44FEATURE Tara ITI

BY HEATHER Kidd – PHOTOS JOAnn dOST

Beachfront

Beauty

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“You can see the ocean from every hole,” said Jim Rohrstaff, who, along with Michael Pleciak,

makes up the dynamic duo that is Legacy Partners, the firm overseeing membership (along with the club’s board of directors), real estate sales and marketing activities for the much-vaunted Tom Doak designed course Tara Iti situated near the town of Mangawhai, a 90-minute drive northeast of Auckland.

Rohrstaff made the claim during our meeting at Legacy’s Auckland office so there was no way he could easily be called out on what he’d said. However a visit to Tara Iti quickly proved his proclamation was not real estate speak and that it was fact… plain and simple.

Although Rohrstaff had done a good job explaining both the course and the concept of the club’s membership, which is based on a US model — creating the impression that Tara Iti is something special — it wasn’t until we arrived at the course, by way of a good ol’ Kiwi metal road then through a modest wooden gateway and along a rutted sandy track that weaves through stands of millable pine, that it became apparent the master salesman had not been overhyping this large-scale project.

Wow, wow and wow! There’s golf, there’s links golf and there is Tara Iti.

I live near the sea; it takes me seven minutes to walk to the beach — which I do most days — and I never tire of the view: white sand, ocean, and a huge sky overarching land and sea. I

equally fortunate that housing on and around the Te Arai property will never be the dominant feature, the property development plan and positioning the 18 holes between the beach and future housing ensuring that the golf course will forever be the hero.

Kiwi company Darby Partners was responsible for the overall land planning and site development but when it came to building a golf course it was landowner, American financier Ric Kayne, who chose the architect. There was no list drawn up, as far as Kayne was concerned there was only one man for the job, Tom Doak.

Doak has a reputation as an architect favouring an organic approach in both his design and as to how a course will be maintained; indeed, on his website Renaissance Golf Design, Doak states: “The best designs of all are organic, evolving from the subtleties of the ground they inhabit.”

It is obvious Tara Iti adheres to those principles. There are the little things, the tee plates set into the ground made from macrocarpa and featuring the outline of a Fairy Tern (Tara Iti in Maori), the rare indigenous bird that inhabits the property, and the simple tee markers that are small rocks collected from the local quarry.

The bigger thing is that the grass is fescue for both fairways and greens. The greens are of course cut shorter thus demarcating playing and putting surfaces.

In springtime the differences between fairway and green are

love my patch of beach, which is pretty and peaceful and different every day; it’s also impossible to imagine a golf course crisscrossing the dunes and the adjacent front row seat real estate.

It’s a good thing that bricks and mortar have not overrun all our country’s spectacular coastline and

A course

lIke nooTher

in new ZeAlAnd,

TArA iTi,designed by one of The

supersTArsof golf course

ArchiTecTure Tom doAk, is officiAlly open for business AfTer AlmosT

four yearsIn The makIng.The cuT wAs forTunATe

To be inviTed To view The course And find ouT whAT All The

fuss is AbouT

Jim rohrstaff michael pleciak

Above: views of the ocean are available from all 18 holes on the golf course. below: The green at Tara iti’s second hole.

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put simply, Tara iti runs as an equity membership model. That

means members, or stakeholders, purchase a share of the club and if and when they decide to leave the

club they get their money back. equity owners also have the right

to pass their share on to future generations or to sell.

Jim rohrstaff of legacy partners says, “The concept has been

exceptionally well received. we have a good mix of international

and new Zealand members.”The total size of the property is

1400 hectares, of which the golf course is built across 121 hectares.

south of Te Arai point is 700 hectares still to be developed

and upon which additional beachfront properties will be

built. currently on the northern half of the property are 46 sites,

35 on the beachfront and 11 on the golf course. in addition, seven two-bedroom member

cottages have already been built. The house sites are between 1-3

hectares, with smaller sites of 1000-1400m (home and land packages) available near the

member cottages. “ron whitten from Golf Digest

has compared Tara iti to cypress point, royal dornoch and royal

st george’s, and also pebble beach which is regarded as the ultimate golf course, saying that claim is officially up for debate,”

says rohrstaff. “he’s making some pretty big statements about our

course. Tara iti is there for the enjoyment of its members and

guests but it has also got people talking about golf in new Zealand once again and our hope is it will

bring more people here.”

members buy into club

fairways drift are all designated waste ground, meaning you can ground your club. It means there is no risk of having a Dustin Johnson-like Whistling Strait (remember the USPGA Championship of 2010) moment.

