Venues
This week's PGA Tour visit to the Sea Island Resort will once again shine the spotlight on Tom Fazio's large-scale renovation of the resort's C.H. Alison-designed Seaside course, an aesthetically flashy Fazio work but one not entirely sympathetic to Alison's Golden Age vision. But halfway around the world, the Sunshine Tour's BMG Classic will visit a less-transmogrified Alison layout, the Glendower Golf Club, a tree-lined, lake-dotted track in Johannesburg's northeastern suburbs. Glendower may also come up a bit shy as a preserved classic (not all of those water hazards, for example, date to Alison's day) but with three South African Opens (including Vijay Singh's 1997 triumph) on its résumé, it does remain a fine traditional venue (photo). And even further afield, the European Tour visits Western Australia for the inaugural ISPS Handa Perth International (Golf Channel), an event to be hosted by another Golden Age classic, the Lake Karrinyup Golf Club. Despite sitting an enormous continent away, Lake Karrinyup would fit nicely into the fabled Melbourne Sandbelt and was built in 1927 by Dr. Alister MacKenzie's Australian partner, Alex Russell. Norman von Nida, Bruce Devlin, Jack Nicklaus and Gary Player have all won Australian Opens here, making it one of Oz's finest and more historic facilities (photo).