gentle and forceful, ironic and direct, with a rhythm both welcoming and challenging. A few holes in, most players will have a good grip on the course’s core personality traits — generosity laced with a dangerous streak. Both come clear in two stretches — holes 3-7 and 14-18. Among them are two 600-plus-yard par 5s, a couple of drivable par 4s and par 3s from 156 to 222 yards (all from the blue tees). In all, Gray’s Crossing is a solid private track that rewards the better stick’s careful strategy but keeps the membership’s more casual contingent happy, too. And, like other Jake-Jim products throughout the West, it starkly reveals the psyches of the two guys who laid it out, and in some ways echoes the hilly, forested character of certain private bastion down south.

“Peter and I were both tremendously influenced by the back nine of Augusta National because it’s probably the greatest example of offensive and defensive golf,” Hardy said. “You play 10, 11 and 12 and you say ‘Amen’ if you got through alive. On the other hand, 13 and 15 are ‘redemption holes’ because all of a sudden they give you a chance to get your score back. You can get eagles and birdies, then you turn around you get some hard golf again. Both of us like that. Our philosophy is to get at least three difficult holes per nine, then six offensive holes. This should not be a difficult course from the regular tees. It should be a difficult course from the very back tees.”

Where, at nearly 7500 yards, only the low-handicapper few should dare to tread. Everyone else needs to move up and have fun, Jacobsen says.

“If we wanted to kick you in the teeth, we would have set up a booth that said, ‘get kicked in the teeth for a buck.’ You should have fun and enjoy yourself. A lot of architects make holes too hard. We want you to have a good day and come back whether it’s a public course or a private facility. Why should we build a golf course so difficult that when you walk off, you hate the game and don’t ever want to play again? We want you to come back and play tomorrow.”

But will members put Gray’s Crossing on a par with the two other courses in the East-West Partners rota? PGA General Manager Dirk Skillicorn, who was at Coyote Moon for several years, thinks Gray’s Crossing strikes a perfect balance between that course and Old Greenwood. Jacobsen agrees, though he assures neither he nor Hardy were influenced by what Nicklaus or Bell had brought to Truckee before them. “I did not want to see Old Greenwood before designing Gray’s Crossing because I did not want to do anything similar. We made a conscious effort to come here, view the land, walk the site, do the routing and the strategizing without worrying about Jack. I say that with respect; he did a fantastic course. But we didn’t want to be compared to it. We simply want people to say we’ve got three great golf courses that are unique unto each other or they are similar to each other. That’s for the golfer to decide — whether they like Coyote Moon best, Old Greenwood best, or Gray’s Crossing. It doesn’t matter as long as everybody enjoys every golf course.”

Miller Time at Timilick

While Gray’s Crossing has two Truckee siblings pining for the spotlight, Timilick is an only child. But by the look of several holes completed and revealed to lot buyers, members and media before Johnny Miller’s midsummer visit, it won’t be lonely for long. It’s got too much going for it, including — stop us if you’ve heard this one — a natural, pristine, lay-of-the-land vibe.

That’s Miller’s story, and he’s sticking to it with a big dab of the kind of refreshing honesty that has made him one of TV’s top golf voices.

“You look at the waves in the fairway and the beauty that looks like we didn’t touch it. That was the design philosophy. We are really into the beauty of the area — all these great trees and even the black boulders. These guys were able to just fit it in so, when we make the final cuts with these fairways groomed, it looks like a tournament player course.”

Timilick’s front nine is relatively flat for a mountain course, meandering gently through Douglas fir and lodgepole pine that will fill early morning and late afternoon rounds with sun-filtered magic, and open views to nearby Northstar, the Carson Range and the Martis Valley. The back side ranges up onto a ridge and asks for a few more forced carries over native terrain, but overall, Miller and Harbottle pulled back on the reins to keep things manageable for members.

“It’s not gonna be a killer course, but from the back tees there are some par fives that stretch out, like No. 18,” Miller told a crowd of ground-floor members. “We’ve tried to think of everything that’s a very enjoyable members course, a very playable course where you should be able to shoot good scores if you hit the ball well.”

Still, this is Johnny Miller, one of the greatest iron players of all time, and he’s not about to go all soft on his designs. “You gotta use your head out there. My goal is to not have a piece of cake the first couple times you play it. I want you guys to have some members’ advantage when you bring your friends out.”

Timilick has the added glitter of its sublime Sierra surroundings, which tends to lighten the blow a bit. “Site-wise, this course — if you rank them on a scale of 1-10 — would have to be an 8 to 9,” Miller says. “It’s not Pebble Beach, we don’t have the Pacific Ocean. But this would be in the top three best sites I’ve ever worked with.”

This isn’t the first time the two Johns have teamed up in these parts. Like their counterparts at Gray’s Crossing, they seem to share one brain for architecture. “John and I have a long relationship,” Miller says. “We worked together on the other side of the Sierra on Sierra Nevada Golf Ranch (now Genoa Lakes’ Resort course), and we share a lot of the same mutual beliefs in a golf course — you want playability, you want natural feel, you want beauty to be important. We’re sort of simpatico, the two of us. There’s a lot of respect both ways. Together, and we get a better product than either one of us could do on our own.”

So, it’s “break a leg” for Johnny and John and Jake and Jim. They love to perform out there, in the dirt. That’s their stage. They may not be Abbott & Costello, Martin & Lewis or even Rowan & Martin, but they know what they’re doing. And right now, in Truckee, they own the joint. FG

Gray’s Crossing

www.grayscrossing.com | 530.550.5800
East-West Partners/Tahoe Mountain Club | 800.217.7554
Tahoe Mountain Club membership initiation fee $150,000; sports membership also available.
Membership includes golf privileges at Gray’s Crossing, Old Greenwood, Coyote Moon and access to all club facilities, Pavilion at Old Greenwood, Golf Academy, Wild Goose restaurant, Schaffer’s Camp restaurant, Alpine Club and more.

Timilick Tahoe

www.timilick.com | 877.846.4542
Currently accepting charter golf membership subscriptions at limited time offer of $60,000 (10% refundable deposit required). Charter golf inititation fee will increase to $75,000 when clubhouse is complete. Timilick residents automatically invited to join and can upgrade from sports or social membership. Includes full golf, clubhouse, recreational and social privileges.