From the first tee the view is of course and pine forest, occasional clearings marking where houses on the generously proportioned sites will be constructed. So can you see the sea? Yes you can. It’s behind and to your left, a ribbon of blue beyond the dunes.

There is only one par-3 on the first nine, the second hole, and it is followed by two par-4s, the first of which plays to a punchbowl green that is largely hidden

subtle but as summer deepens the playing surfaces will become more visible as fairway watering is pared back to allow the fescue to turn golden.

Organic too is the design, the par-71 6264m (6900yds from the championship tees) course gently undulating and unfolding across 121 hectares of the 1400 hectare property.

The course is two distinct nines, separated by the clubhouse, designed by renowned New Zealand architect Pip Cheshire, and which is as subtle and organic as the golf holes surrounding it.

The first hole, a par-4, can cause first-timers to ponder just how large the landing zone is (and it won’t be the last time the same thought will cross your mind as you traverse the course) thanks to the rather tricky but clever design that creates a perception of a lack of space when in fact the opposite is what waits to reveal itself.

Indeed, generous fairways are a feature of the course, along with the fact that official bunkers don’t exist and the expanses of sand into which the

Above: The green at the seventh hole is exposed to any sea breezes. below: The third green.

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when Tara iti officially opened its doors on october 1, endangered shore birds outnumbered golfers by nearly 10:1, a fact that delighted club founders and the local conservation establishment.

upon acquiring the property, club founders established the Te Arai and mangawhai shorebirds Trust to conserve and protect fairy terns in addition to other at-risk shorebirds on the mangawhai wildlife and the mangawhai marginal strip. As well as sourcing and providing funds necessary to the preservation, protection and fostering of these shorebirds, the trust is charged with actively promoting growth in the number of threatened shorebirds.

Thirty-seven fairy terns were assessed on the property at the beginning of the 2014-15 season and that figure has grown to an estimated 40.

Tara iti’s general manager matt guzik said the golf club and other contributors fund all shorebird Trust efforts. in April 2016 the club will host the first of what will be an annual golf tournament to benefit the trust, thereby spreading year-long financial support among the club, its members, northland golfers and conservationists alike.

“The partnerships we’ve created here aren’t just with the golf club, or with Te uri o hau,” guzik said, referring to the local maori iwi or tribe in the northland region. “we meet with all the conservation organisations in the area. our club staff assists in trapping and monitoring. it’s been a real team effort, and everyone is so pleased with the progress: in bird counts, in opening the club, in creating something truly unique here.”

birds benefit

behind a small hillock. Not hidden, however, is that ocean view. It’s a constant, as is the genius of the course design.

The holes unfurl before you as you make your way across the course. Nothing jars, the routing meanders across and around the land, and because you are making the journey on foot — yes, that’s right, on foot, no carts allowed — the cleverness of the design is apparent.

There’s a softness about the course, in no small part due to

come into play, and it is entirely up to the golfer as to where he or she directs the ball.

That’s not to say the course is a soft touch; nothing could be further from the truth, and the track that will harden and therefore get faster during summer means careful attention must be paid to line and length of shot.

Unusually, holes six to nine are all par-4s with No 7 the standout due to the fact it is only 292yds (from the championship tees),

as Rohrstaff mentioned on more than one occasion during our round, “fun golf”.

Another reason the course is fun is because it has been designed to cater for every level of golfer. In themselves the holes are not difficult, what makes them testing is either the wind — and whether it is on or off shore you can depend on it to defend the course — and how good or bad your golf shot is.

There are no trees to speak of on the course, certainly none that

the lack of clearly delineated boundaries between one surface and another. Fairway and wasteland merge in a manner that suggests man hasn’t been much involved — which obviously isn’t the case — but this toned-down look complements the environment in which the course sits.

The highest points on the course are not high at all but neither is the land flat. Just as waves roll to shore, so the land rolls inland. A number of the greens are higher than the fairways and it’s perfectly possible, indeed a good call, to take out the putter if your ball is short of the green.

Punchbowl greens offer options as far as approach shots go. Playing Tara Iti, it’s possible to putt your ball from the fairway to the green and should you strike your shot too firmly the raised back slope is there to help feed your ball back towards the pin. It created the opportunity for,

260 from what is termed the middle tees. The hole is drivable but don’t expect to make birdie. The element of difficulty on this hole is that it is target golf and if you go for the green, which is surprisingly small, especially when compared to others on the course, you better make it. Don’t and you’ll struggle to make par.

The main difference between the front and back nines is their maturity. The spinifex, nature’s way of helping hold the shifting sands in place, has yet to grow in. In a way, the lack of development enhances these holes, for there’s a coastal rawness about them, and at times you can look across the land and wonder where the golf course is, it’s almost hidden amongst the dunes.

The back nine, which features three par 3s, the 10th, 15th and 17th, is the highest part of the course and the views of the ocean — and the prominent Hen and Chicken islands — truly stand out. Some of the holes seem to swoop around the dunes, opening up 180deg views of the coastline from the Whangarei Heads to Pakiri Beach.

Should the wind get up, and given the course’s proximity to the sea, that’s when during your round, not if, there’s a real feeling of battling the elements.

Nothing says beach more than sand dunes and one of the biggest in the southern hemisphere is the looming Mangawhai sand dune that is visible from many points on the back nine. Its towering presence, a massive cone of glittering white sand, is like the exclamation point in what is surely the ultimate when it comes to scenic splendour: blue sky, green golf course, white sand and, it must be said, a view of the ocean from every hole.

taraiti.com

righT: green grass and white sand are

the signature sights of Tara iti. below:

The 18th hole leads back to the

clubhouse.

Above: where forest once dominated, now it’s the views along the coastline. lefT: The clubhouse at night.

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The look is very interesting, rather like a jigsaw puzzle. At first, even from above, you don’t immediately see traditional fairway shapes; the corridors are highly irregular and expansive, they appear to weave in and around what look like existing swaths of sand and scrub. Were you looking to do something you’d seen elsewhere or is it unique? My associate Brian Slawnik was based in New Zealand for two-and-a-half years working on Tara Iti. He had a lot of time to tinker with that look on those first few holes, to create them with a character of their own. The way the grass bleeds into the sandy areas is different, maybe a little risky in that some people are going to want a really clean edge. But we think the approach is pretty natural

highest point on the property. That little stretch is different, there is more space and sand between holes on that part of the course out in the middle of the Sahara. You have such a different perspective, but also a really good visual perspective on the rest of the golf course. To me, the tee shot at the 12th feels like the thing Bernard Darwin described at Sandwich in the old days where it’s just raw sand everywhere and if you can’t carry it 150 yards to the fairway you’re in deep trouble.

No doubt the entire course will change in appearance over time, not just the back nine. We expect the entire course will evolve year to year, more than most courses. CJ [Kreuscher], the superintendent who worked at Old Macdonald with us — and who we recommended for this job — plays a particularly important role in this. He’s learning to roll with the punches and learn what the weather and wind patterns throw at him. He’s having to adjust fairway patterns and respond based on those kinds of natural factors, and that’s fine with us. Just because a fairway ends right here, right now, doesn’t mean it has to be that way next year or 20 years from now.

The seventh at Tara Iti is a really great, short par-4 with a tiny green.In building a 260-yard par-4 you’re sort of going out on a limb. You’re taking a risk that people are going to think it’s too easy or, if you try to avoid that too much, they’ll think it’s too gimmicky because you’ve jacked it up too much. But it seems every time I build a par-4 under 300 yards people love it. They’re so rare to find

Tom, when you first arrived at Te Arai the land that has become golf course was pretty much a solid block of pine, was it not?There was just this wall of trees. Just north of the site is wide open, with huge sand dunes and no trees, but our site had been planted for forestry 30 to 40 years ago. There was one spot where a swath of them had been cleared — so some of the islands off the coast were visible, I think. If they hadn’t done that, the only way we would have known there were any views outward and down the coast would have been to walk along the beach.

for that environment and we hope people are accepting of it because it’s one of the things that makes the course challenging. You’ve got a lot of fairway to play to; there are only a couple holes anyone would consider narrow. If it gets windy, there’s still a lot of golf course out there, a lot of turf. On the other hand, we tried to work the angles into the green sites where you can be in the wrong half of the fairway on some holes and have no chance of getting it close to the hole.

But you also created a few punchbowls that gather balls onto putting surfaces. The third at Tara Iti is a splendid example. Do you put a punchbowl on every course these days or just where the spirit moves you? We don’t do it everywhere, but when you’re working in sand

How did you make the transition from that solid wall of pine to what we see now? Or was it obvious what you wanted to do, allowing you to simply remove the trees and get busy? It wasn’t completely obvious, and it took quite a while. We had to get comfortable that we could establish the dune vegetation before we designed much golf course. Because of the slow pace of construction on the project we were able to do a few holes to start with and nurse some of these dune plantings into being. They thrived to such an extent that we basically started harvesting plant materials from those first holes and replicated that look in other places.

dune you need some of that to really make it feel like a links course. It’s natural and it’s a good balance to other places where the first bounce is away from the hole. You’re just playing into a bowl that sits there in the dunes. When I’m working in dunes I always look to have a couple of greens sites sitting down low. It’s the one environment where you don’t have to worry so much about drainage.

The ninth green is a sort of hybrid, three-sided punchbowl. Nine was always going to be a favourite of mine. That bowl was really deep when we started, we actually had to fill it in a great deal. If we hadn’t, everything would have gathered in the same trough at the bottom of that bowl. But the bowl is turned to the line of play so there’s only an entrance at the left front of the green, the rest of it is hidden by the right side of the bowl. You want to drive it out to the left, and then use the wall of fairway at the back of the bowl to steer the ball around to the hole.

The back nine, the last holes to be planted, are still maturing. As a result the two nines look quite different. Will they always, or is this simply a matter of the back nine maturing?They’ll grow to be quite similar. The big departure on the back nine is going up on 12, 13 and 14, which is the

Tom doAk is noT A sTrAnger To The new ZeAlAnd lAndscApe, hAving creATed The celebrATed cApe kidnAppers course, buT TArA iTi is his firsT links course here. even before iTs officiAl opening in ocTober, The word wAs ThAT iT is A mAsTerpiece. hAl phillips spoke To doAk AbouT The proJecT

Keeping it

real

Tom doak names the ninth as one of his favourite holes at Tara iti.

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and maybe I am trying harder because I know I’m sticking my neck out. The trick at the seventh is that it’s such a small green there’s just one place short and right where it’s easy to get an approach onto the green. It’s driveable, of course, but if you don’t hit that small target, or you lay up anywhere but that one spot, it’s really hard to get it on the green.

The green at 18 is just the opposite. It’s enormous and gathers shots at the end of a long par-5.The green site reminds me of that green at Dornoch that everyone loves, No 14. It’s a big green but you really don’t want to fly it up there ‘cause if you do it might go through the green to the trough in back. Of course, most places where you’d try and reproduce that green you

bent at Tara Iti, some time in the future, if they wanted to go that way. But I don’t think they’ll ever want to go that way. Just like at Bandon, from the fairway you cannot tell where the greens start at Tara Iti. There is no line. That’s a visual thing but it’s also a playability thing, because fescue is the ideal surface for links golf, for bouncing the ball in. In that perfect world, you don’t want it to bounce differently if it is five feet short or five feet on.

It also plays into the whole grassing scheme at Tara Iti, right? It fits with the idea that there’s no ‘corridor’, but instead a series of advantageous paths that move from day to day, depending on conditions.Right. You have to keep the grass scheme for something like that very simple because if you have fairways defined by different grasses or different cuts in the rough, it’s hard not to have that differentiation at green’s edge too. At Tara Iti, it’s very simple — it’s either grass or sand.

wouldn’t have the wind or fescue fairways. The whole point is to bounce it up there. But if you don’t have the proper conditions, you can’t even try.

You chose to go all fescue at Tara Iti just like you see at places like Dornoch. CJ has a big role there. He’s both really well versed in fescues, having worked at Old Macdonald, and he’s a really good player, like a 2 handicapper. He’s really into it from a playability standpoint, keeping it really firm and getting it to work right. At the beginning of the project we had issues with irrigation supply so the fescue and its inherent drought tolerance was key to that. They have enough water now so it’s not mission critical but it’s still a better thing for the neighbourhood and environment to have something we’re not watering a lot. You know, it’s so sandy and with the coastal breeze it’s going to stay so dry naturally. Trying to maintain anything else would have been really hard, you’d just be pouring water and fertiliser on it all the time. There’s no doubt that fescue is the right grass.

The fescue choice is part environmental, part playability and part old-world cachet. What determines whether it’s really going to work in any particular place? What matters a great deal is what’s going on in the neighbourhood. Like, if they have it all on the courses at Bandon, and you’re playing on fescue every day, there’s no problem. At Pebble Beach, where you have fescue on Spanish Bay but only Spanish Bay, people say, “Why isn’t this playing like the other courses?” Whistling Straits has bent on the greens and made their approaches bent, too, which is crazy. It would be easy to change the greens to

“it’s either grass or sand,” says designer Tom doak of Tara iti. This spectacular bird’s eye view of the course confirms his statement.

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